A group of environmental advocacy organizations made good on a promise to sue San Francisco today over what they call Environmental Species Act violations at Sharp Park Golf Course.
The Wild Equity Institute, one of the plaintiff's in today's lawsuit filed with a United States District Court, had issued a 60-day intent to sue with the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department (RPD), which manages the golf course, on Nov. 18, 2010, but nothing had been sent to a court until today.
Alongside Wild Equity as plaintiffs are the Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, Surfrider Foundation, Sequoia Audubon Society and the Sierra Club.
The plaintiffs' intentions in the suit are threefold, explained Neal Desai, associate director of the National Parks Conservation Association.
First, they want to compel the RPD to adopt a complete habitat restoration agenda for Sharp Park west of Highway 1 that does not include golf, similar to what is laid out in a study published by an environmental consulting firm in January and touted by environmentalists as the only “peer-reviewed” study to-date.
Second, they want to force the RPD to develop a habitat protection process for the land that abides by federal ESA laws. However, there is a seemingly insurmountable stumbling block in the way of the department doing this, said Desai.
Because frogs, snakes and frog egg masses are still damaged regularly on the course, the city would have to get an Incidental Take Permit (ITP), which would allow for the killing of endangered and threatened species during normal golf course management activity while a protection process is being implemented, in order to continue to allow golf there.
"Getting a permit to kill species for golf is an absurd thing for the city to do," said Desai. "Not to mention that it's highly unlikely [the federal government would allow it]."
Sharp Park Golf Course regularly floods and frogs, snakes and egg masses are damaged when course managers pump the water out. If the city cannot get an ITP as part of its habitat protection process, no pumping will be allowed and golfing would be impossible.
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