Mount Umunhum partnership with Ohlone tribe a great idea, but not potential lawsuits

If you’ve only been to the top of one of the four tallest publicly accessible peaks around the San Francisco Bay, you definitely have not seen ’em all.

Mount Diablo’s summit in Contra Costa County has a wonderful visitors center in an historic stone building. Mount Tamalpais in Marin honors the scenic railway and cool “gravity cars” that charmed tourists a century ago. Mount Hamilton in eastern Santa Clara County is home to the Lick Observatory, a research center since 1888.

And what about the South Bay’s Mount Umunhum, the latest to open to the public. What will it be when it grows up?

The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District will make an important decision tonight. Steve Abbors, the general manager, proposes to enter into a conservation easement with the Amah Mutsun tribe of Ohlone Indians, who lived in this region for centuries until the Spanish mission system tore apart their culture.

Abbors wants to restore to Native Americans a tangible link with a piece of land — something they lost centuries ago — and to make the culture, knowledge and history of the Ohlone an integral part of the mountain’s identity.

I love the idea of this partnership. It would give Mount Um a distinct purpose and identity, increasing educational opportunities to the public and even to academically educated Midpen staff, who already are finding value in tribal knowledge of native plants and such. I see why Abbors, who is about to retire, wants the tribe to have a stake in the mountain’s future.

But the legal encumbrances of a conservation easement in this case do not seem appropriate for the public agency, at least without broader outreach in the community whose taxes purchased and developed this preserve. Hardly anyone knew this proposal was coming until about 12 days ago.

The agreement strains to keep primary control of the land with the district board, but the fact is it grants a property right enforceable by civil law. If disputes develop over plans proposed by either the Midpen board or the tribe, and they can’t be resolved amicably, this is how it works: 1. Open checkbook. 2. Unleash lawyers.

If only there were a way to give the Amah Mutsun a seat at the table and an advisory role in managing the mountain without the property right. Or, is there? I hope the board will examine the possibility before passing the proposed deal.

My reservations aren’t based on the current board of Midpen or leadership of the Amah Mutsun, the only tribal group that wanted to engage with the district on Mount Umunhum after learning there would be no financial gain.

The question is what elected Midpen boards decades from now want to do in the public interest, and how aims of future leaders of the Amah Mutsun might differ from today’s. Conservation easements are pretty much forever. That’s their point.

And it’s Abbors’ point. “We view the conservation easement as a wonderful opportunity, and a responsibility, to help reconnect the Amah Mutsun people with their culture,” he said. “That connection was severed centuries ago. The permanence of the conservation easement makes that reconnection truly meaningful.”

At the same time, he said, it supports Midpen’s mission to restore and preserve the natural environment at Mount Umunhum and provide a richer experience for visitors.

There’s no hard evidence that Ohlones occupied Mount Um. The Air Force scraped the top off the mountain for its radar base. But Ohlones definitely lived in the general area, and the mountain is part of their creation myth. Umunhum is the Ohlone word for landing spot of the hummingbird.

Still, the public value of the partnership is measured mostly in intangibles, and easements carry the possibility of financial damages if things go awry.

Veterans value the mountaintop because of the Cold War Air Force base that created “the cube:” The huge radar tower that’s visible from the valley floor. Midpen originally hoped to tear it down, and I’m grateful to the vets who sought and won historic status for it.

Midpen’s promise to seal and preserve the cube will not change, but the easement would ban further development of or around it. I’m personally OK with leaving it at that; a singular monument to the mountain’s more recent military history.

I’d like to see the rest of the area evolve as a monument to simpler times in the more distant past. And I’d like to see descendants of the historic residents be part of that.

Just without the lawsuit part.