Book Note: Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast

Frances Werner, Proprietor, River Reader, Guerneville

If you want to get your blood boiling about the truly deplorable politics that have led to a dammed and degraded Russian River, a paved flood plain and devastated tributaries, read Dr. Marty Griffin's Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast: The Battles for Audubon Canyon Ranch, Point Reyes, and California's Russian River. And if you want to find out what we can do to restore the watershed, bring back the salmon, assure safe drinking water, and bequeath a pristine waterway to future generations, you will find that in Dr. Griffin's book, too.

The most important lesson to be learned from Griffin's book is that it can be done. The first two sections of Saving the Marin Sonoma Coast chronicle the incredible victories won in West Marin in the l960s and 1970s when Marin County proposed to run a freeway up the coast, fill in the Bolinas Lagoon, and develop new towns with hundreds of thousands of people, all of which would have killed the plan to create the Point Reyes National Seashore Park.

How do you save the environment? Bit by bit, small battle by small battle, until the cumulative effect is an enormous victory: the unspoiled shorelines of the Bolinas Lagoon and Tomales Bay embracing the incomparable Point Reyes. Griffin tells of years of strategic land purchases, arduous fundraising, the development of grassroots organization, and the training of future environmental and political leaders. In the end the political apparatus in Marin was transformed from pro-development to pro- environment.

Dr. Griffin is generous in his praise and attribution of the efforts of others in saving West Marin, but he clearly played a key leadership role, and his personal Story, albeit gleaned only indirectly from the book, is fascinating. Throughout the Marin battles he maintained a medical practice in Ross and would give his patients a dose of environmental zeal along with a remedy for whatever ailed them. Often the lands in contention were owned by his medical colleagues who were investing speculatively. Eventually, his interest in the environment led him to return to medical school for a degree in public health, making him an even more formidable advocate.

When Dr. Griffin moved to Sonoma County in the late 1980s, he could have simply practiced medicine, raised grapes (he owns Hop Kiln Winery), and rested on his laurels. Fortunately for us Sonomans, he has done no such thing. As co-founder of Friends of the River, an umbrella group of organizations concerned about the river, Dr. Griffin has remained very much in the forefront of environmental battles.

The battle for the Russian River rages on, and according to Dr. Griffin, we are on the edge of the abyss and can pull back only if we adopt a land ethic that acknowledges the role the river and its watershed play in the health of our communities. There are hopeful signs now that such a land ethic might take root. A lawsuit filed by the Friends of the River against the State WAter Resources Control Board for dereliction of duty will force the development of the (first-ever) flood and watershed management plan. The National Marine Fisheries has listed the coho and steelhead as threatened species, requiring a recovery plan. And federal funds are available for a watershed restoration project. But none of these developments will bear fruit unless grassroots organizations tend to them carefully and an informed electorate votes in pro-river, not pro-development, Countywide officials.

But if you read Saving the Marin-Sonoma Coast you will be heartened that the Russian River can be saved. This is Dr. Griffin's achievement: he has created a record of what has been done in Marin and a call to arms for what must be done in Sonoma. (Russian River Monthly)