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The California Coastal Commission today unanimously approved a sweeping consent agreement to address a host of major Coastal Act violations tied to a controversial luxury home project overlooking Humboldt Bay.

The deal, which was developed by Coastal Commission staff in collaboration with Wiyot-area tribes and property owners Travis Schneider and Stephanie Bode, requires the partially built 21,000‑square‑foot house to be demolished and the site to be fully restored. The agreement also includes a $400,000 administrative penalty and calls for the land to be transferred to one or more of the Wiyot-area tribes. Commission staff described the agreement as “a creative and valuable resolution” to serious violations.

The case, as the Outpost has reported on extensively (see links below), centers on two adjacent parcels on Walker Point Road in Bayside overlooking the Fay Slough Wildlife Area, a 484‑acre wetland complex managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The properties contain critical wetland habitat and lie on the remnants of a pre‑contact Wiyot village. 

Travis Schneider addresses the Humboldt County Planning Commission in 2023. | Screenshot.

Despite specific protections in a 2017 Humboldt County coastal development permit (CDP), Schneider and his hired contractors conducted major unpermitted grading, performed vegetation removal in an environmentally sensitive habitat area (ESHA), and began constructing a house more than two and a half times the size of what was approved, with portions encroaching into a 100‑foot wetland buffer.

Humboldt County originally permitted an 8,000‑square‑foot residence with limited grading, but the as‑built structure reached roughly 21,000 square feet, with about 15,000 cubic yards of imported fill — 10 times the authorized amount. An unpermitted gravel access road was cut through buffer areas on both parcels, and native California blackberry and riparian vegetation were mowed or removed, allowing invasive Himalayan blackberry and grasses to take hold. 

Work onsite continued after county staff issued a stop-work order in early 2022. 

The project’s wetland buffer encroachment inadvertently put the project into the Coastal Commission’s area of jurisdiction, and in March of 2024 the agency took over the remediation project.

Prior to today’s hearing, the commission received letters of support for the agreement from the Wiyot Tribe, the Bear River Band of the Rohnerville Rancheria, the Surfrider Foundation and two concerned residents. Ted Hernandez, the Wiyot Tribal’s former chair and current historic preservation officer, appeared before the commission. He said the site “holds … traditional knowledge for us and our medicine and ceremonies” and voiced support for staff’s work on securing a land-back agreement.

Several public commenters expressed surprise and indignation about the violations. Adam Leverenz, for example, noted that Schneider’s credentials as a developer and owner of civil engineering firm Pacific Affiliates helped him to secure an alternative owner builder permit for the property, “which allowed some level of self-monitoring and self-approval of code inspections,” he said. “That is a problem, I think.”

Leverenz’s voice trembled with emotion as he continued. “I’m not against wealth and affluence,” he said. “I’m against when it leads to a level of entitlement that you can so severely violate so many things.”

Wiyot Tribal Administrator Michelle Vassel also attended today’s hearing in Half Moon Bay. She said that when the tribe and others first alerted the county to violations on the property they were met with “public displays of racism, threats, accusations [and] called liars, among other offensive language.” 

Vassel said her only concern about the consent agreement is about Schneider’s compliance. 

Under the agreement’s terms, Schneider and Bode must remove the partially built home and unpermitted road, conduct remedial grading to return the site to pre‑violation contours, install erosion-control measures, eradicate non‑native invasive plants and re‑vegetate with native species, including culturally important native blackberry. 

The restoration work will be monitored for a minimum of five years, with monitoring extended and additional actions required if success criteria are not met. The respondents will also fund tribal cultural monitors during all ground‑disturbing work, and a cultural resources survey and cultural materials plan must be prepared and implemented under experts approved by commission staff with tribal input.

A central feature of the settlement is the commitment to transfer both parcels — about 6.1 acres — in fee title to one or more Wiyot-area tribes at no cost, with $100,000 of the penalty earmarked to support long‑term stewardship by the eventual tribal landholder. The remaining $300,000 will go to the state’s Violation Remediation Account. 

Local attorney Bradley B. Johnson, who formerly represented the Rob Arkley-affiliated Citizens for a Better Eureka, spoke on behalf of Schneider and Bode. He initially spoke briefly, expressing his clients’ support for the agreement. Following the public comment period he again briefly addressed the commission, saying, “I do want this commission to understand that not everything you’ve heard is accurate or true.”

Coastal Commission Vice Chair Dr. Caryl Hart remarked that she “became more and more stunned at the violation here” as she read through the staff report. “The cultural damage is so, just, incredibly disturbing. The natural resource damage is incredibly disturbing.”

Johnson, the attorney, pushed back against some of the criticism. He pointed to an archeological study conducted by the firm William Rich and Associates and said, “Their report is unequivocal — unequivocal — that the activity did not result in the destruction of any cultural resources on the site and did not result in the destruction of the site’s ability to convey cultural significance.”

Regarding concerns about Schneider himself doing the remediation work, Johnson said that his client wasn’t the contractor who actually built the structure and would not be personally doing the remediation work. 

Hart admitted that she had not read the archeological study, but staff from the commission’s enforcement team later chimed in to note that while the report in question found that no archeologically significant items had been broken or crushed, harm can occur in many other ways, including displacement and failure to screen or rebury objects properly.

In her concluding remarks, Hart commented on the significance of this agreement.

“Every day I’m proud to be a commissioner … [but] no more than today,” she said. Addressing staff, she said, “I can’t thank you enough. It’s an enormous violation, and to have a land-back provision … . You want to talk about environmental justice; there is no more just result than the one here.”

Humboldt County Supervisor and Commissioner Mike Wilson — in whose district the project sits — said he was “grateful” that a long and contentious saga would end with permanent protection of wetlands, ESHA and a culturally significant village site under tribal stewardship. 

“I’m grateful for the protection of this culturally significant site … and the return to the Wiyot people is just an extremely important step forward,” he said.

The commission closed the hearing by voting unanimously for all three motions, formally adopting the consent cease-and-desist order, restoration order and administrative penalty against Schneider and Bode. 

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