Drakes Bay Oyster Company & the National Park Service. Watch the video, "THE FRAMING OF AN OYSTER FARM" at http://vimeo.com/52331881

Why Read This Blog? Why Should You Care?

Drakes Bay Oyster Company Worker

Watch the video: “The Framing of an Oyster Farm” by clicking here or copying and pasting this link into your web browser: http://vimeo.com/52331881

Shortly after his election in 2008, President Obama addressed the National Academy of Sciences giving a compelling speech promising scientific integrity and transparency, essentially promising to transform the use of science in government decision making. His speech was so powerful; it brought tears to the eyes to some of those scientists in attendance. As of 9:40 AM, November 29, 2012, his administration, in particular the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, in league with the Director of the National Park Service Jon Jarvis, turned that promise into a hollow statement by relying on false science, misconduct and fraud* to deny renewal of the lease for Drakes Bay Oyster Farm.

*per two separate NAS studies, MMC studies, numerous independent scientist’s findings, Senator Dianne Feinstein and other bi-partisan government officials

 

Even though the fight was lost and, with it, the farm, the livelihood of 30 workers and their homes for them, their spouses, their children and their grandchildren in addition to a sustainable, renewable, ecologically beneficial source of food, the abuses continue.

This is the story as it unfolded and the aftermath.

 

Over the years I lived in Point Reyes (2004 to 2013), I witnessed an incredible story unfold involving the National Park Service, the Sierra Club, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Environmental Action Committee of Marin hurling one accusation after another, year after year, at the owners of Drakes Bay Oyster Company – the Lunnys – and the Lunnys denying everything thrown at them.  

• At the request of Marin County Board of Supervisor’s Steve Kinsey, the world-renowned scientist and elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Corey Goodman, became involved back in 2007 and remains involved to this day. Dr. Goodman found what he believes to be scientific misconduct and has filed charges.
• Senator Dianne Feinstein was brought in by unanimous vote of the Marin County Board of Supervisors in 2007 and remains involved to this day.
• In 2011 the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee began looking into the situation. 
  • As of late spring 2012 depositions are underway in preparation for Congressional Hearings into the matter.  
  • Now, the possibility of charges of fraud may be brought against senior staff at the National Park Service and others working with them.
• 04-14-2014 DBOC to file petition with the US Supreme Court to have their appeal to the decision to keep the farm open during the court case against the DOI heard
• 04-15-14 DBOC vs California Coastal Commission, Marin Superior Court, Dept B

If the Oyster Farm goes, the ranchers and farmers will be removed citing pollution of the Estero from run off from the agricultural operations as the reason for removal – agriculture and mariculture in West Marin will be destroyed forever.

What is crazy is the establishment of the PRNS was, as Kevin Lunny put it, to preserve the agricultural and maricultural way of life of the area, not to destroy it.

National Park Service Pictograms

My husband and I moved to West Marin in summer of 2004. In late 2006 and early 2007 the story began to unfold. I had no idea whom to believe. Should I believe the National Park Service, nationwide  

environmental groups, plus a local environmental group? After all they are the guys in the proverbial white hats! Or should I believe a local, fourth generation rancher, who purchased the run down 80-year-old oyster farm, and already spent over $300,000 just in cleaning it up and bringing it up to code?

With pressing family and business obligations of my own, all I could do until April of 2011, was read about the saga in the weekly paper every Thursday and look forward to Sunday morning coffee hour after Mass, to hear the Lunny’s side of the story. The trouble came when I’d go home and try to update my husband; the stories were so fantastic, so bizarre, so extreme, they would be met with, “That couldn’t have happened!”, or “They couldn’t have said that!”, or “That can’t be true!”. I honestly began to doubt what I had heard or that I had gotten the story straight. 

About mid April of 2011, with family and business affairs finally straightened out,  I had the time to devote to figuring out what had actually transpired. I thought if I could do some research on the web, get the facts on paper, and create a chronology, I could decipher the mass of information and decide for myself who was telling the truth.

What I found out turned out to have national implications. Along the way, I discovered that the Federal Government –the National Park Service as well as the Department of the Interior – were not telling the truth, over and over again!  And it was not hard to uncover. It was all in black and white. I became outraged by the injustice, the abuse of power and the disregard for the ordinary person and the  small business owner. I was determined to make available to you what I had discovered so that you can read and decide for yourself.

This blog is intended to be informative not inflammatory. I accomplish this by providing links to the actual letters, articles, government reports and investigations, scientific reports and investigations as well as documentation of Bi-Partisan efforts and much more. I have excerpted quotes from each of those documents to provide an idea of the gist of the document being cited. The blog does offer elements of my own journey in my own community to understand a public policy issue and the facts from within it.  

In this blog, you will find:

• My chronology, including time lines, dates, names, information and hyperlinks to government documents, reports, investigations by the National Academies of Sciences and others, and websites (which I must update often to keep up with ongoing events).
• Bi-Partisan efforts: Senator Dianne Feinstein, who has been on this since 2007, the original authors of the 1976 Wilderness Act, and others), world-renowned scientists, authors, etc.
• Commentary (my own) on the draft Environmental Impact Statement, other meetings, etc.
• YouTube links and Power Point Presentations by Dr. Corey Goodman (the scientist – an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences –  who uncovered and exposed the scientific misconduct which is now the subject of an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform) and author Paul D. Berkowitz, a retired 25 year veteran of the National Park Service Criminal Investigation branch.
• Television News coverage.
• And more.

Why should you read this, why should you care?

• We have federal agencies run amok: the Point Reyes National Seashore was established in 1962 when the local ranchers and farmers, with the assistance of the Sierra Club, negotiated a deal to sell their 100 plus year old historic dairies and ranches to the National Park Service in exchange for RENEWABLE leases.  50 years later, they need protection from the very agency that made a deal to protect them in perpetuity.
• We have national and local environmental groups run amok. The Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association along with the Environmental Action Committee here in Marin, have falsified documents and photographs, given false testimony, and are sending misleading email blasts to their subscribers across the nation in an attempt to aid in the termination of the oyster farm. The Sierra Club, the very group that championed the cause to protect and preserve the ranches and dairies 50 years ago now seeks to destroy them today by starting with the removal of the oyster farm.
• We have a locally produced, sustainable, renewable, ecologically beneficial food source that provides jobs for 30 local workers, a good thing for the planet and a good thing for the locals and the local economy.
• Drakes Estero is one of the most pristine estuarine systems in the nation where eelgrass has doubled and harbor seals find refuge during the pupping season. It is a sanctuary well protected by the oyster operation and its workers.
• World population in 1960 was 3 Billion, as of November 2011, it is 7 Billion, two and one-third times bigger in 50 years. Congress wants to increase shellfish production by 5 fold, the President wants to create jobs, and the Sierra Club, the National Park Conservation Association, the Environmental Action Committee (of Marin) along with  the National Park Service want to eliminate them. Seems like some cannot see the forest for the trees!

 I will bring you information as it becomes available and will post commentary as well.

 Where should you begin?  

• Start with the chronology
• then read the Commentary
• then the YouTube presentations of Dr. Corey Goodman. 

After that, have a look at the Articles and Letters, Scientists Weigh In, and then NPS Elsewhere.

Decide for yourself what is going on.

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