Sunday, February 4, 2007

'The devil is in the details' of conservation

By: Bruce Kranz, Placer County Supervisor

It all starts with a great concept of how to make something better. Governmental bureaucracy then transforms the good concept into years of discussions, presentations, research, stakeholder groups, demonstration projects, and political battles. The initial concept ends up looking nothing like what it started as.

Good concepts are great, but the devil is in the details. The time it takes to wade through voluminous reports often obscures the important details. Such is the controversy surrounding The Placer Conservation Plan.

The plan is a concept the Board of Supervisors has recently grappled with. The concept is that with a mapped out area, development will be streamlined with the result that developers will not have to wait a decade to see their plans come to fruition in Placer County. Vernal pool habitats get saved and communities grow to their maximum potential. That goal is far from what played out this last week in the five hours of the conservation plan debate at the Board of Supervisors meeting.

My goal remains to ensure that if a plan is adopted it does not trample private property rights. We cannot, with a stroke of the pen, create millionaires on one side of the road and handicap landowners on the other side.

We all know that there are certain high-value resources, such as vernal pools, which the federal and state agencies regulate and mandate that we protect. I have no problem preserving conservation areas where high-value resources occur in a natural state. Putting land with no high-value resource into a conservation area and identifying it as a "purple zone" on a map, you are not accomplishing the original concepts of the plan.

I have yet to see a commitment from the county, federal or state agencies ensuring that agricultural land that gets put into the "purple" zone will remain as it is today: land that can be farmed. Will the farmer be able to continue or introduce growing row crops? Will they be permitted to use herbicides and pesticides?

How much will it cost to preserve the proposed 50,000-plus acres currently identified as required mitigation land in question?

While the perception is that developers will pay, the reality is that the end user, new homebuyer and future taxpayer, and those who currently own property and end up in the "purple zone," will fund the plan. If the conservation plan is adopted in its proposed format, it will cost the taxpayers at least $1.2 billion in acquisition costs and another estimated $7 million to $10 million annually in management costs.

I have many questions about this plan, as do a lot of people. I want to take this opportunity to tell you why I ask hard questions and the reason I voted to continue work on the plan. Make no mistake about it; the plan was going to proceed with or without my vote. I decided to vote to continue the process once I received a commitment from the two supervisors on the county's negotiating committee that they will take another look at those properties in the "purple" within District 5. If those properties do not have high-value resources, those properties will be removed from the conservation area.

I was also given assurance the agricultural community will be protected and be allowed to continue their current and future farming practices. If these issues are not addressed in the negotiations, I reserve the right to vote against the final negotiated plan.

There were over 200 property owners within the "purple" in District 5 alone. When I learned that they had not been notified that the conservation plan could affect their properties, I immediately sent them a letter informing them of this proposed project and inviting them to take part in the public comment period of the Board of Supervisors meeting.

I made a commitment when I was elected to protect private property rights and to be transparent with all actions and decisions. I intend to stand by that commitment. As your county supervisor I will continue to look into the details of this and every item that comes before me and I will insist on transparency in government.

If you have questions regarding the Placer County Conservation Plan and where we are in the process, please contact the Planning Department at (530) 745-3000.

Bruce Kranz is the District 5 Placer County Supervisor