Just as the Frankenstein monster has no soul, Dracula survives by draining the life blood of the living. This is an apt metaphor for the Summary of Environmental Impacts and Mitigation Measures at the end of part 2 – Executive Summary of the DEIR for the General Plan. In my last posting, I discussed the environmental tragedy of some additional traveler conveniences along the Hwy 88 scenic corridor. Other impacts from that section will now be examined.
While nobody wants the vibrate night sky obliterated by artificial lighting, the plan (2-8) describes everyday occurrences as if they were criminal offenses. Several reasonable suggestions for mitigation measures are described, but they all would make having a business or owning a home more complex and costly. But while the plan decries nighttime lights, it proposes stores along a sidewalk for the Pine Grove town center with parking behind the businesses. This effectively doubles the amount of artificial lighting. It seems that ideological concerns for the European style town centers make their sometimes valid, if overstated, environmental goals moot.
Another significant environmental impact is the conversion of 307 acres of farmland (2-9, 10) to other uses including mining and public facilities. Certainly welfare offices take up less land than productive facilities that employ people. The hoped for normal growth of the economy now has too significant an impact and is advised to be mitigated with costly measures that help preclude it from happening. One of these is conservation easements. This takes more land away from private decision making and, over time, diminishes opportunity for those who come after us. If you add up all these easements and other similar land control schemes nationwide and place them upon a map, it looks like the aristocratic land tenure system of the Middle Ages, not the modern democracy we still think we live in.
The draft General Plan allows some conversion of forest land to other uses (2-11). Not surprisingly this is considered another significant environmental impact that should be met with mitigation measures such as berms, fencing, landscaping and building orientation. So if you want to live in the forest, you have to somehow live apart from it. This recalls the abstraction I noted in my prior installment, the direct opposite of our inherent participation in the natural world. The freedom that dies here is not considered, by their way of thinking, a significant impact.
The document continues with the significant impacts of construction-related emissions (2-12, 13) including everyday dust. They propose 15 mitigation measures such as suspending work when the wind exceeds 20 mph, a posted telephone number for dust complaints and the use of electric rather than fossil fuel equipment. Of course, there is no cost benefit analysis for these sometimes extreme measures. But the document writers are fulfilling the law and providing the cost benefit decision makers, generally the County Board of Supervisors, a laundry list of options. Herein lies the true danger of this document. Almost every one of the proposed or suggested mitigation measures is the basis for a lawsuit. The case is clear: It was recommended to you, and you didn’t require it.
Air pollution, defined as particulate matter, reactive organic gases and mono-nitrogen oxides, is also a significant impact if anything changes (2-14, 15). Ten mitigation measures are proposed under the title of “Implement Reduction Measures for Discretionary Projects”. It seems that your future place of employment or your child’s future home are discretionary in their point of view. Some of these measures are beyond the scope of what the County does. While there already is a thriving solar installation business in Amador County and the County has set a good example with the new county building, a new county only solar program is beyond County resources. The document suggests new solar over “unused… ground space” which at least at this point in the document amazingly has no environmental impact. Another measure is having businesses implement telecommuting and flexible work hours, both of which are beyond the purview of what the County does and probably beyond what the county should do as they clearly interfere with one’s prerogative to run their business or agency efficiently. This idea ignores the fact that most local enterprise is service-oriented, and that we do not have huge traffic jams with hundreds of idling vehicles. These concepts appear to be an outside cookie cutter consultant approach and little else.
Some of their measures are simply over the top in terms of cost benefit, with a significant downside of hassle and hostility such as: “Enforce and follow limits idling time for commercial vehicles, including delivery and construction vehicles.” Are we to have a sheriff’s deputy stand there with a timer? Are they to arrive at the enforcement location by bicycle to prevent further potential pollution?
Other mitigation measures include bike lanes on our roads and “Promote ‘least polluting’ ways to connect people and goods to their destinations.” While that statement may sound innocuous they are asking us to change our entire way of life, something I consider a very significant impact. If this Count Dracula document were to be literally implemented, our new lifestyle would be zombie-like.
These are a few highlights. More to come…
Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett
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