Land Use & Development: Tuolumne County needs to follow the law

By John Buckley, Exec. Dir., CSERC

If someone wants to blame environmentalists or state laws or the Endangered Species Act for all the economic woes from the world recession, facts won’t change their opinions.

If someone wants to blame the slow economic recovery in Tuolumne County on CSERC or other conservation groups, logic won’t change their strongly held views.

But it may be helpful to know why our center is suing Tuolumne County over the Blue Mountain waste disposal project.

Think of a 27-acre woodland full of bushes, oaks, gray pines, and stringer meadows.  Think of squirrels, quail, deer, songbirds, tree frogs, and many other kinds of wildlife.

Then imagine those 27 acres buried under a massive mound of waste mining material.  CSERC believes that most people will agree that destroying 27 acres of oak woodland is, indeed a significant environmental impact.  Tuolumne county supervisors say it isn’t.

State law requires and Environmental Impact Report (EIR) to be prepared if a project may create a significant impact.  One key reason to complete an EIR is to assess alternatives to a project that could cause less harm.  Could the mine place waste material higher on the 48-acre waste material site it already is using?  Could the Mine put some of its waste material back on already denuded, mined acres?  County supervisors rejected CSERC’s urging to require an EIR to carefully consider such alternatives.

Tuolumne County approved the planing of oak seedlings as 100 percent of mitigation for the mine project.  Yet State law explicitly states that a project cannot use the planting of oak seedlings for more than 50% of mitigation.  In a democracy, when citizens believe laws are being broken, they have an obligation to challenge those violations.

For 24 years CSERC has reviewed all development and planning projects in Tuolumne County.  The current lawsuit is only the fourth legal challenge CSERC has filed against the County in all those years.  We did everything possible throughout the planning process to alert the county that we believed the mine waste site project was illegal without an EIR.  There is no benefit to CSERC for suing.  At best we get lawyer fees paid.  CSERC never profits from litigation.

Over recent years, some representing building and development interests have attacked county policies that help protect the environment.  They have vilified citizen watchdog groups at hearings (such as the mine session) as supposedly being the reason for a lack of new construction or development.  Much of what has been voiced is simply inaccurate.  With over 5,000 vacant lots in Tuolumne County, there is no shortage of lots for building new homes.

Despite the minimal protection that wildlife and oaks currently get in the county in development plans, that protection is certainly not stopping new projects.  Yet representatives of the building industry and their County Supervisor partners have spent th epast year in a committee, picking through County regulations to throw out policies that annoy building interests.  AT those sessions, builders and supervisors have openly discussed how to ensure that State wildlife representatives will have the least ability to protect wildlife values in County planning processes.

Last year, I asked a founder of a high-tech business what he thought about moving his company to our beautiful region.  He acknowledged that he loves the rivers, wildlife and forests in Tuolumne County, but he immediately dismissed the idea.  He shared that people who work for his company wouldn’t be comfortable living and working where county politicians are so openly against protecting nature.  He said it just wasn’t a fit for most progressive companies.

Those who represent local building and development interests can continue to put time and energy into blaming environmentalists, denouncing State laws, and bemoaning why the present isn’t like the pre-recession boom time.  Or … county politicians and building interests could move past the “blame game” and put that same time and energy into working to create a more forward-thinking atmosphere where measures to protect water and wildlife are embraced so that the County becomes an even more attractive location for solar, high-tech, and new tourism ventures that would boost building and development.

John Buckley and CSERC are members of the Calaveras Planning Coalition