Environmental advocates say the San Francisco Bay’s sandy floor, the habitat for fish and wildlife, is under threat from mining leases based on flawed data.
San Francisco Baykeeper filed a lawsuit Thursday against the California State Lands Commission for authorizing 10-year leases that allow Martin Marietta Marine Operations LLC and Lind Marine LLC to harvest the Bay’s sand for concrete and asphalt.
Baykeeper contends the commission relied on inaccurate information to measure the impact of the leases on the sand it argues is ancient and irreplaceable. A spokesman for the commission could not be reached after regular business hours on Saturday. ater
“The agency relied on faulty baseline data to claim that the total volume of sand mined would decrease under the new leases–when the opposite is in fact true: the leases approve the taking of more sand out of the Bay,” Baykeeper said in a press release.
Sand has been dredged from San Francisco Bay for channel and harbor maintenance since the 1800s and as construction material from the Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary since the 1930s, according to a staff report to the commission.
The leases cover about 2,600 submerged acres in San Francisco Bay, in San Francisco and Marin counties, and 936 acres of Suisun Bay in Solano and Contra Costa counties. Sand mining uses a long, articulated suction pipe connected to a moving barge to vacuum sand, silt and gravel from the seabed. Fish are screened out, according to the commission.
Baykeeper managing attorney Eric Buescher said the leases amount to selling off public resources for private profits.
“Unsustainable sand mining harms endangered fish and marine mammals, reduces necessary habitat for wildlife, increases coastal erosion, and takes away a non-renewable public resource that’s needed for local beaches and shorelines,” Buescher said in a statement.