Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Dear editor,
I have been studying the upcoming Measure P recently, and have found it to be a confusing mess. The county hasn't even identified the many thousands of miles of Class 3 streams that will be regulated by this ordinance, among other problems, so no one really knows if they are about to lose hundreds or even thousands of feet of their property or not. Vote first, the fine or jail time comes later I guess.
However, your article of Jan. 14 today identifying big money backers from agricultural interests as the supporters of Measure P explains all I need to know. I found that this initiative gives an exemption to all large wineries, for current plantings and all future replants, and lo and behold they are the financial backers of passing the ordinance. Why am I not surprised? Once again, the wealthy get a pass and the small guy gets the shaft. This ordinance will apply mostly to those with small pieces of land that are not yet developed, or only partially developed. For example, if you own three acres with a house somewhere, and want to put in a new driveway, a picnic area, even a garden on some undeveloped part of your property, you won't be able to do it if so much as a small dry gully runs anywhere near it with water in it for as little as two weeks a year. Yet huge acreage planted right up to the river bed with vines by large grape growers is exempt! Exempt even if they replant it!
I can't imagine anything more unfair, or particularly more environmentally useless. This is not going to help the environment when the largest land owners have a built in exemption apparently for perpetuity. Surely we can come up with a better plan than this.
Thanks for giving us all we need to know to vote on Measure P, or should I call it The Big Growers Environmental Exemption Act.
Michael Haley
Napa
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