January 13, 2003
Tom Gamble
Napa County Farm Bureau
Dear Tom:
I certainly see why you are disappointed with the Stream Setback Ordinance. In the beginning it seemed to be a promising part of your plan to defeat the Malan initiative, but it now seems so watered down that it may no longer be a credible countermeasure. Early on it seemed that it had wide support and would easily be approved, but the small property owners dealt an unexpected wild card at the last minute. It originally looked like a legitimate way to preserve and enhance the quality of the watershed, but now no longer appears to address any identifiable, quantifiable problems, or offer any real measurable environmental benefit. While it once looked like a way to promote the agricultural community's image as an environmentally conscious group, it now threatens to blossom into a public relations disaster for the industry. All this makes a pretty good case for abandoning the Stream Setback Ordinance altogether and adopting a new approach.
The frustration is compounded by your own realization that a desperate effort to defeat a bad ballot initiative in the face of a rapidly changing political situation has led your industry down a less than rational path, where it finds itself fragmented and uncertain about how to proceed. I understand your dilemma, and I especially appreciate your sincere desire to make things right. Furthermore, I believe that you are absolutely correct that all of us can still work together to meet everyone's needs, which are not mutually exclusive, nor even mutually antagonistic. Our truly common needs are the following:
1. The legitimate and conscientious environmentalist community needs to ensure the preservation and enhancement of the watershed (as do we all).
2. The Agricultural organizations need to demonstrate to voters that Napa County can get its environmental house in order without the Malan initiative (as do we all).
3. The County Supervisors need to support Napa County's major industry, and want very much to comply with the wishes of the Agricultural organizations (as do we all). The Supervisors also want to govern responsibly and in an environmentally conscious manner, and want the voting public to know they are actively working to protect the environment (and we all need to encourage that).
4. The Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance needs a solution that achieves everyone's goal of a healthy watershed while also respecting individual property owners and tenants and their need to use and enjoy their property (and I know that all of us, including the Supervisors, are in favor of that, too).
Since we all want the same thing, the only decision we have to make is how to achieve it. I would like to suggest that the best and most rational way to meet all of our mutual needs is with an educational program that will encourage voluntary action to preserve and enhance the quality of the watershed.
An educational program designed to win the hearts and minds of the true stewards of the land (those who live and work on it), and structured to empower and motivate them to protect and enhance their watershed, will be far more productive than the currently proposed regulatory restrictions that would have been difficult to enforce and therefore easy to circumvent, and whose complexity and cost of compliance would have encouraged such circumvention. An educational program will have an even greater positive impact on the health of our watershed than would the proposed Stream Setback Ordinance because generating enthusiasm for a healthy watershed will stimulate beneficial and productive effort by individuals who would otherwise be deterred by resentment toward an oppressive regulatory scheme.
The Education Alternative (which we have tentatively named STEWARD), if properly designed, funded, implemented, and promoted, can serve the needs of all parties and result in real immediate and long term improvements to the health of our watershed. I propose that you, the Ag groups, all legitimate environmentalists, and NVLSA should jointly propose this Education Alternative to the Board of Supervisors and encourage them to enact it in lieu of the currently proposed Stream Setback Ordinance.
Such unanimity of support would ensure its prompt passage, set us all on the best course to preserving our environment, send a strong message that the health of our watershed is important to all of us and to the Supervisors, and set a positive and inspiring example for the rest of the state and for the nation. It could also save you from squandering time and money on a counter-initiative that may not succeed. (After all, a counter-initiative that mimics the Stream Setback Ordinance would meet the same community resistance as did the ordinance.)
Besides, the voters never would have been fooled by token efforts to appear "green." Just like the rest of us, they would have easily figured out that the Stream Setback Ordinance wasn't really based on science, didn't have specific, measurable goals, and could never have been evaluated for its effectiveness in actually benefiting the watershed. The voters would not have been impressed.
What will impress the voters and all the rest of us is the sight of people rolling up their sleeves to identify, quantify, and solve specific watershed problems with cooperative, concerted efforts delivering measurable results.
Instead of squandering resources on application fees, staff reviews, expert reports, and legal challenges, let's devote those same resources to productive projects such as bank reconstruction, telemetry-sending submersible stream gauges, fish ladders at the dams, supplementing, monitoring and preserving stream water flows, reducing watercourse velocities, and otherwise addressing the Limiting Factors we already know about. An educational program like STEWARD can identify specific needs, inform residents of those needs, provide them with the tools and the motivation to do their part, and recognize and reward jobs well done. Favorable publicity surrounding just a few successful projects of this nature will let everyone know how important it is, how effective individual property owners can be, and how each person can make his own contribution.
Enthusiasm is infectious, and well-intentioned people given good information can accomplish wonderful things. Why not harness those positive energies and synergies to ensure a popular and continuing effort to enhance the quality of our watershed? And if "only" 80% or 90% of the adjacent owners participate in a given project, and the remaining 10% or 20% get a "free ride," rejoice that such a high participation rate was achieved, and that so much was accomplished. After all, the goal is to get the work done, not to envy and resent those who did not participate. Voluntary participation is always more pleasant and rewarding than forced participation, and always accomplishes more.
NVLSA squarely supports true conservation measures leading to definable environmental gain. The Education Alternative (STEWARD) proposal we circulated was a preliminary outline designed to illustrate the idea, suggest possibilities, stimulate discussion, and probe for support for a flexible educational approach to achieving those environmental gains. Our idea has turned out to have broad appeal and is already achieving significant momentum. If such an educational program is ultimately pursued, all stakeholders should have a voice in designing and implementing the final program, including the content of the course and the wording of the ministerial ordinance that will authorize, fund, implement, and promote the program. (A ministerial ordinance might require only submission of plans and a certificate of completion of the STEWARD course in order to get a permit.) We encourage you, your affiliated agricultural groups, and the legitimate environmentalist community to take an active role in this development process, in order to ensure that the program is ultimately the best it can be.
Supervisor Dodd has expressed a desire to also have all the cities in Napa County adopt STEWARD, in order to secure the maximum environmental gains throughout the watershed. He also sees STEWARD as a possible model for other counties in the state, which have so far been reluctant to enact meaningful environmental protections for fear of encountering the same problems with the Sierra Club and CEQA that Napa County has had. A program like STEWARD would afford those counties the opportunity and the means to rally public support for environmental preservation, yet avoid exposing themselves to extortion by environmental extremists.
STEWARD might also accomplish the same for Napa County if you were to use it as the core of your counter-initiative and structure it to repeal the current Hillside Ordinance. That could be a way to get us all back onto a truly rational track and provide us a reasonable, viable, and credible program to sell to voters in lieu of the unnecessary and counter-productive Malan initiative. But the most important first step is my immediate proposal that we all work together to promote the development and implementation of the STEWARD program in lieu of the Stream Setback Ordinance. Can we do it?
I have attached a copy of the draft STEWARD program for your review. I look forward to your response, once you have found time to carefully consider this proposal.
Sincerely,
George Bachich, NVLSA chairman
Cc (via e-mail): Sandra Elles, Deborah Blodgett, Linda Reiff, Becky Peterson, Dawnine Dyer, Tyler York, Bill Dodd, Mark Luce, Brad Wagenknecht, Mike Rippey, Diane Dillon, NVLSA members
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