Tuesday, January 23, 2007

County conservation plan on tap

By: Gus Thomson, Journal Staff Writer

A Board of Supervisors showdown looms today over whether to move forward with a planning strategy for western Placer County that would provide a fine-tuned future blueprint for land conservation.

Up for discussion is the future of the Placer County Conservation Plan, an effort that was initially championed by the Board of Supervisors as an opportunity to provide the county with a simpler way to steer development through federal and state environmental guidelines.

With a change in board make-up and some key decisions now on the table, the future of the conservation plan is now under question and could be scrapped at today's board meeting.

The new year has brought two new supervisors -- Rocky Rockholm of Roseville and Kirk Uhler of Granite Bay -- who could shift the balance of support. The two succeed Roseville's Bill Santucci and Granite Bay's Ted Gaines -- both supporters of the conservation plan.

Eastern Placer County Supervisor Bruce Kranz of Weimar has expressed strong reservations about a plan he says could prove unfair to some property owners.

Supervisor Robert Weygandt of Lincoln is the strongest supporter of the plan, stating that it's a continuum of county efforts rooted in the 1994 general plan and further fostered by the 2000 decision to go forward with the Placer Legacy open-space preservation effort.

Auburn-area Supervisor Jim Holmes, who joined the board two years ago, is also a supporter of moving forward with the conservation plan for those reasons.

Supervisors will be asked today whether to continue on with the plan. If they decide to move it forward, they would then choose from 16 different map combinations for working with federal and state agencies on.

Adding to the highly charged atmosphere of Tuesday's meeting will be the possibility that one of the maps chosen could include acreage owned by Sacramento developer Angelo Tsakopoulos - who helped pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into last year's election primary campaign in a failed attempt to unseat Weygandt. At the same time, Tsakopoulos interests provided at least $5,000 in funding to the Rockholm campaign to defeat Placer County Water Agency Director Pauline Rocucci for the Roseville board seat.

A 3-2 vote - with Rockholm and Uhler siding with Kranz - would stop what has been steady but slow movement forward on a complex plan that would try to weave several strands of federal and state government regulation together in what Weygandt described last week as a "one-stop shopping approach" for developers.

In his report on options the board will have today, Planning Director Michael Johnson said the plan, which encompasses the western part of Placer County, is intended to provide 50 years of compliance for the federal and state endangered species acts, the federal Clean Water Act related to wetlands and water quality, as well as streambed modification agreements under the state Fish and Game Code.

The regulations the conservation plan would tie together already exist, with property owners, environmentalists, county planners and private developers now having to move through each strand of legislation separately.

"Collectively, these permits represent all of the major wetland and endangered species act regulations that are required on public and private property to accommodate new development," Johnson said.

Johnson said estimates are that over the next half-century, 54,000 acres of land will be converted to developed land in the unincorporated county and city of Lincoln. At the same time staff has estimated that about 55,000 to 60,000 acres of land could be required to establish the conservation reserve system.

The reserve system, estimated to cost development in western Placer County about $1 billion to pay for conservation lands and easements, would not change current zoning or land-use designations, he said.

"Property owners will retain all rights and privileges they currently enjoy on their property, with or without the PCCP," Johnson said. "Only those property owners who elect to sell their property or sell a conservation easement over their property would relinquish some or all of the rights and privileges afforded by their land-use designations."

Property owners would be compensated for the land or the rights that they elect to sell at a fair market value, he added.

Johnson said staff is seeking direction from the board today on what would be the "least environmentally damaging practicable alternative." That alternative would provide the most regulatory relief and assist in obtaining permits for the Placer Parkway - a planned through-route from north of Roseville to Highway 65 to ease traffic congestion planning concerns - and a Sacramento River water diversion project - which would provide a source of water for the growing western Placer County region, he said.

The Placer County Water Agency, which oversees water supply for most of western Placer County, will be weighing in on the support side to continue conservation plan efforts. It wants the board to adopt a conservation plan as soon as possible, so that it can fine-tune its own infrastructure plans.

Auburn Director Lowell Jarvis, chairman of the agency board, said that the agency has concerns over the possible loss of what it believes may be the only effective way to move forward with new surface-water supply options that would meet the needs of both western Placer County and northern Sacramento County.

"The conservation plan offers the only opportunity for the agency to acquire a take permit to cover its existing operations and maintenance activities that have the potential to affect aquatic species of concern in the streams of western Placer County," Jarvis said.

The Journal's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com.