[env-trinity] SF Chronicle- Byron Leydecker, former Marin supervisor, dies

[Tom Stokely]

Byron Leydecker, former Marin supervisor, dies

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/26/BAQ41JGRTH.DTL 

Thursday, May 26, 2011



Byron Waite Leydecker, a former bank executive and Marin County supervisor who helped stop development in the Marin Headlands and, for nearly two decades, drove the restoration and protection of his beloved Trinity River, died May 12 in his home in Mill Valley.

Mr. Leydecker, who was 83, had been battling lung and liver cancer.

Mr. Leydecker was born in Oakland on Aug. 28, 1927. He served briefly on the battleship Iowa at the end of World War II before enrolling in Stanford University, where he graduated in 1950 with a degree in economics. During the Korean War, he served as a public information officer in the U.S. Army in Washington.

He worked briefly as a securities analyst and in 1953 got a job at Chico's Anglo National Bank, which later became Crocker Bank. By the time he left, he had become the bank's youngest-ever vice president. In 1962 he helped found Redwood Bank, where he was chairman of the board and chief executive officer until the bank was sold in 1981.

In 1963, Gov. Edmund G. "Pat" Brown appointed Mr. Leydecker to the Marin County Board of Supervisors. He won re-election in 1964. As a supervisor he fought a proposed development known as Marincello, which would have allowed construction of 20,000 homes in the Marin Headlands.

Never shy about speaking his mind, Mr. Leydecker could be a gruff taskmaster. He may have sometimes lacked diplomacy, but he was amazingly adept at getting what he wanted, said his friends and colleagues.

He started racing cars in the 1970s and, driving a modified Porsche, won the 1977 Northern California championship of the prestigious Sports Car Club of America circuit.

The construction of Trinity Dam and Lewiston Dam in the 1960s and diversions of water as part of the Central Valley Project were sore spots to Mr. Leydecker, who had fished the Trinity in the 1930s when it was nearly pristine.

He decided to take action in 1991, when a channel improvement project by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation choked the Trinity River with silt. It was so bad that Mr. Leydecker got stuck in the mud on a side channel while he was fly fishing. "He was madder than a wet hen," said his friend Tom Stokely, the water policy analyst for the California Water Impact Network. "He called me up and he must have yelled at me for a half hour. Then he said, 'I've got money. I can hire a lawyer.' It was the beginning of a long and wonderful relationship."

Mr. Leydecker forced the bureau to stop digging along the river and in 1992 founded the nonprofit Friends of the Trinity River. The group fought to establish minimum annual water flows, improve fish habitat and enhance the riparian ecosystem.

"He was an authentic champion for rivers and fish, but especially the Trinity River," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who chairs the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife Committee.

Mr. Leydecker, who always wore a pressed button-down shirt with blue jeans and cowboy boots, fought until the very end for Trinity River improvements and against water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

"He gave so much of his time and effort that it would be remiss as his friend for me not to continue that effort," said Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, who once spent several days hiking and rafting the river with Mr. Leydecker. "He had a sense of romance about big rivers and what they bring to a society."

He is survived by sons John Leydecker of San Rafael and Mark Leydecker of Aspen, Colo.; daughters Caroline "Lama Palden" Alioto of San Rafael and Criss Troast of Nantucket, Mass.; and eight grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held June 5 at 3 p.m. at Marin Art & Garden Center, 30 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., in Ross. Donations may be sent to the California Water Impact Network, 808 Romero Canyon Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108.

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite at sfchronicle.com.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/25/BAQ41JGRTH.DTL#ixzz1NTJswTio
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