San Francisco Baykeeper Sues State Over Sand-Mining Leases Threatening Bay Habitat

San Francisco Baykeeper filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court against the California State Lands Commission, alleging the agency rubber-stamped a decade of industrial sand mining in the Bay using flawed environmental data — and that the true extraction volume will be higher, not lower, than what regulators claimed.

The lawsuit, filed on or around March 12, targets 10-year leases the commission granted to Martin Marietta Marine Operations LLC and Lind Marine LLC, authorizing the companies to vacuum up to 1.75 million cubic yards of sand per year from the Bay's floor using articulated suction pipes mounted on moving barges. The leases cover roughly 2,600 submerged acres in San Francisco and Marin counties, plus 936 additional acres of Suisun Bay stretching into Solano and Contra Costa counties.

Baykeeper's central allegation is that the commission certified a Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Report on February 9, 2026, based on inaccurate baseline measurements. "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.

Managing attorney Eric Buescher framed the dispute as a question of public stewardship. "California cannot afford to sell off its public resources for private profits," he said. "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."

The complaint invokes three legal theories: violation of the California Environmental Quality Act, violation of the CEQA Guidelines under Title 14 of the California Code of Regulations, and violation of California's Public Trust Doctrine. Baykeeper seeks a writ of mandate compelling the commission to set aside both its FSEIR certification and its approval of the San Francisco Bay and Delta Sand Mining Project, identified in state records as State Clearinghouse No. 2007072036.

The ecological stakes extend well beyond the Bay itself. Baykeeper's complaint cites research showing Bay sediment transport is physically connected to outer-coast beach systems, arguing that sand removed from the Bay floor will accelerate erosion as far away as Ocean Beach. That risk is compounded, the complaint contends, because sand inflows to the Bay have already dropped sharply over the past 150 years as dam construction and reduced creek and river flow starved the estuary of natural replenishment.

Sand has been commercially dredged from the Bay since the 1930s, and from its channels for navigation purposes since the 1800s, according to a staff report submitted to the commission. The commission's staff report describes the extraction method as a long, articulated suction pipe connected to a moving barge that vacuums sand, silt, and gravel from the seabed, with fish screened out during the process. A commission spokesman could not be reached for comment.

This is not Baykeeper's first legal confrontation with the State Lands Commission over Bay sand mining. The organization won a significant ruling in San Francisco Baykeeper Inc. v. State Lands Commission (2018), in which the First District Court of Appeal held that sand mining does not qualify as a public trust use of submerged lands — rejecting the commission's position that any private commercial activity involving watercraft could be deemed a trust use as impermissibly overbroad. That decision followed an earlier remand in the 2015 case, Baykeeper I.

Baykeeper served a formal notice of intent to file the CEQA suit on March 11, 2026, a day before the complaint was filed, as required by Public Resources Code section 21167.5. The notice was served on Matthew Dumlao, Ph.D., the commission's executive officer, at the agency's Sacramento headquarters at 100 Howe Avenue. The law firm Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger LLP is representing Baykeeper, with Robert "Perl" Perlmutter signing the notice on the firm's behalf.