Wednesday,

August 6, 2025

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

In-person / Zoom hybrid

Join Us In-Person!

Please consider joining us at the meeting at MCL offices. 

MCL Conference Room, 175 N. Redwood Drive

James Muller 

Principal Environmental Planner

San Francisco Estuary Institute

Ellen Plane

Senior Scientist 

San Francisco Estuary Institute

Novato Creek Baylands Strategy 

A project overview

The Novato Baylands represent one of the last remaining areas of former tidal marsh around San Francisco Bay that are relatively undeveloped and potentially available for restoration and flood mitigation. However, potential projects are complicated by existing important infrastructure. 

A Novato Creek Baylands Strategy team has been working over the past year to develop a high-level restoration strategy to meet multiple goals for flood protection, habitat, sea level rise, and other benefits. The project is developing a holistic approach through a series of phased alternatives and scenarios based on constraints in the public and private bayland parcels that extend from Bel Marin Keys Unit V in the south to Simmons Slough in the north. 

Please join us to learn more about this important project.

Thursday,

August 14, 2025

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

In-person / Zoom hybrid

Join Us In-Person!

Please consider joining us at the meeting at MCL offices. 

MCL Conference Room, 175 N. Redwood Drive

Kevin Wright

Marin County Parks

Manager of Government and External Affairs

Access to Public Lands and Parks...and other current topics

A reminder that Marin County Parks’ Manager of Government and External Affairs, Kevin Wright will join us at the August 14, 2025 meeting of the MCL Parks and Open Space Committee (POSC) to take us on a tour with groups of visitors and ways he has found for them to surmount barriers that prevent some of the public from easily visiting Marin’s public parks and open spaces.

Also on the POSC August 14th Agenda:

• Marin County Forest Health & Fire Resilience Draft Public Works Plan (PWP). This PWP, which has been prepared by the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority (MWPA), provides a planning framework to review and implement individual vegetation management projects using best practices that align risk reduction planning with the protection of coastal resources in Marin County’s Coastal Zone. Individual projects will be implemented over the next 10 years. We will hear an overview of the Draft. The Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority seeks public input on draft plan to conduct vegetation treatments in Marin’s Coastal Zone. MCL plans to comment on the Draft PWP by August 29, and welcomes your input.



• MCL's Road and Trail Policy for Marin Public Lands and Open Spaces. MCL’s current policy provides recommendations for how recreation on foot, bike, and horseback can be enjoyed on public lands and open spaces without damage to sensitive natural resources and with minimal conflict among different modes of recreation. The policy was last updated in 2019 and needs to be refreshed to reflect changing conditions, in particular the continuing growth in outdoor recreation. We will welcome committee input in this process.  

A future POSC meeting will explore County Parks’ Measure A funds as they are being allocated to promote sustainable agriculture, including Marin County Resource Conservation District restoration projects, and the FARE (Food, Agriculture, and Resilient Ecosystems) program of grants to foster the linkage between local sustainable food systems and opportunities to improve biodiversity and other natural resource values on Marin’s working lands.  

Next Meeting:

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Stay Tuned: We will have an interview with Jeff St. John, national energy and climate reporter for Canary Media.

Defeating Washington's Assault on Climate



How to sustain global, national, state and local climate leadership through the next four years of cascading crisis

Congressman Jared Huffman, Ranking Member, House Natural Resources Committee

Sara Aminzadeh, Deputy Secretary, CA Natural Resources Agency

Mary Sackett, Marin Supervisor and MarinCAN Board of Directors

Colin O'Brien, Deputy Managing Attorney, Earthjustice

Congressman Huffman led off by emphasizing some of the worst assaults on climate and environmental policy taking place, including eliminating clean energy tax credits; resuscitating fossil fuels; rolling back California’s Clean Air Act waiver which thwarts our ability to set stricter GHG standards for ourselves and other states; enforcing a trade policy that undercuts climate goals. Through his work as ranking member of the House Natural Resource Committee, Huffman and his colleagues are calling attention to myriad assaults by marking up the dangerous Republican Reconciliation budget bill. His highest priority is to “Hang on to our democracy”.

Colin O’Brien recounted Earthjustice’s success in winning 85% of its cases against the first Trump administration. He made a strong case for confidence in judges and the integrity of the judicial system. Courts will continue to be a significant obstacle to Trump’s anti-climate agenda. He is dismayed at the national normalization of bullying and cruelty.

Supervisor Mary Sackett emphasized Marin’s ongoing climate and environmental accomplishments. Both Sackett and O’Brien urged us to talk to friends, neighbors, and family, to both listen and get the message out opposing these retrograde and dangerous positions.Sara Aminzadeh cited California $10 billion Climate Bond as a prime example of the state's commitment to climate action, and an important resource for moving forward. She moderated the panel, asking about key threats from the Administration and how to counter them. Sara urged everyone to think of this time as a leadership moment for state and local leaders, as was the case during the first Trump administration when we developed some of California’s most ambitious climate policies.

Actions and takeaways from the event:

• Make yourself heard at peaceful protests like the No Kings demonstrations.
• Insist on fact-based governance and resist the rollback of science and public media - we cannot manage the climate crisis without monitoring and anticipating its impacts.
• Push back on the purging of disaster preparedness and layoffs at FEMA, NOAA, the Weather Service, and federal wildfire agencies as climate threats intensify.
• Keep California the bastion of climate action, with rules of the road for EVs and heat pumps, and climate bond funds and state incentives to counter federal cuts.
• Urge Marin leaders to provide local funding & ordinances to keep climate on track through EV acceleration and infrastructure, building electrification and workforce development, renewable electricity systemwide, and carbon sequestration in ranchlands and forests. For example, see the incentives that MCE Clean Energy is providing.
• Support legal action to guard climate gains, democratic process, and the rule of law - defending rulings like the 'endangerment finding' that enables EPA's regulation of GHG and California's Clean Air Act right to limit tailpipe emissions.
• Build alliances with other groups - immigrants, low-income, and front-line communities are the most vulnerable to climate impacts and now the most cut off from climate funding.
• Stand up for DEI and Climate Justice as key values for solving the climate crisis.
• Build alliances with public health professionals and health care providers, and focus on the health impacts of deadly heat waves and air pollution from fossil fuels.
• Push for restoring the funds and tax incentives needed to build a healthy, clean economy.
• Talk up climate in civil conversations (in public and private) with citizens of all persuasions.
• Make climate a central issue in the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race.