Notable Quotes from Ed Schulz
Excerpted from his e-mail communications to NVLSA members
I thought we had limits on residential permits in the County just so we could focus on farming/Vineyard/Agriculture as the highest and best use of the land. . The Ag Preserve was supposed to preserve agricultural rights above others, not to preserve the place FROM agriculture. .Vineyards are perfectly appropriate in a farm production zone. . Maybe the Ag Preserve needs to be renamed the AG and Farm Production Zone, to distinguish the concept from Open Space Preserve. - Ed Schulz
.(We should discourage) all property owners from summarily clearing deadfall from waterways. Deadfall can be cabled against banks to slow water velocity, if cross-flow position is untenable. .(A)t least since 1986, the mantra has been "clean up those damn creeks" so the brush doesn't come down and logjam the River. People will have to be reoriented: what to clear, what to leave behind, and how to fix it so it stays in place. - Ed Schulz
.(The TMDL Phase 1) report. delves into all kinds of issues that rightly should make all the municipalities very uncomfortable. Very few City Water users would want to think of the fish that are unborn and deprived of access to the most important 1/3 of the watersheds, each time they take a shower. But it is true, sadly true, that all the Municipal dams in the Valley were built in the 1940's and 1950's, and not one of them provided for the fish. 50 years later, not one of the dams provides for the fish, and it is also true that my private water releases, to our creek, to combat premature drying, exceed all such releases, COMBINED, of all the Municipal water systems, valley-wide. Valley-wide Municipal releases to combat premature drying = ZERO gallons. That is what is so damning about the Limiting Factors Analysis, and why I suspect Staff would rather bury the info under the footnote *TMDL report. "TMDL Report" diminishes the significance of the entire study, all the recommendations, (none of which are adopted by the Ordinance Amendment) and relegates it to "inconclusive" status. Staff would rather elevate the Jones and Stokes Report on Fantasyland Watershed in Anyplace, USA, where there are no Urban influences, and no Class IV man-made watercourses. It makes it so much simpler to get at the hypothetical science. -- Ed Schulz
Part of our responsibility is to foster better land use practices among members and "outsiders" in the Public. So many municipal residents have bought off on the "farmers killed the fish" crap, and would be appalled and angry to think that actually it was their own municipal water supply, so unthoughtfully created in the 1950's, that did the most harm, and continues to be the most significant limiting factor. Fish and Game is well aware of this, but has gotten worn down over the years of deafness by Supervisors and City officials. - Ed Schulz
To the list of hidden motives, I suggest adding "public access" through the setbacks. There is already a trail system in development along the Napa River, and there is the Bay Area Ridge Trail. What better recreational connection for wilderness loving urbanites, than watershed hiking and biking trails through previously inaccessible private lands? How do we acquire parkland for free? - Ed Schulz
The proposal is to raise my setback from zero to 150', with an option to buy it down to some lesser amount, for some limited, as yet unspecified period of time? At an unstated cost to me? Sure, whatever they think is fair. I pay bridge tolls. Why not a gardening tax? -- Ed Schulz
Given the omission of Limiting Factors Analysis from the "Technical Memo", I think we need to ask the Supervisors for a little more time, perhaps to get Professor William Dietrich from UC Berkeley, or someone from Stillwater Sciences to testify before the BOS. I can't predict right now what their testimony would consist of , but it is absolutely vital that NVLSA members stand up to ask that these folks be contacted, and if the BOS won't invite them to testify, then NVLSA members will undertake that task on behalf of Napa County Landowners. Please think about this and send a memo to the membership if you concur. There has been some kind of conscious effort to keep this Factors Analysis and the writers of it off of the radar screen. We need to request their testimony be heard in Public. - Ed Schulz
An unfinished item from the 12/3 meeting, was Mike Rippey's request that Staff go through the thinking on Section 8 CEQA Exemption, for all to hear. This did not happen at the 12/10 meeting, and should be done somewhere down the road. I have put forward, in writing, that exempting the Class IV man-made waterways would cause negative environmental consequences, which requires Staff to produce proof that such waterways are not point-sources of sediment that we should be concerned about. Any race to vote the thing in could probably be called back on "Reconsideration" if they overlook this key point that was promised to the public. Ed
Here's a few issues to think about in context of proposed land-use legislation:
Who takes out the trash? Municipal reservoirs, like Rector, once open to the public for fishing, are now closed. They had to be closed because of negative environmental impacts of all the visitors. People throw all kinds of stuff off the bridge adjoining our property, and this ordinance does not protect my right to enter and clean up their mess. So I theoretically need to apply and pay fees for discretionary permission to continue.
Three Watershed Restoration projects, including one dam removal, that were funded and approved for action, were suspended by the landowners, when the urgency 150' setback was adopted. The RCD has found that no landowners will now even talk to them about watershed restoration projects, so their real, valuable, credible and documented environmental gains are in limbo.
Fish and Game and the RCD have to have landowner permission to act. In the past, landowners typically volunteered money and labor to help get stuff done. That has gone right out the window. The volunteer labor pool that actually does anything, will not accept this regulation, not without clear Environmental documents from the County that show how good the water will get, or how much reduction in flooding is potentially gained.
The Sulphur Creek fish ladder, completed this year, with landowner cooperation, took 3 years to get all of their agreements. Fortunately the contracts were in place before the Urgency Ordinance took effect, as many of the landowners wanted to back out. The Fish Ladder will have untold beneficial effects by opening 3 square miles of potential spawning ground for COHO, Steel head and other desired species. Total project cost was $40,000 US Dollars.
Total cost to date of Jones and Stokes Technical Memo: $56,176 USD and rising fast.
The amendment is so onerous that I would have to apply for permission to enter my own land to pick up the trash. Landowners aren't going to cooperate for any reason. Most Negative Environmental Impacts are caused by Human intervention, and failing to calculate the level of cooperation, (or non-cooperation) by all the people whose goodwill and free labor we depend on, is a bad oversight. We continue to have a dam on a significant tributary that would have come out this year. The loss of an otherwise obtainable gain, is a negative impact.
Instituitionalized arrogance: The proposed Amendment EXEMPTS City, County facilities from any provision of the ordinance. I guess it should. The 3 main municipal watershed dams, all built in the 1950's, still do not have Fish ladders. Combined, they took away 30% of the fish spawning habitat. The Sierra Club thinks that tilling fields caused the rapid decline of fish counts in the early 1960's. My guess is cutting them off from their historic habitat was the more significant event. The Municipal environmental damage goes unrecognized and specifically exempted from the process. Urban setbacks are exempted, so the inevitable environmental degradation which new development will cause there, does not have to be addressed. That degradation is OK.
No clearing of deadfall from waterways: Material will build up, damming seasonal waterflows, which will blow out in localized areas. Downstream sedimentation levels will rise in a disorganized and uncontrolled fashion.
Localized flooding will occur. The Ordinance Amendment is supposed to improve water quality and control flooding risk. Is higher sediment load considered to be improved water quality, or worsened water quality? Is localized flooding and erosion lessening the flood risk or increasing it?
We get back to the lack of Science. Jones and Stokes uses the lemming principle associated with most junk Scientists. A few other communities they looked at cursorily did x or y. Did any of them gain water quality? Did any of them reduce flooding risk? Did any of them have municipal setback exemptions, so that the City fish could have a zero setback and the Country fish could have 150 feet? All we are told is that some other communities did something that may have been quite stupid. We are therefore encouraged to do likewise and jump off the same cliff. -- Ed Schulz
(P)er my reading of the Limiting Factors Analysis, a seasonal gully could be enough of a local point-source of fine sediments to further reduce the hatch of a fish population that is already struggling. They admittedly did not study point-sources, and whether roadside drainage ditch A runs more crud than gully B is probably site-specific. Aggregate sedimentation was not at harmful levels in two years of study, anywhere in the Watershed. All sudden sources of sediment are equally suspect, including the ones that are illogically "exempt". Importantly, vegetation could help slow the race of downstream water, which velocity is indicated as an unhelpful factor to a struggling population. Neither of these factors (sediment, velocity) would be of much significance, if the fish had full access to their historic habitat. But they don't have that access, for all the reasons cited: municipal dam obstruction, private dam obstruction, dredged-out gravel beds, and watercourses drying prematurely, due to dams and irrigation draws. So, if historic range access continues to be denied, alternate, suitable range access must be created, and the interplay of elements within the "substitute" or "surrogate" habitat need to be managed with some thought to maximize the results. Clearing Napa Creek of downfall, which Public Works and a bunch of flood-wary volunteers do religiously, every year, is wonderful for raising water velocity and lowering local flood-risk. The problem is it also flushes out the fish eggs, and makes the water run so fast that the fish get tired trying to go up there. If the City (to cite the most egregious example) is going to keep on killing the hatch in the name of Flood Control, some other Watershed will have to take on the role of maintaining downed limbs and low rock walls, which slow the velocity enough for the fry to hatch, and the parents to get up the stream. There are relatively few suitable alternate Watersheds. Massive setback regulations will not make these areas suitable. Thoughtful management and maintenance (labor) and the judicious addition of water are really the only requirements. Some agreements with certain users will have to be worked out, so that irrigation draws do not simultaneously take down the added water, but fortunately, with today's technology, remote electronic submersible stream gages can send data on water depth and speed to the various users. These were not available just a few years ago. But now that they are available, why isn't the Department of Conservation spending $60,000 to buy 30 of them, to front-load the program? -- Ed Schulz
A real problem with this Ordinance is it doesn't know where it is, doesn't know where its going, but its in motion and wants to stay in motion. The goals of improving water quality and improving flood risk are completely incompatible with the Limitations Analysis, which suggests we will need to lower water quality standards and increase risk of local flooding to create viable fish habitat. The Ordinance itself is incompatible with the realities of the labor force that will be required to create these habitats. If the Urban requirements of clearing deadfall from Napa Creek are legitimate for averting Flood Risk, then somebody, somewhere else in the Watershed, has to create an equivalent amount of Fish-accessible habitat to replace what is being taken away, due to Urban requirements. Many people, myself included, would continue to attempt to do this, voluntarily, but NOT if the use of our land is taken away.
If $350,000 is too much for Napa City Water users to collectively pay for a fish ladder and filtration screen at Conn Dam, to open the best 15% of the Watershed to migratory fish, then somebody, somewhere else, has to create the alternative, Fish-accessible habitat to take up the slack. 20 miles of Dry Creek would be ideal, and I have no doubt that residents along Dry Creek would be happy to help, but not if the use of their land is confiscated in some grand scheme that ties everyone's resources up in a paper chase of filings, just to maintain the status quo. After all the setback exemptions are filed, not one dollar has been spent on a pipeline to supply Dry Creek. All that Fish Habitat, which could be created by running the equivalent of two households' water requirements during the dry season, will still not be happening, and the fish still won't have anywhere to hatch. The idiots who claim to be Conservationists", and "For the Environment", will still be trying to pin the blame on Farmers and Vineyards, and anything but the realities of Urban requirements. 10,000 foot setbacks will not create 1 square inch of new fish habitat. One creek-owning Land Steward with a zero-foot setback can create hundreds of feet of new fish habitat, with a few friends, on a Saturday afternoon. -- Ed Schulz
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