Old Landfill Forces Piper Park Marsh Plan to Petaluma, as Residents Cry Foul

The city's long-planned tidal marsh restoration at Piper Park's old dog-park site — required mitigation for the Bon Air Bridge replacement — hit a wall this year when excavation turned up tires, pipe, and wood debris from an old landfill, prompting a stop-work order from Marin County Environmental Health. Two years later, staff finally brought council a fix: buy wetland mitigation credits off-site instead.

“the official and formal and legal dump was run by and shut down by the county”— Council member, clarifying Piper Park's landfill history for the record

Council approved a $115,650 reservation agreement (a 25% deposit) with the privately run Halo Ranch Mitigation Bank in Petaluma via Resolution 6326, effectively abandoning the on-site marsh in favor of paying someone else, in another county, to restore wetlands. Staff warned that walking away from the mitigation obligation entirely could bring fines, jeopardize future regulatory approvals, and put federal funding at risk.

Residents who've watched the half-dug site sit for years were not appeased. A 46-year Boardwalk resident called it "a bit of a fiasco," pointing to deteriorating plastic tarps blowing into the marsh, bent fencing, and growing piles of gravel and dirt encroaching on the wetland. Biologist and resident Jillian Schultz noted other California cities have successfully excavated landfill debris and restored marshes, and that the Bay Area has already lost 90 percent of its historic marshland; another commenter simply asked why the city couldn't finish digging out the toxic debris now instead of leaving it for the next generation.

Pressed on the site's murky history, one council member drew a careful legal line for the record — the dumping predates the city's involvement, officially at least.

Residents Demand a Real Flood Plan Before Winter's King Tides

With forecasters watching a possible "super El Nino" collide with record king tides late this year, public comment at Tuesday's council meeting turned into a pointed push for the city to do more than restock the usual sandbag pile.

“I'm concerned how the city of Larkspur is preparing for this winter's El Nino storms combining with king tides and sea level rise along Corte Madera Creek... this is not the same old same old go get some sand for sandbags in Piper Park.”— Joan Lundstrom, former mayor and former Chair of the Corte Madera Creek Flood Control District

Former mayor Joan Lundstrom, who once chaired the Corte Madera Creek Flood Control District, told council flatly that this year calls for real contingency planning — including scenarios where flooding on Bon Air Road cuts off access to Marin General Hospital and snarls the Greenbrae interchange. Marina resident Corey Berkin followed with a concrete accounting of the stakes: over $50,000 in damage to his home from January flooding, water up to his car's tires, and blocked storm drains and outfall pipes near his neighborhood that still haven't been cleared or documented.

The city manager responded that a new staff-level task group with Central Police and Fire is standing up tabletop exercises and targeted outreach to vulnerable neighborhoods — but conceded a complicating wrinkle: this year's tidal almanac predictions have been running about half a foot off, making precise planning harder than usual.

State Freezes Larkspur's Green Building Push; City Turns to Carrots, Not Codes

Two meetings this week delivered the same unwelcome news from different angles: Larkspur's years-long push for a stricter "reach code" requiring all-electric construction is now moot. Community Development Director Andrew Fogson told the Climate Action Forum that AB130, in effect since September 2025, imposes a six-year moratorium on local building-code changes, freezing every Marin jurisdiction's electrification effort except one that beat the deadline. "No California jurisdiction has yet been approved or been able to circumvent the state moratorium, even for alignment with established general plan policies," Fogson said. "The only agency in Marin County that has a valid reach code in place is Mill Valley, because they got approval before AB130 took effect."

“It's a an ethical or moral decision that we just have to make... if we want people to do this we should be willing to step up and say fine we'll... supplement you to do it.”— Council member, during the Cal Green workshop

The timing stings: council had voted 5-0 for all-electric new construction and 5-1 for all-electric remodels, only to see the state override it. Fogson argued the sting may be smaller than it looks, since the existing CalGreen energy budget already makes gas hookups cost-prohibitive for most new building — the roughly 350 homes proposed at the Ross Valley Sanitary District site aren't planning gas hookups at all, because it simply doesn't pencil out.

With reach codes off the table until 2031, both bodies turned to what's left: incentives. The Climate Action Forum kicked around rebates of $2,500–$3,500 for households swapping gas water heaters and HVAC for electric, two-tier permit pricing that fast-tracks electric projects, and loaner water heaters to bridge installation gaps — with member Tom pushing the group not to forget the roughly half of Larkspur residents in rental housing, "the poorest quality housing in the community... in terms of leaky insulation and lacking upgrades." A day later, the full council landed on a similar page, directing staff to explore non-financial incentives like floor-area-ratio bonuses or reduced parking requirements for solar, battery, or EV-charging projects, with one member framing the choice starkly.

Council instructed staff to work with the Climate Action Forum on targeted incentives — heating/cooling and water heating for residential remodels, EV infrastructure for commercial and multifamily projects — plus a cost-benefit analysis, reporting back in about six months. The Forum, for its part, wants annual public reporting on gas-versus-electric installations as roughly 950 housing element units get built in the coming years.