Corrections
I, once again, need to make a correction to something
printed last week in this column and think it is appropriate to put it first
rather than last. Captions under photos from Scotland were misspelled. They
should have read, “Fingals Cave.” I know that you may
not care how it is spelled, but my relatives in England will know the
difference and I would rather they think I cared enough to spell it correctly.
I would also like to take this opportunity to correct a
misperception, perhaps deliberate to make a point, that my writings concerning
the casino are actually, as the writer stated in the Letters to the Editor,
“Crawford-Hall’s personal war against Armenta.” As
much as it suits some people’s agenda, I have never had any sort of “war” with
Mr. Armenta, particularly since I have never met the
man. I have stated repeatedly, if you care to research it, that I wish we could
all sit down together and come up with a plan for “our” valley. This has been
repeatedly rejected by tribal leadership, and numerous false accusations have
been hurled at valley residents for being racists.
What I have continued to remark on is how tribal
leadership needs to take responsibility for the changes to the community that have occurred because of the casino. In
addition, there are many in the community who are beginning to feel
discriminated against because of the fact that their tax dollars, so far, have
been spent on things that do not benefit them in any way. It is incredibly
stupid, I think, to continue to foment divisions between the tribe and the rest
of the community. We all live here, none of us is moving elsewhere, and we need
to sit down together with friendly attitudes and work out how we can make this
valley a place where we can all be happy and productive. Please have the decency to stop the
incendiaries. Future negatives will be your responsibility and I, personally,
will continue to inform the community of things happening which could affect
them.
Valley
Plans
It is my intent to keep you informed to the best of my
ability of plans for the valley that may have an impact on you. One of those
plans, which I mentioned last week, is the legislation being carried by Pedro
Nava (not written by him) for our local water district. After a conversation
with a representative of the water district, I had a number of my questions
answered which made me feel a lot better about what I was reading and I think
it will make you feel better about it, too.
As I said before, I was concerned about eminent domain,
groundwater control, recreation and new powers being given to the district that
they didn’t have before. After my conversation, I was relieved to hear that
with one exception, the powers are the same. There has been no intention to use
any of the more contentious powers in the past and no reason to think that
things will change in the near future.
The only new power being requested is something which
makes a lot of sense to me, and that is for the district to have the ability to
capture storm flow from the river and inject it into the groundwater basin to
use when winter rains do not adequately replenish our supply. It seems
practical to be able to retain water for our increasing water needs that would
go to the ocean otherwise.
I hope that you will read the article on this subject for
more information. I am not sure that most people are aware of how tenuous our
water supply is. I don’t mean to imply that we don’t have enough, but I do mean
to draw your attention to some facts that you may not be focused on. The first
is how we use our water and what that means. I know we are all aware when our
winters do not have enough rain or that we have changes to the landscape due to
fire, flood or other natural phenomena. Sometimes those of us in agriculture
hear calls for the cessation of growing alfalfa because it takes a lot of water
and humans don’t consume it, at least not directly. Well, if I were to stop
growing alfalfa, you would lose the beautiful green fields along Highway 154
where you often stop to admire the deer. Furthermore, if I didn’t have the oats
and alfalfa hay to supplement the feed for my cattle and the high quality
alfalfa hay for my world-class horses, I would be forced to go out of business.
San Lucas would have to fire employees who support fourteen families, and the
final insult would be to abandon the ranch to developers. I don’t believe
anybody wants to see that.
So what other uses do we have — other than that for our
residents? Well, the largest consumers of water from this valley are four water
districts on the other side of the mountain. As those communities continue to
grow, there will be increased requirements for more water to flow through the
tunnel. The major voices demanding artificial watering for fish emanate from
the other side of the mountains as well. As population increases, we may need
to rethink our priorities if it means that we will no longer have enough for
people when we are releasing 2000 acre feet of water per year down the river
for 17 fish which may or may not be steelhead. There’s the casino, which
continues to attract people from outside our area who consume our resources but
leave nothing behind to replace them. We need to work together to account for
this increasing use or we will all be in trouble.
There are many other uses of our water that we need to
consider carefully its availability and the very large fluctuations that occur
each and every year. As a person in agriculture, the weather and water are
first and foremost on my mind at all times. I also know that people who are not
in agriculture and are not dependent on water supply for their livelihoods are
not as cognizant of these issues as we are. I would like to continue this
conversation in future editions until we have come to a mutual understanding of
how to manage this resource. In the meantime, we have a pretty good start with
our local water district, which should not be under the control of outsiders
such as the LAFCO Board, mostly made up of representatives from outside the
valley. LAFCO also has some pretty serious conflict of interests
issues, as well.
The
SY Plan
I just started reading the plan for the Santa Ynez Valley
and, frankly, I don’t know where to begin to comment. I had a full page of
notes just reading the Executive Summary, and I have to tell you that this is
one of the most overworked, agenda-driven, ridiculous documents I have ever
laid eyes on. I know that most of you have neither the time nor inclination to
read through the entire set of documents, so I will take the liberty of
beginning this week to point out what I find to be some of the most glaring
issues.
Let’s start with the Boundary Line defined as that which
“separates areas adequately served by existing — or logical extensions of —
(my emphasis) public infrastructure (Urban) and areas best suited for
agriculture and open space (Rural).” An area between these is termed Inner
Rural and is designed to be a buffer between them. I find this designation to
be amusing, since part of my ranch has been included in the Inner Rural
category, and when I asked supervisor Brooks Firestone to put it back in the Rural area where it would remain with the rest of the ranch,
he forgot to do so. In the meantime, I decided to take it out of the county’s
hands and put it in a Conservation Easement, which precludes the County or
anyone else from changing it from how it looks today. Both of those parcels, I
believe, are on the face of this plan, and I would ask them to use someone
else’s property as an example, as they clearly aren’t interested in taking care
of the land as I will and do.
I know this because this plan on the very first page
declares that previous planning documents featured 710 new residential units
whereas this new plan envisions 936 new residential units.
It is carefully explained that these figures don’t
include second units of any kind, including agricultural units. Wow! Doesn’t
that sound like quite a lot of new development? Where is it supposed to go?
I did notice that a good part of downtown Santa Ynez is
going to have a zone change (including the Valley Journal property) to include
mixed use, i.e. apartments over commercial establishments.
I guess some of it will go there, although the old
beautiful buildings will have to be rebuilt to accommodate that.
For your perusal, I will include a few other items for
your consideration including the following:
• roundabouts are to be
installed on the highways
• businesses will be required to
show receipts of 50 percent minimum participation in recycling efforts
• if you can’t find a place to
restore land after development on a 2:1 ratio, you will be forced to give an
unspecified amount of money to a “conservation” fund of the county’s choice
• “trees to be considered impacted shall include those to
remain in livestock areas where fencing is not provided to prevent browsing on
lower branches”- can’t you just see all the ranchers fencing off the thousands
of oak trees in their pastures!
• Action HA-SYV-4.3: The County, Tribe, and community
should work together to ensure appropriate tribal access to traditional cultural,
historical, and spiritual properties while still respecting the rights and
privileges of private property owners.”
There are lots more where this comes from, and I think
you need to prepare yourselves to comment on these items to your representatives.
(?).