No conservation plan in the works

To save Calaveras County’s financial credibility and avoid a lawsuit, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to return just over $10,000 in grant money to the Sierra Nevada Conservancy after failing to execute habitat conservation work initially approved in 2008.

The total grant amount issued was $46,000 and was meant to fund “specific” ecological studies and fund a separate grant application that would cover the total cost of a countywide habitat conservation plan – a document that sets specific steps developers must take to mitigate endangered species habitat loss and typically expedites development decisions.

According to current Planning Director Rebecca Willis, expectations regarding what it truly takes to develop a full-fledged habitat conservation plan were probably not well articulated to the 2008 board.

“It (habitat conservation plan) is a tremendous effort that takes years and hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Willis said Tuesday, noting that the $46,000 was not nearly enough to implement a countywide plan.

Of the $46,000, only about $19,500 was spent. The money went toward hiring a consultant, John McCaull, to prepare an application for a larger U.S. Fish and Wildlife grant that would have covered the plan’s full cost. That application was denied. Since then, the other work outlined in the original scope of work appears to have drifted below the radar.

“For reasons unknown, the SNC grant was left open and unresolved for the past five years,” read the staff report prepared by the Planning Department.

In 2012, after Willis had taken the department’s helm, the conservancy came knocking, asking Calaveras to show what work had been completed. After review, SNC asked the county to return just over $10,000 of the $19,500 that had been spent since “only one of the deliverables” – the submittal of the larger grant application – had been completed.

Willis said her department has made contact with McCaull to try and recoup the money he was paid for work that was not completed, but she “can’t predict how that will play out” and the conservancy is “not interested in waiting for us to collect monies from our contractor.”

Members of the public in attendance at Tuesday’s meeting voiced their discontent with the situation but also spoke more deeply – and heatedly – about the general nature of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy.

Valley Springs resident Tonja Dausend characterized the agency as a black pit of taxpayer dollars used to inhibit the full exercise of individual property rights.

“Keep their ill-begotten money out of our county with all their dirty strings attached,” she said.

Her comments raised the ire of Calaveras County’s District 2 Supervisor Chris Wright – himself the former executive director of a similar group, Foothill Conservancy.

“You don’t want their money? Well, I want their money. Sierra Nevada Conservancy is a really great agency represented by a broad aspect of stakeholders,” he said. “Even though this is a mess I wouldn’t throw the whole agency under the bus.”

If the county fails to return the money the Sierra Nevada Conservancy will likely take legal action, a consequence that appealed to none of the supervisors, evidenced by their unanimous support of repayment.

In an interview with the Enterprise, Willis mentioned that there are other “strategies” the county can use to address open space in addition to the component to be included in the new general plan. One such strategy is the creation of a regional conservation strategy – a scaled down version of an HCP that would identify prime and subprime habitat in the county’s predicted growth areas, namely Copperopolis and Valley Springs. The strategy was recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service previously when Copperopolis’ Sawmill Lake project was being debated, but Willis said there were no guarantees any RCPs would be forthcoming.

“All this still takes money and landowners that are willing. The grant funding from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy would have helped us move forward,” said Willis. “But, since we can’t deliver the product that the money was intended for, we need to refund and keep our good credit.”

According to John Buckley, executive director of the Central Sierra Environmental Resource Center, Calaveras County will suffer from the lack of a countywide conservation plan. He said it will create further burdens for potential developers and concerned citizens by failing to create clear measures on what should be done to protect vulnerable species and corresponding habitat.

“Right now Calaveras County is moving forward in a general plan update process without having that broad important strategic approach spelled out,” said Buckley. “It will be difficult for the county to show adequacy in protecting a range of wildlife. Until some plan is accomplished it will be difficult for the county to have a clear strategy for what it’s going to be doing.”