Editor's note: This updates to include mention of a letter the oyster farm's attorneys sent to Interior Secretary Salazar on November 1 stating that his decision wasn't bound by the National Environmental Policy Act, an interesting point in that the lawsuit argues that he violated NEPA.

An oyster company denied an extension on its lease to operate in Point Reyes National Seashore has gone to court in a bid to overturn that decision, arguing that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acted rashly and without cause to deny the extension.

The 100-page filing, which seeks an injunction to allow the Drakes Bay Oyster Co. to continue operating until the lawsuit is settled, maintains that Secretary Salazar has torn "the fabric of a rural community" with his decision.

Drakes Bay Oyster Co. has employed 31 workers who produced between 450,000-500,000 pounds of Pacific oyster meat a year from Drakes Estero inside the Seashore for Bay Area outlets. The company's fate has been fanned in recently years by both U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, an ardent supporter of the oyster company and its small workforce, and environmentalists and conservationists who wanted to see the estero granted official wilderness designation.

Those who wanted the oyster company to shut down maintain Congress long ago directed that Drakes Estero become officially designated wilderness once all "non-conforming uses" were removed. The Drakes Bay Oyster Co.'s 40-year lease to the area expired on November 30, and those in support of the wilderness designation saw it as the perfect opportunity to remove the company, a non-conforming use, from the estero.

But those backing the oyster company maintained that the lease carried a renewal clause that should have been triggered by the National Park Service.

It was in 1976 when Congress said the estero one day should be designated as official wilderness. The 1976 Point Reyes wilderness legislation that set aside 25,370 acres of the national seashore as wilderness cited another 8,003 acres encompassing the estero that would be "essentially managed as wilderness, to the extent possible, with efforts to steadily continue to remove all obstacles to the eventual conversion of these lands and waters to wilderness status" -- and the oyster operation was seen as being incompatible with such a designation.

The lawsuit filed in oyster company owner Kevin Lunny's behalf by Cause of Action, a law firm that works to hold government accountable, largely is built on the contention that the secretary's decision violated the National Environmental Policy Act, in part because the National Park Service failed to prepare a thorough environmental impact study on the oyster farm's operations at Drakes Estero.

The Seashore's Final Environmental Impact Statement, quietly issued on November 20, did not contain a "full and fair" discussion of the environmental impacts, reads the filing, and also fails to "inform decisonmakers and the public of the reasonable alternatives which would avoid or minimize adverse impacts."

However, Secretary Salazar was acting on a directive Congress issued in 2009 that he personally consider renewing the oyster farm's lease for another decade. When he announced his decision on November 29, the secretary specifically referred to that directive, noting that it "does not require me (or the NPS) to prepare a DEIS or an FEIS or otherwise comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 or any other law."

"The 'notwithstanding any other provision of law' language in Section 124 expressly exempts my decision from any substantive or procedural legal requirements," Secretary Salazar continued. "Nothing in the DEIS or the FEIS that the NPS released to the public suggests otherwise."

And while Mr. Lunny's lawyers maintain in the lawsuit that the Interior secretary was indeed bound by the legal provisions of NEPA and that his failure to adhere to that act was "arbitrary and capricious" as well as "an abuse of discretion," in a November 1 letter they pointed out that he was not bound by NEPA.

"...Section 124 includes a 'general repealing clause' that allows you to override conflicting provisions in other laws -- including NEPA -- to issue the (Special Use Permit)," wrote Ryan P. Waterman, an attorney with the firm of Stoel Rives that is representing Mr. Lunny, on Nov. 1 (attached below).

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in northern California, asks the court to either order Secretary Salazar to extend the oyster company's lease for 10 years or set aside his ruling and direct the Park Service to conduct a new DEIS and FEIS "that complies with all NEPA and other applicable substantive and procedural requirements to enable a new, neutral decision-maker to issue a NEPA-compliant (Record of Decision) allowing DBOC to continue to operate...."