Court says Suisun Bay land must be restored
The state Supreme Court rejected the appeal Wednesday of the owner of an island in Suisun Bay who has been ordered to pay millions of dollars in penalties and restore landfill he discharged into marsh waters to make room for duck hunters and a kitesurfing club.
John Sweeney purchased the 39acre island, Point Buckler, on the eastern edge of Grizzly Bay in the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta in 2011. It had been used by duck hunters for many decades until the 1990s, but regulatory agencies said levee breaches and neglect of the site had turned it into a tidal marsh.
Sweeney rebuilt levees around the island, opened a kitesurfing center — where members ride surfboards propelled by kites — and announced plans to reestablish the club for duck hunters, whose prey swim in ponds maintained by the levees and tidal gates.
But the Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board said in 2015 that Sweeney had acted without the required permits and damaged habitat for waterfowl and fish, including endangered species of salmon and the delta smelt, by depositing dirt from trenches in marsh and tidal waters. They or
dered him to clean up the 8,500 cubic yards of landfill he discharged and pay more than $3.5 million in penalties.
Those orders were overturned in December 2017 by a Solano County Superior Court judge, Harry Kinnicutt, who said Sweeney actually had improved conditions on Point Buckler and apparently had been targeted by the regulatory agencies. But the state’s First District
Court of Appeal disagreed in February and reinstated the agencies’ orders. The state Supreme Court rejected Sweeney’s appeal Wednesday.
In his ruling, Kinnicutt said the dirt Sweeney used to repair the levees and left in the water was not “waste” but actually a valuable building material. But the appeals court said the soil, though not contaminated, was
“harmful as used” and caused “excess sedimentation that smothered the (water) habitat.”
The discharges have harmed habitat for waterfowl, blocked access to habitat for fish and endangered species, interfered with tidal flows to the interior of the island, killed tidal marsh vegetation, and caused “excessive salinity, turbidity and discoloration of the (island’s) interior waterways,”
Justice Peter Siggins said in the 30 ruling.
The law contains “no mandatory duty directing state agencies to carry out activities in a manner favorable to duckhunting clubs,” Siggins said.
Sweeney’s lawyer, Lawrence Bazel, said Sweeney has been financially drained by the case and cannot afford to pay penalties or other costs. He also said the island has been restor
ing itself without human intervention, and that “nature has provided what the government agencies tried to get by litigation.”
The cases are Sweeney vs. BCDC, S267896, and Sweeney vs. California Regional Quality Control Board, S267897.