On the evening of December 12, 2000, when the Novato City Council was to vote on whether to permit 424 new housing units to be built above some wetlands and in oak-studded hills that environmentalists had tried for 25 years to protect, nine horsemen led a solemn procession through downtown to City Hall, followed by picketers carrying lighted tapers and chanting “Save Bahia.”

A photograph of the dramatic procession appeared on the front page of the next day’s Marin Independent Journal, but the Council’s action was a blow to the Save Bahia effort. Shortly after 3 a.m., before an overflow crowd, the Council had unanimously (with one abstention) approved the development.

That looked like the end of the story. But the Save Bahia group had prepared one more move—a long shot. Quickly, a new campaign committee, Citizens to Save Bahia, filed with the Fair Political Practices Commission and began to gather signatures on a petition for a special election in which Novato citizens would have the final say. Four months later, after an intense campaign, 70 percent of the city’s voters turned out to reverse their City Council’s decision by a margin of two-to-one. Soon after, the developer called the Marin Audubon Society. He was interested in discussing the sale of the entire 641-acre Bahia property. On January 6, 2003, Marin Audubon closed escrow.

Bahia is a rhythm of oak woodland and salt marsh weaving in and out of five shallow coves that ascend from the sloughs on the Petaluma River’s west bank. It is a rare remnant of habitats, the only known location in the San Francisco Bay Area, and possibly the state, where blue oak woodland adjoins salt marsh. Its purchase, an achievement in itself, is also a major step toward the Herculean goal of restoring 7,000 acres of Marin County’s historic wetlands to San Francisco Bay, a goal that is shared by a consortium of organizations and agencies, led by Marin Audubon and Marin Baylands Advocates.

The story of Bahia is unique, but it has parallels in other communities around San Francisco Bay and along the coast. It demonstrates that citizens can prevail over powerful development interests when fighting for the survival of a valued natural place—given sufficient determination, energy, passion, endurance, political savvy, and luck. The luck is partly in the availability of public funds. Had California voters not passed Proposition 12 in 2000 and Proposition 40 in 2002, the effort to save Bahia may well have failed. The Coastal Conservancy’s contribution, for example, came largely from money made available through these bonds.

This story also demonstrates that people who buy houses built in defiance of the natural dynamics of their location may be buying future disappointment.

Marsh to Waterway to Marsh

Bahía is the spanish word for “bay,” but this property is not a bay. As you approach it on a summer day heading east on Bahia Drive, the road rises to the crest of a hill, and before you lies a watery plain, in hues of green, brown, and gold. In winter and spring a sheet of water covers the lowlands and migrating waterfowl and shorebirds abound.

To the south, the Petaluma River glistens —actually a tidal estuary, not a river. In the late 19th century, schooners and flat-bottom scows passed by, plying the route between San Pablo Bay and the town of Petaluma, 10 miles north. Later, steamers traveled the river. The last sternwheeler made its final run in 1950.

More hills frame the far horizon. This marshy plain is a historic wetland, a remnant of the vast marshes that fringed San Francisco Bay a couple of centuries ago. Most of these wetlands were diked and drained for farming, and subsequently were lost to roads, buildings, and streets as the San Francisco Bay metropolitan area kept growing. Here on the upland vantage point of Bahia Drive, it’s easy to imagine what once existed.

There is a woodland to your left, various oaks mixed with madrones and other trees. To your right, large steps have been cut into the hillside—sites for more houses. Grass has covered them. At the edge of the marsh below, single-family houses are scattered along winding streets. A channel overgrown with bright green marsh grass leads from this residential enclave to a larger channel, which runs to the river.

These houses, 288 of them, were built in the late 1960s as the beginning of what was to be a 2,200-home water-oriented community. The original developer, a southern California engineer, graded the streets and dug two lagoons from what was then grazing land, but then lost the property due to financial setbacks, according to Bill Wright, who worked as an engineer for developers who built the houses around the first of the two lagoons. The second lagoon remained undeveloped.

To those who bought homes here, the name “Bahia” was a promise—or perhaps only a dream—that they could sail from their doorsteps out into the world. Some envisioned themselves sailing from their back doors out into the river, through the Golden Gate, then perhaps south toward the beautiful bahías of Baja California.

But the lagoon silted in and evolved into a tidal marsh.

• • •

All but ten percent of San Francisco Bay’s historic wetlands have been destroyed, but a dramatic turnaround has occurred within the past decade. Not just in Marin County, but in every one of the nine counties that surround the Bay, work is under way to preserve what remains and to restore as much as possible. In late 2000, the San Francisco Bay Joint Venture, a partnership of agencies and organizations concerned with wetlands, adopted a goal: to preserve or restore and enhance 200,000 acres by 2020. In late July 2003, Joint Venture coordinator Beth Huning said that goal is within reach.

Ann Thomas has been active with Marin Baylands Advocates since its inception in 1994, and helped to organize the Bahia petition drive.

Read the conclusion of the Bahia story in the print version of Coast & Ocean.