From the Napa County Resource Conservation District, 2000 Newsletter, posted on the NCRCDC website, http://www.Naparcd.org. Visit their site for a wealth of information on watershed stewardship.
Since 1991 the Napa RCD has had a contractual agreement with the Napa County Planning Department to perform technical reviews of agricultural erosion control plans required under the Conservation Regulations, and to make recommendations to the Planning Department as to their efficacy. The RCD's traditional role as technical advisors to the growers has been overlain (not replaced) by its role as technical advisors to the County. Plan development and integration with vineyard design have been the responsibility of the grower/applicants.
RCD's review has been based, not on a set of inflexible best management practices (BMP's) or a "building code", but on an exhaustive evaluation of the proposals' potential performance, including computer modeling (soil loss and hydrologic) and an evaluation of the proposals' "farmability." Placing responsibility on the growers has led to the "invention" of a number of technical advances that might never have been realized under a system that required specific BMP's. Furthermore, the flexibility inherent in Napa's system has allowed continuous integration of the latest erosion and sediment control technologies with cutting-edge viticultural strategies. The tremendous pressures for hillside vineyard development since 1991 have borne out the value of the Napa Ordinance's approach, as the developments have resulted in significant reductions in the erosion and sediment that could have been expected under vineyard development strategies prevalent in the 1960's, 70's and 80's.
However, Napa's Conservation Regulations address only erosion and sediment control. Public pressure for more vineyard regulation based on wildlife habitat, viewsheds, hydrology, and other environmental and land use concerns led the Board of Supervisors to appoint a Task Force (In December 1998) to review the Ordinance and recommend amendments they considered appropriate. Those recommendations are pending as of this writing, but are likely to include changes in stream setback requirements, maximum slope restrictions, allowable peak flow increases, and new application of setback and slope restrictions to currently "grandfathered" vineyard replants.
The already difficult task of the Task Force became dramatically more complex in September 1999, when the Sierra Club concurrently sued Napa County and a number of growers holding approved erosion control plans. Sierra Club claimed that the approved plans should have been subjected to review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Ironically, the flexibility and judgment employed in plan review, the very qualities that have made the Napa Ordinance so effective, proved to be the legal achilles' heel that would halt the plan approval process. Sierra Club argued that the judgment exercised in plan review defines a "discretionary" permit process, as opposed to a "ministerial" review, such as a building inspector might perform. Discretionary processes require environmental review under the language of CEQA.
The County conceded the point, stopping most plan approvals, and began another difficult task: setting up an environmental review process for hundreds of acres of proposed vineyard developments annually. There is new County staff charged with a portion of this work, and LSA, a private firm from Point Richmond, has been hired as well. Once the CEQA juggernaut is rolling, it is anticipated that an additional 60-90 days will be required for Plan approval. However, in the short run there is a backlog of approximately 90 unapproved vineyard erosion control plans that RCD has reviewed. No one knows how much time will be required to work through this backlog.
Apart from the frustration of seeing our work lie fallow in a file cabinet while the process sorts itself out, what this means for RCD is more work. In particular, the prospect of a limitation on allowable peak flow increases for vineyard developments, either as a result of an Ordinance amendment or as part of CEQA review, may require extensive hydrologic modeling and/or review of applicants' calculations. Some of the Task Force´s proposals to redefine streams that require setbacks would also require more staff time and expertise in the field. In addition, we will continue to develop and maintain our erosion control plan database, some of which will be made public in GIS format on our new web site. All indications are that County government will rely heavily on RCD and NRCS technical guidance during this difficult transition and beyond.