The Mummy meets the General Plan

The Mummy was buried alive.  That is the intent for Amador County expressed in the DEIR for the General Plan. We are to become a park for the Bay Area hi tech environmental elite and our job is to change their bed linen. Timber felling and gold mining would just get in their way. Amador County is a home rule county and intentionally not part of a MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) like much of California. Yet we are part of someone else’s regional plan in the proposed General Plan DEIR and it’s for their benefit, not ours.  

Page 2-18 discusses biological resources and special status species. And while humans are not special status species and our needs irrelevant, if the wrong bird flies over your property your project will need to mitigate itself into oblivion. Also endangered are vernal pools, the environmentalist jargon for seasonal puddles.  Mitigation measures for these travesties of normal, and hopefully productive, human life include the approval of several government agencies controlled by environmental extremists along with a new county permit process. We, and our future, are being buried alive.

While livestock and all animal husbandry are considered human impacts upon the environment, it seems ironic that the relatively non productive keeping of animals as pets is never considered. The number and variety of lizards around my Pine Grove home have all but disappeared given the profusion of house cats. Pets appear to be a protected class, mysteriously exempt from the rules that govern others.

The document continues with “Substantial adverse effect on riparian habitat, a sensitive natural community” (2-19, 20) and “Substantial adverse effect on Ione chaparral, a sensitive natural community” (2-20, 21). While many seem to regard this sensitivity as vital, they ignore that it excludes us extraneous humans. These two adverse effects, and the ones that follows for oak woodland (2-21, 22, 23), all include conservation and related easements as mitigation measures. These land entanglement preserves now cover the United States like the aristocratic land tenure of the middle ages. So to use your land you now have to  donate some to interests opposed to yours. Every time a landowner consents to this coercion they increase the power of those who oppose them and the right of private property ownership for everyone. This power relationship reminded me of Karl Marx’s definition of the alienated worker whose hard work only makes his profiting “adversarial” factory owner more powerful.

Their discussion of the Ione chaparral includes the danger of airborne pathogens from new construction and their effect upon the present plants. As in the discussion of riparian habitat, they see nature as static. But plants in an area change. Nature is dynamic. It is called ecology. But given their overkill micro management DEIR they seem to deny creation and instead prefer to be their own gods. While some may take this as unkind, I say with the greatest compassion to the writers of this DEIR and especially to those who wrote the laws this document enforces: There is treatment available  for people afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorder.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

Board of Supervisors Hearing

On 12/2/14 the Board of Supervisors and the Planning Commission held a joint hearing on the DEIR for the General Plan. The remarks I read into the record follow:

I am well aware that this overly detailed process is required by the state and that the mistaken choice of AECOM as the consultant was made before all or almost all of the present supervisors and planning commissioners took office. One look at AECOM’s web page makes it clear that they are the implementation cadre of Agenda 21 and the new world order. Their disregard for us ordinary people is blatantly apparent. Affordable housing outside of compacted cities or centers and employment opportunities determined by supply and demand seem outside their vision.

However, I live in the real world, and am fully aware of the time and money spent on this and the related documents. Therefore I understand that aside from some few feasible modifications we all may have to live with this. But putting that and the state requirements aside, I find the General Plan and the Draft EIR to be abominations. As I’ve reviewed the document I have posted my comments on both Facebook and on my blog, Outside the Ivory Tower. It will all be submitted to the Planning Department by the deadline.

But I wish to take this time to note two factors: First is the assumption that underlies all the reasoning of the DEIR. They believe that humanity is an intrusion upon the natural world and not an intrinsic part of it. The so called natural world is partly the result of human tinkering for possibly a million years. We have been, and are, in symbiosis with the environment. These are not opposing forces. I would also like to add that many in our community would consider this assumption as atheistic.  

The other factor is the copious lists of mitigation measures. While the consultants are just doing their job - and it is clear that the final trade off decisions rest primarily with the Board of Supervisors - I find this to be a potential laundry list for future litigants. They could simply say it was recommended to you, and you didn’t do it. Our present outbreak of  litigation fever may even be causing a paralysis of far greater danger than an overly restrictive General Plan.