Enviro Updates

SuzanneAugust 14, 2024August 29, 2024Climate Change & Energy, Forests, Land Usedevelopment, wildfire hazard, wildland urban interface

A Newsom-backed bill to change California’s wildfire hazard rankings is taking heat. Here’s why

Ari Plachta, SACRAMENTO BEE

The bill would overhaul California’s ranking system for wildfire hazards.

A bill backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to overhaul California’s ranking system for wildfire hazards is taking heat from environmentalists and local governments, who argue the bill would lead to a dangerous increase in housing development in fire-prone areas.

Senate Bill 610 would replace the state’s existing, three-tiered, labeling system that rates communities based on their probability of burning with a single framework that would only identify whether or not an area requires “fire mitigation.”

The hazard ranking system is a key to local development processes, building safety standards and home defensible space requirements. Proponents say the reform would simplify a convoluted system and help expand compliance with those rules.

SuzanneJuly 26, 2024July 30, 2024Land Use, TransportationCloverdale, new community

Company affiliated with Edge Esmeralda ‘pop-up village’ enters into purchase agreement for huge site in Cloverdale

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

A massive, vacant swath of land in southeast Cloverdale that once was to be transformed into a $200 million resort suddenly is slated for potential development by a surprise buyer: a company linked to Edge Esmeralda, the “pop-up village” that attracted visitors from around the world to Healdsburg in June.

Esmeralda Land Company, run by Devon Zuegel, a principal behind Edge Esmeralda, has entered into a purchase agreement for the 267-acre site, which has sat quietly on the real estate market for seven years.

Pending approval from Cloverdale city leaders and final signoff from Esmeralda investors, Zuegel told The Press Democrat on Friday she plans to transform the open space into a full-time neighborhood that includes a hotel.

The ethos of the community will mirror that of the month-long event Zuegel helped lead in Healdsburg in June, where people took part in a variety of lectures and day trips, harmonizing with nature and prioritizing health and wellness.

SuzanneJuly 23, 2024July 30, 2024Agriculture/Food System, Climate Change & Energy, Forests, Habitats, Sustainable Living, Wildlifebiodiversity, California proposition, climate action, parks funding, recreation, salmon, water

A look at the $10B climate bond (Prop. 4) California voters will decide on in November

Manola Secaira, CAPRADIO

In November, California voters will decide whether to approve of a bond that would fund state climate initiatives.

Proposition 4 on Ballotpedia

Legislators announced the $10 billion bond will appear on the November ballot as Proposition 4 earlier this month. Dozens of environmental groups advocated for it, especially in light of state budget cuts made earlier in the year that impacted climate programs.
Fred Greaves for CalMatters
Big cuts, no new taxes: Gov. Newsom’s plan to fix California’s budget deficit

Many advocates are optimistic voters will approve of the bond, citing a PPIC survey published earlier this month that found 59% of California voters would likely vote “yes.”

Assembly member Lori Wilson was one of the legislators who introduced the measure. Before it came together, she said she’d been working to introduce a bond measure that would focus on agriculture. But she and other legislators eventually decided they’d see a better chance of success if they pooled their bond proposals.

“Once we started to see the cost of inflation, just the impact that the voters were feeling, we knew there really wasn’t an appetite for multiple bonds on the ballot and there would have to be consolidation,” Wilson said.

The bond would be paid off by California’s general fund, which is supported, for the most part, by tax revenue. The state’s legislative analyst’s office says the estimated cost to repay the bond would be $400 million a year over the course of 40 years.

Supporters say the bond would provide much-needed funds to accomplish California’s ambitious environmental goals, like its commitment to conserving 6 million acres of land by 2030.

SuzanneJuly 23, 2024July 30, 2024Habitats, Sonoma Coast, Wildlifehabitat restoration, kelp forest, sea urchins

Groups unite to replant Sonoma Coast kelp forest

Cole Hersey, NORTH BAY BOHEMIAN

This July marks the first summer planting of lab-grown bull kelp along specific sites on the Sonoma coast by the Greater Farallones Association and NOAA.

On a sunny afternoon just north of Bodega Bay, two large troughs of water bubbled in the sunlight, toward the ocean. Swirling in the eddy of bubbles were slimy forest green blades of kelp. Julieta Gomez, the Greater Farallones Association (GFA) kelp restoration specialist, explained that these were blades of lab-grown bull kelp, a tall brown algae that towers dozens of feet over rocky coastlines like a tree.

Bull kelp forests were once a common sight along beaches all across Marin and Sonoma counties. But over the last decade, they have been almost entirely wiped out from the West Coast, only surviving in small pockets between Santa Barbara and Alaska. In Marin and Sonoma, their numbers have been wiped out by nearly 90%, replaced by vast areas of urchins, called urchin barrens. One such barren reaches hundreds of miles from Marin County, all the way to the Oregon border, according to work conducted by UC Davis researchers.

SuzanneJuly 12, 2024July 30, 2024Transportationroundabouts, traffic

Cotati voters to have say on roundabouts — again

Amie Windsor, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Round and round they go: Cotati voters will have their say on roundabouts after a citizens’ initiative to repeal a citywide ban on the traffic configuration has gathered enough signatures to be placed on the November ballot.

A ban against the love-it-or-hate-it road junction has been in place since voters passed a measure in 2012 prohibiting the construction of roundabouts and traffic circles within city limits.

That original ban was also a voter-driven initiative after the council planned to install two roundabouts on Old Redwood Highway as part of a $3.5 million redesign of its downtown. The plan was part of a long-planned revitalization intended to maintain Cotati’s small-town feel, spur economic activity and make the highway safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

At the time, opponents said the traffic circles would jam traffic, cause accidents and stifle business along the half-mile corridor. Ultimately, they were never constructed.

Eris Weaver, one of three proponents for the repeal, said the original arguments against roundabouts were false.

“I don’t know why people lose their mind about roundabouts. I think it’s fear of the unknown, maybe,” Weaver, who serves as the executive director for the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition, said.

SuzanneJuly 3, 2024July 20, 2024Land Useconference center, tourism impacts, urban planning, urban residential

What could redevelopment at former Sears site mean for downtown Santa Rosa? Local officials weigh in

Sara Edwards & Paulina Pineda, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Government officials, business leaders and observers say two competing visions for the former Sears site at Santa Rosa Plaza could help inject new life in that corner of the mall and provide a boost to downtown merchants and restaurants.

Sonoma County Tourism has proposed building a convention center and 250-room hotel at First and A streets to rope more business tourism into the local economy.

Meanwhile, mall owner Simon Property Group is said to be in talks with an unnamed national housing developer to bring apartments and retail to the site.

The full picture of the economic impact of either proposal is still coming into view as public details of the proposals emerge.

But the discussion comes as Santa Rosa’s urban core grapples with an identity crisis fueled in part by boarded up shops and less foot traffic following the COVID-19 pandemic.

SuzanneJune 27, 2024July 20, 2024Land Useevent centers, traffic, wineries

Neighbors in rural Petaluma fight winery over tasting room proposal

Jennifer Sawhney, NORTH BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL

A neighborhood battle has quietly erupted west of Petaluma among the bucolic, rolling hills along Spring Hill Road. The cause? A local winery’s proposed tasting room.

Azari Winery’s owners have spent five years and more than $100,000 so far on the 2,800-square-foot tasting room, which they say is well-considered, safe for the area and perfectly legal.

But a group of over 30 neighbors has a different take, calling the winery’s new addition an “event center” and saying it could have harmful environmental and agricultural impacts on their rural neighborhood, and be an inroad to further development.

“You’re never going to tear a building down to put it back to farmland,” said Shelina Moreda, a fifth-generation dairy farmer who pointed to the loss of dairy farms as cause for concern. “Once these things come in and move in, you have forever lost that farmland — forever. The problem with it is that it’s not just one building, it’s the chain reaction that it affects.”

Some of these neighbors have had family in the area for over a century, while others arrived more recently for the calm setting. Evidence of their growing dispute with Azari Winery is already visible along the roadside, where they’ve posted red-orange signs reading, “No event center on Spring Hill Road.”

SuzanneJune 9, 2024June 24, 2024Habitats, Water, Wildlifeendangered species, salmon habitat, salmonids, watershed restoration

Salmon and the subsurface

David Dralle, Gabe Rossi, Phil Georgakakos, Jesse Hahm, Daniella Rempe, Monica Blanchard, Mary Power, Bill Dietrich, and Stephanie Carlson, CALIFORNIA WATERBLOG

Our central hypothesis is that we will not recover salmon abundance without recovering a diversity of paths through the watershed and through the life cycle and, moreover, that the strategies that are missing or only weakly contributing today are ones that relied on the mainstem and other non-natal habitats for rearing / as stop over sites…

You’ve probably noticed that some streams flow year-round while others are seasonally dry, despite receiving similar amounts of rainfall. Through a recent NSF-funded effort (“Eel River Critical Zone Observatory”), we learned several things about how landscapes filter climate to produce such diverse flow behavior–and the implications for how salmon live their lives.

Our 25-year field study revealed that belts of California’s Eel River watershed underlain by different geologies have different Critical Zones (CZs) – Earth’s permeable surface layers from the top of the vegetation canopy down to fresh bedrock, where water can be stored and exchanged.

SuzanneJune 6, 2024June 10, 2024Climate Change & Energy, Forestsfire prevention, PG&E, power lines

PG&E plan to use wildfire funds on ads sparks critics’ fire

Jaxon Van Derbeken, NBC BAYAREA

“It’s outrageous to charge customers for promotional advertising that only promotes the utility,” said Katy Morsony, an attorney with the ratepayer advocacy group TURN.

PG&E recently acknowledged that it intends to have customers pay for an ongoing $6 million ad campaign, calling it “safety communications.” But critics say the utility shouldn’t be allowed to tap funds earmarked to help prevent wildfires on what they consider blatantly promotional commercials.

In the ad campaign that began last year, PG&E’s CEO Patti Poppe says that “to make our power system safer and more reliable…we’re transforming your local utility from the underground up.”

She goes on to talk about an ambitious plan to underground 10,000 miles of power lines across 21 counties that she says will make “us safer and it’s less expensive in the long run.”

PG&E recently told state legislators that it wants customers to pay for the three-year campaign out of a pool of funds known as the “fire risk mitigation memorandum account.”

SuzanneMay 30, 2024June 2, 2024Local Organizations, Sonoma Coast, Sustainable Livingcoast conservation, development, Russian River

Marty Griffin dies at 103, leaving legacy of land conservation, environmental leadership

Mary Callahan, PRESS DEMOCRAT

Marty Griffin was among a generation of pioneering conservationists who fought off development pressure and paved the way for protection of large swaths of the Marin-Sonoma Coast.

He didn’t do it alone. But the vast, open landscape of rolling hills and coastal waterways that draws nature lovers to the Marin-Sonoma coast might have looked a whole lot different had Marty Griffin not been around.

Imagine a freeway, whole communities, housing for tens of thousands, a mall, coastal villas, even a nuclear plant on the huge swath of coastline now dominated by nature preserves, public parks and agriculture.

Griffin and other early conservationists mobilized during the 1960s and ‘70s―as intense development pressures threatened to alter the North Bay landscape profoundly―and fought to thwart that outcome, shifting the region’s culture in ways that are evident in the lands now protected.

Since his death at home in Belvedere on May 22 at the impressive age of 103, Griffin has been remembered not just for his commitment to the cause but for his passion and leadership, the “clever,” “wily” manner in which he approached each challenge and his refusal to back down.