Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:25 AM PST

Supes approve 50-year land plan

By: Gus Thomson, Gold Country News Service

Placer County is moving ahead on a strategy for western Placer County that would map out a 50-year conservation plan fine-tuned to address growth projections and environmental concerns.

With new supervisors on the board and given the opportunity of dropping efforts to go forward on the Placer County Conservation Plan, supervisors decided in a 5-0 vote Tuesday to take the next step and start to negotiate a plan with federal and state regulators.

The decision followed a public hearing that drew an overflowing crowd of about 150 to the 100-seat supervisors chambers in Auburn and lasted more than five hours.

With many people listening to testimony outside the meeting room on speakers and TVs set up for viewing, 36 people voiced concerns or support for the conservation plan.

Supporters let supervisors know that they thought the plan would provide a solid planning base for development to work with while preserving the county's dwindling supply of agricultural land in western Placer County.

Opponents -- many of them property owners -- objected to what they considered an intrusion on their ability to eventually sell or develop their land in the way they wanted to.

Auburn resident Joe Medeiros said moving forward with the plan would provide the balance the county needs in the face of growth pressures.

Citing global population pressures, Medeiros called on supervisors to throw out any old rulebooks and consider future generations of Placer County residents.

Janae Noble of Orangevale held back tears as she explained that she feared her seven-acre parcel along the Bear River would not be developable because it may fall under the area that maps drawn by the county show as targeted for open-space preservation.

Under the county's plan, about 54,000 acres of land will be developed in the unincorporated county and city of Lincoln. At the same time, staff has estimated that about 55,000 to 60,000 acres could be conserved.

The conservation area would preserve about 6,000 to 7,000 acres of vernal pools - or approximately 70 percent of the county's remaining stock of the fragile, seasonal ecosystems.

The plan also would provide the county with a 50-year contract complying with several federal and state environmental regulations, including the Clean Water Act and the state Fish and Game Code.

New supervisors Kirk Uhler of Granite Bay and Rocky Rockholm of Roseville joined supervisors Robert Weygandt of Lincoln, Auburn's Jim Holmes and Weimar's Bruce Kranz in moving the plan forward.

Weygandt and Uhler agreed to serve as members of an ad hoc committee to work with concerned parties and several state and federal regulatory agencies to come up with a map showing areas that would targeted for conservation efforts. The county's intent is to have development buy conservation easements on farmland and open space from willing sellers as growth occurs. The estimated cost is $1.1 billion over 50 years.

The regulations the conservation plan would tie together already exist, with developers and planners having to deal with each individual agency separately.

Kranz continued to express reservations about the conservation plan but agreed to move it forward if negotiations would take into account the 209 property owners in his district he said would face being part of a conservation zone. His contention was that because no environmentally sensitive vernal pools are located in the targeted areas in his district, they should be left out.

Kranz, who sent letters to the 209 property owners, said he also wasn't happy that there was no county notification process.

"They don't like being put in the position of 'trust me, it'll work out,'" Kranz said. "I can see the handwriting on the wall (on the supervisors' support) but I'm still concerned about agriculture."

As proposed by Uhler and Rockholm, one of the options will be a blend of map proposals. Sixteen maps were considered and Weygandt said he'll be entering the negotiation phase with no preconceived notion on how the final map will turn out. The map could be back before the board for approval this summer.

Weygandt, whose district takes in most of the conservation plan preservation area, said it would be "the epitome of irresponsible" to not proceed with the conservation plan. Holmes described the situation as critical and noted that it was supported by the Sierra Club and the Sacramento Area Council of Governments.

Rockholm, in his second meeting as a supervisor, said that he was used to 1½-hour meetings as a Roseville City Council member. On Tuesday, supervisors met from 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a break for lunch.

While saying he sympathized with property owners who expressed concerns Tuesday, Rockholm said the issue before the board wasn't about property rights.

Instead, Rockholm said he was fully committed to move forward on a plan that would provide contiguous conservation areas for wildlife and replace a system in place now that develops open space preservation on a piecemeal basis.

Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com