Lawson’s Landing gets state approval for major upgrades
Coastal panel gives resort OK for sewage, buildings
After 14 often contentious years, an endeavor to bring the Lawson’s Landing campground and resort in West Marin into compliance with state coastal laws appears to be nearing an end.
The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously during an onlinemeeting on Friday to allow the resort to install a new wastewater system along with several new buildings, including an office building, campground bathrooms, equipment sheds and a 5,400-squarefoot barn, among other changes.
“We’re hopeful that today’s hearing will finally provide for the public and the environment what we have been working to achieve for the last several years: a superior functioning wastewater system,” co- owner Michael Lawson told the commission before its vote on Friday. “This system will allow us to finally provide our customers with real restrooms and showers. Itwill also reduce the need to truck sewage offsite to far-away treatment facilities. It will also allow our campground to remain open to provide valuable, low- cost, short-term coastal access.”
The wastewater treatment upgrade was one of the remaining major conditions the campground owners had to complete as part of a 2011 coastal development permit it received from the commission. In 2017, the commission rejected the company’s application for the wastewater system and the new buildings because of concerns about endangered red-legged frogs and sensitive habitat at the site.
Vowing to come back with a passable project, the Lawsons and Voglers followed through almost three years later with Friday’s approval. Itwas vital to the campground’s survival.
“If we failed, it would have
been an eventuality that we would have had to close down,” Lawson said after the vote. “We’re only allowed so much time and basically we had a decade to get something finalized, and it fortunately only took nine years.”
Just days before the hearing, Lawson was still working out the details with the state and county, eventually relinquishing his preferred plan. It would
have not required the removal of certain buildings, among other changes.
Lawson said he settled because he feared the company would have faced a lawsuit from the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin. He said the commission “did the right thing and we’re going to move forward.”
“This is progress,” he said.
The wastewater project alone is expected to cost about $4 million, according to Lawson. Catherine Caufield of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin, which has acted as a check on the project over the past decade, said the organization has been calling for the resort to have a sewage disposal system since 1975.
“So we are delighted to think that 45 short years later a wastewater system that finally protects Tomales Bay will be installed,” Caufield told the commission in support of the project.
The group’s attorney, Ralph Faust, a former 20year lawyer for the commission,
saidhewaspreparedto make a legal argument at the meeting.
“But it sounds like everyone is in agreement on the solution that staff came up with,” he said.
Under an amended permit, the company will be able to construct a wastewater systemnorth of the campground and remove the existing septic leach fields and holding tanks.
In addition, the commission allowed the company to build facilities to support a mobile food trailer near the campground and an emergency boat storage area. It also gave after-the-fact approval to remove the dilapidated fishing pier.
The 5,400- square-foot barn will support the nearly 420 acres of cattle grazing and agricultural operations
on the property.
The permit also requires Lawson’sLanding to remove a truck shed, an adjacent storage area and an oil shed that it deemed unpermitted, and to restore those areas.
The 960-acre resort just south of Dillon Beach has been owned by the Lawson family— later co-ownedwith the Vogler family — since 1928. The family opened the property to the public in 1957 as a camping, fishing and boating destination.
The permitting issues began in2006whenthecoastal commission issued a ceaseand-desist order to the company and called for a coastal development permit to be acquired. The commission approved the permit in 2011. It included the establishment of a 465-acre natural resource conservation area
and other changes.
Beforemakingamotionto approve the wastewater permit, Marin County Supervisor Katie Rice, a member of the commission, commended the Lawsons’ and Voglers’ work on the project.
“It’s amuch different place than it was 50 years ago: more beautiful, cleaner, restored in somanyways,” Rice said. “What our approval todaywill allowwill just take it thatmuch further. It’s a spectacular place.”