Creek setbacks are down, but not out
By CHRIS COURSEY
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Monday, August 21, 2006
The folks at the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and the North Bay Association of Realtors probably spent the weekend celebrating their apparent victory in beating back a proposal to increase regulation on land next to creeks and streams in rural areas.But this fight isn't over.
Round 1 goes to the Farm Bureau, the Realtors and their success in turning out the hundreds of angry landowners for a series of hearings on the update of the county general plan. On Thursday, the majority of the Planning Commission said "no mas" and indicated it won't support rules to increase setbacks along county waterways.
While the two sides retire to their corners for a breather, let's handicap the rest of this fight. Even though the folks hollering about "property rights" look strong right now, keep in mind that it's water in the other corner. And water has a way of wearing its opponents down. Just take a look at the Grand Canyon if you don't believe me.
Metaphors aside, here's the reality: Water is going to be increas- ingly regulated in Sonoma County. The only question is whether that regulating will be done by the county, the state or the federal gov- ernment - or, more likely, all three.
This is not a new development. Ever since the National Marine Fisheries Service listed the Russian River's coho salmon and steelhead as threatened species, big changes have been made in rules governing how humans use water in this region.
In 1997, United Winegrowers director Bob Anderson said the day the fish were listed as threatened would be "the day that life as we know it in Sonoma County will end."He was right. The river on that day became something more than a supplier of drinking and irrigation water and a conduit to carry waste- water to the sea. It became a protect- ed habitat where the needs of the fish are just as important - and sometimes more important - than the needs of the hundreds of thou- sands of us who live near it.
But life in Sonoma County isn't through changing. The impacts of those 1996 and 1997 rulings still ripple through the community, and this summer's debate over stream setbacks is just another one of them.
Restricting new development alongside streams has been dis- cussed for five years as the county worked to update its general plan. A 15-member advisory committee eventually recommended a compro- mise that included new setbacks from the river and from seasonal and even "ephemeral" streams.
The development and agriculture industries were well-represented on the committee. But in a series of hear- ings that were enlivened - to say the least - when the Realtors association sent out 40,000 postcards sounding the alarm, the plan was portrayed as a seizure of property rights by a bunch of raving environmentalists.
By the time the issue got to the Planning Commission last week, though, it had morphed away from a plan to keep creeks healthy and improve water quality to a hot political potato that commissioners - not to mention the Board of Supervisors - didn't want to touch.
Well, they may not have to. But someone will, because regulators believe the watershed is in crisis, and "we have to bring it back to health," said John Short of the state Regional Water Quality Control Board.
"We're about to focus our efforts on the Russian River watershed," he told me last week. "We will be looking at appropriate setbacks."
That bell you hear is the beginning of Round 2.
© The Press Democrat.