Last night I attended the second of what will probably be many open forums on the proposed amendments to the Sonoma County general plan. At issue is whether or not the county should extend Riparian corridors 100 feet from each bank of designated creeks, streams, and rivers, whether biotic habitat zones should be enacted where suspicion of endangered species exists, and which areas to add to the designated scenic areas list that protects views of ridgelines and prohibits most building in such areas.
Our vineyard is a designated scenic area and it is intersected by two large proposed biotic resource (BR) zones. You can see a blurry photo of our parcel in the picture. The green circles represent the BR zones.
The problem I have with the new proposals can be summarized with an example: For BR areas where the county doesn’t know and isn’t sure if a danger to some flora or fauna exists, instead of looking more closely into the areas under consideration to determine the danger (or lack thereof) to protected species, they simply increase the size of the protected sphere on the map. Conversely when the county is sure that there is a species that needs protection it is able to properly estimate the area needed and the spheres are much smaller and contained. The number of people affected is minimized by having good data.
The proposed policy however has the extremely undesirable effect of impacting the most property owners (and forcing them to perform expensive environmental impact studies costing thousands of dollars) where there is the least information known. It punishes property owners for the general ignorance of county and state governmental agencies tasked with identifying areas in need of protection. We and other property owners will have to pay for a study where the probability of a possible biotic problem is, paradoxically, the least likely.
It is extremely silly.
And I would have said so since it was, after all, an open forum. We had already heard from an organic dairyman who alerted the committee that if the setbacks from streams were enacted that he would lose 60% of his grazing land, thus putting him out of business. We heard from another farmer who complained about the fencing regulations that call for the lowest wire on a fence to be 18 inches above the ground saying that his heifers would easily crawl under such a ridiculously high fence and “eat your riparian corridor.”
But then Jess Jackson’s name was called. Jess owns a family winery in Sonoma County called Kendall-Jackson. You may have heard of it.
Jess is a large man, and he crept up close to the microphone as he spoke to the committee. He introduced himself as a lawyer, but said that he had been a farmer since he was six. He mentioned that he owned 1000 acres of vineyards in Sonoma County and that he had represented numerous cities, water boards and counties throughout his career on similar property rights issues. He said that he agreed in principal with the goals of protecting our waterways and endangered species and habitats and that indeed, every farmer he knows supports such ideals. Many in the crowd of about 500 gathered for the meeting murmured their assent.
However, because we don’t know about the amount of space we actually need for the proper protection of riparian areas, and due also to our stunning lack of knowledge as to if there are even species in need of protection in areas that will be designated as biotic areas, Jess advised the county to let another district try and tackle such murky legal issues.
And then in a rather deft turn of phrase, Jess, in so many words, threatened to sue the pants off the county if they approved the new plan. Though he didn’t actually utter those words, he was quite clear that he believed that the proposed measures amounted to a “taking” of land without just compensation to landowners - and then he pointedly mentioned that he had already sued the County once before, and won.
“Litigating such matters can get very expensive in court,� he said. “It can cost the county and taxpayers millions.�
After he left and most of the crowd assembled clapped and cheered I knew that, at the very least, the message I had hoped to convey to the council had been sent, but in a much more memorable fashion than I would’ve ever been able to muster.
The committee chairman banged his gavel and admonished those present to “stop behaving like children� as I got up to leave to go back home to my new son and family. I drove home down half-constructed highway 101 to my wife, boy and a late dinner safe in the knowledge that the concerns of Sonoma County farmers had been given voice, and that they had been heard.
So from my family to yours, thank you Jess.
