The Sonoma City Council sided with the farmers Tuesday night, not the vintners nor the hopsters but the mariculture farmers of Drake’s Bay Oyster Co.
The measure was added to the agenda's Consent Calendar by Mayor Ken Brown and Councilmember Tom Rouse, but when the Consent items were brought to the floor Councilman Rouse elected to open this one to public discussion.
The other Consent Calendar items were passed without dissent. So, ultimately, was Item 5-D: ”Adoption of a Resolution urging the State to assert its right to continue to lease the water bottoms in Drakes Estero for shellfish cultivation.”
If what ensued had been a baseball game, it would have been called a “laugher,” a polite way of saying what we called it in grade school. This reporter lost count, but about 30 people came to the public comment podium, only two appeared to have any reservations whatsoever about the measure.
A large number of them were not from Sonoma, nor were they from Sonoma Valley, nor Sonoma County, but Marin County’s Point Reyes and surrounding communities, where Kevin Lunny has his oyster farm, Drake’s Bay Oyster Co.
The farm grows oysters and clams on about 1,000 acres of submerged land in Drakes Estero, an estuary of Drakes Bay, and processes and cans them on three shoreline acres. It produces 40 percent of the oysters harvested in California each year.
The farm is challenging a decision by U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar to close it since it is located within the federally protected Point Reyes National Seashore.
The case has become a rally flag for a number of different points of view, from a sustainable industry in a regional “foodshed” and small farmers rights to federal encroachment and invasive species. The Lunnys are currently asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to issue a preliminary injunction that would enable the farm to continue harvesting oysters while the owners challenge Salazar’s action in a federal trial court.
Lunny purchased the oyster farm seven years ago from its original owners, probably in the hope that his appeal to continue farming would be approved.
The National Parks service, for its part, wants the oyster farm gone so the estuary can become the first marine protected wilderness on the West Coast.
But somewhere between small farmer and big government, it turns out the lease that Lunny has for the property is from the State of California, not the National Parks Service. So the resolution requested that Assemblyman Mark Levine would “urge the State of California to assert its rights to continue to lease the water bottoms in Drakes Estero for shellfish cultivation.”
It also holds that Congressman Jared Huffman should “support a bi-partisan Congressional investigation by the appropriate House Committee of Natural Resources … into the questionable science that informed Secretary Salazar’s decision not to grant the Oyster Farm a permit for the facilities onshore Drakes Estero.”
Whether or not Sonoma has skin in the game, or a horse in the race, appeared to be the only question that might stall an endorsement, if any endorsement was to be forthcoming at all.
Sure, a number of Sonoma restaurants serve oysters, plus other local venues such firemen community functions and local fundraiser events, as the resolution pointed out among its many “whereas” clauses.
But taking a regional, even national stand on matters outside the City Council’s jurisdiction is always a dicey business, as at least one of the sitting City Council members knows too well.
Nonetheless, Mayor Brown and Mayor Pro Tem Rouse brought the resolution to the Council, at the request of constituent Yannick Phillip, and the matter was opened to public comment.
A never-ending number of pro-oyster farm advocates paraded to the podium, from scientists who said the Interior Department misrepresented their data, to family members of the employees of the company, to small farmers who saw in Lunny a stand-in for their own struggles, to one man who testified that the effort to close down Drake’s By Oysters was “an indication of how the UN rolls, equivalent with Hegelian dialectics the underpins the method of oppression.”
There seemed to be only one or two voices raised in caution, such Turtle Island Program Director Teri Shore. “The issue here is not about whether the oyster farm is sustainable or not, but about undermining the federal Wilderness Act,” she has said.
Other questions were whether science was final on the possible negative impact of oyster farming on the estuary, and doubted the legal standing of contravening the original act that set aside the Point Reyes National Seashore, which allowed 40 more years of mariculture, to expire in 2012.
Eventually Kevin Lunny and his wife Nancy themselves came to the podium, speaking of the “foodshed” his farm represents, saying the Sonoma was in the same foodshed. “If we lose this resource, you’ll be looking to Korea or other places in Asia” for oysters, Lunny said.
When it came back to the City Council, one by one the council members voiced their support for the resolution. Laurie Gallian said “This is about small farming, this is about what we in California do best.”
David Cook affirmed that it was a local issue, as family members of the oyster farming business lived in Sonoma, and other businesses such as restaurants were involved as well.
“We’re neighbors of yours, Mr. and Mrs. Lunny, and we’re acting like good neighbors,” he said.
The vote, a loud and strong 5-0, met with applause from those present. Mayor Ken Brown alluded to his earlier efforts to get the City Council to oppose the Iraq Invasion and Afghanistan War, saying “Maybe now I’ll have the courage to bring those back.”
What do you think – did the City Council oversteps its authority in taking a side in the Drake’s Bay conflict with the government? Let us know in the comments.
