The Werewolf Avoids this General Plan DEIR Critique

Despite the monstrous nature of the General Plan’s DEIR, the Werewolf has deferred judgment since it depends upon the wolfs bane blooming. While traditionally used to kill wolves or whales this toxic plant’s American variety, the trailing wolfs bane, is an endangered and/or threatened species in Tennessee and surrounding areas. So when the moon is full the Werewolf needs his stuff and his wolfs bane is protected. Fortunately the DEIR protects us against hazardous materials (2-36) by proposing “identifying businesses using, storing, and/or transporting hazardous materials.” Sounds real good, but it all depends upon who and what defines hazardous materials. How many of our old paint cans and fluorescent light bulbs are hazardous materials?  

The frightening prospect of forest fires is contained on page 2-37. Mitigation measures include “using fire-resistant materials, installing sprinkler systems, and providing on-site water supplies for firefighting” and “impact fees”. No mention is made of the possible carcinogenic nature of many fire-resistant materials. I find sprinkler systems to be ugly and to have them in my home, my most private and personal space, would be a grim reminder of state power’s ability of invasion like a computer chip in my palm would be.  No concern is voiced that each new requirement costs money and prices more and more people out of home ownership. Since growth is nonexistent today, except for perhaps for some lawsuits, it can only intend to slowly force us into town center apartments under someone else’s control.  Any trade off decision, or individual freedom to chose where one lives or assess their risk, is gone. Once again, their static natural world/ forest concept sees people as only a hostile intrusion. Their underlying assumption is laid bare because they completely ignore thinning the forests in the high country. We all know that a summer lightening strike fire spreading into the Upcountry is a real possibility.

Water quality concerns pages 2-38 to 2- 42.  Their proposals include “…climate appropriate landscaping…” and “reduced pavement cover, permeable pavement, and drainage features which increase infiltration and groundwater recharge.” These ideas seem to flow from the assumption that our rainwater belongs to the San Joaquin Valley aquifer and that it isn’t ours. Forget the graciousness of guest parking on your property. Given our clay soils permeable pavements will just trap moisture near structures rather than allowing it to run off into more porous soils. “…to reduce adverse hydrology and water quality impacts by limiting the quantity and increasing the water quality of runoff flowing to the County’s streams and rivers” they propose that “This program will incorporate stormwater management programs for agricultural land.” They seem to assume that farmers and ranchers callously let their top soil disappear. I would consider this an insult. 

So much of this DEIR depends upon the global warming hoax that carrying their logic forward I wonder what the Environmental Impact Report for having a child will entail? Will the stress of the process cause a miscarriage? How much CO2 does a pile of pampers emit? Can we mitigate this by killing our parents the way people did before the Ten Commandments said Honor thy Father and thy Mother?

The water quality discussion continues with proposing “low impact development techniques.” Housing is only abundant when we build what we can afford, not what an ideological expert decrees with a hidden agenda. If we lose the property owning middle class we have an impact on democracy, self governance and social stability far greater than any concocted concept of the environment. In the people off the land and into crowded settlements of this document’s intent we will all be frustrated enough to howl at the full moon like the Werewolf.

Copyright 2015, Mark L. Bennett  

The Invisible Man meets the General Plan

Just like the Invisible Man could not be seen, we the people of Amador County are not seen or heard in the DEIR for the General Plan except as an intrusion.  While fulfilling the mandates of current law, the land use which determines our way of life, our prosperity, our freedom and our values is gone. Being seen or heard is mitigated away. We are secondary to an abstract concept of the natural world.

Page 2-22 & 23 contain such stringent requirements for maintaining and replacing oak woodlands one wonders how they ever grew on their own before human intervention. Seeming to come from science’s need to freeze the moment for observation, this contradictory static view of a dynamic system prevails. This premise dooms it to failure along with the more obvious affects on the quality of human life. Reality is now invisible.

The “waters of the United States” fill pages 2-23 &24 with that edict from the Environmental Protection Agency never approved by Congress. “The government overreach from this rule would extend beyond farms to affect businesses, homes, schools, churches-any place built on land where water runs through after a heavy rain,” said Jimmy Parnell, president of the Alabama Farmers Federation. The mitigation required by the United States Army Corps of Engineers is both complex and costly. It is so extensive that if one were to complete all the paperwork the eye strain alone may require an additional ophthalmologists’ exam afterward. So if you want to build a home or business that may get wet I suggest you become invisible.

Cultural Resources follow on pages 2-25 to 27. While no one wants to trash these resources, people have lived in Amador County for millenniums so almost anything could be considered a cultural resource. The map on page 12 of the Draft General Plan’s Conservation Element shows Cultural Resources Sensitivity to encompass about a third of the county if you exclude the forested high country. I wonder how much a no growth attitude affected the judgment calls made for this map and the related extensive state and federal laws. Their text cites historic buildings, structures, objects, landscapes or sites. If destroyed the cultural resources can be documented, but the documentation versus feasibility of preservation decision required could induce a frenzy for future litigants.  

The Mineral Resources zoning is documented on page 2-19. The DEIR says little except to cite state law. The proposed General Plan says, “Ensure extraction and processing of mineral resources and aggregate deposits may continue. Encourage extraction and processing of mineral and aggregate resources” (page E-29, Economic Development Element). The Mineral Resources Zone map of this same plan, page 15 of the Conservation Element, shows vast resources and clearly delineates the mother lode. Yet the Housing Element, already passed by the Board of Supervisors as a required separate item, shows home sites atop possible gold mines between Sutter Creek and Amador City on page 51. Our usually scrupulously detailed DEIR appears to neglected mineral resources when it fits into their designs to compact our population.

Part of the reason for this is the overriding fear of global warming caused by greenhouse gases. This absolute fraud, enshrined in state law, consumes pages 2-30 to 33.  Many of the migration measures only make sense, if at all, in large cities. Call it their expensive cookie cutter approach or something more deliberate, but the DEIR has us as invisible by exhibiting no appreciation for or respect of our rural way of life. Any masochist is free to read their list of restrictions. Rather than global warming I fear we have entered an intellectual ice age.

Copyright 2015, Mark L Bennett

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.

Dracula Meets the General Plan

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

“Papa’s got a brand new bag”

This commentary isn’t about James Brown, the godfather of soul, but about having to pay for bags at grocery stores after the first of the year. When someone leaves the supermarket with a plastic bag that bag often contains four or five other plastic bags with produce, etc. Apparently those ‘inner’ bags somehow don’t count in this environmental equation. What can explain this leave of common sense? One can certainly conjecture politically progressive brownie points as an objective. Referring back to the pop culture word usage of James Brown: What bag are you really into?

In addition to the obvious nonsensical nature of this new law for those sincerely concerned about plastic bag pollution, it will cost consumers more money. And coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, this new expense is regressive, like so many environmental regulations, and unequally punishes those least able to pay. I remember when everyone carried their own cloth bags to the store having spent my early childhood in an inner city neighborhood about 60+ years ago. We were not affluent enough to give out free bags.

Given the depression, the war and some personal tragedies, my grandmother didn’t smile a lot. But one day she was beaming when I walked into her kitchen. She was washing out, to save, a plastic bag that some produce had came in. “Look what they gave me at the market for free!” she exclaimed in amazement at the prosperity we had achieved.

We have now lost that prosperity, and use other idioms to express what we are afraid to say.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

Frankenstein Meets the General Plan

After printing out (one sided) the Draft EIR for the General Plan, I had a stack almost six inches tall on my desk. Others refer to this as “The 2,000 Pages”. All this is in addition to the General Plan itself, and to the Housing Element of the General Plan, which also must go through a separate EIR process. My first question should appear obvious: Is this expense of money and human effort justified?  Historically, the EIR processes followed the General Plan/Zoning process, so it got tacked on as a separate undertaking given the governmental bureaucratic point of view. But both the modern planning and conservation movements started about a hundred years ago in response to industrialization and rapid urbanization. Aren’t both the General Plan and the EIR about essentially the same thing: preventing mistakes? Do we really need two or more studies for the same end?

Ironically, this document - a program EIR - exists to “Allow reduction in paperwork” (1-2) and “Avoid duplicative reconsideration of basic considerations” (1-2).  To accomplish this end, the document, despite being called “general”, is very specific. As an example, any development along the Hwy 88 Scenic Corridor would have significant environmental impacts (2-7). So a restaurant, general store, service station or a motel at the entrance to hiking trails would threaten the Sierra scenery. Most people would find that these establishments enhance their enjoyment of the Sierra because of their convenience. An earlier study done before the environmentalists prevented the Ironwood skiing area from reopening found that tourists don’t like Hwy 88 because it lacks these conveniences. Unlike the ordinary people enjoying the Sierra, but like the Frankenstein monster, this plan has no human soul. The environment is an abstraction where in all human activity is a threat. But humans have been shaping the environment and acting in symbiosis with it for probably a million years. Their detached attitude gives me chills. This is why Alternative Three-Restricted Growth is the Environmentally Preferred Alternative (2-5, 6).

However, all this specificity and the EIR for a General Plan process do intend to make future development less controversial since they are conceptually pre-approved (1-2).  Ideally, this should inhibit the relatively pandemic litigation now plaguing our small county. But the document states: “…unless new information arises that changes the impact analysis” (1-3), “later documents need only focus on new impacts that have not been considered before” (1-4) and “agencies may utilize this…” in “…approval of subsequent implementation activities” including such unsympathetic bodies as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Conservation (1-5, 6). The document also states: “…commentators should also focus on the document’s sufficiency in analyzing possible environmental impacts” (1-10). So anyone of the well funded environmental elite should have no problem suing and adding unnecessarily to our county’s expenses and growing anti-business reputation.

The seemingly benign goal of this entire effort “…is to accommodate population growth, housing and employment in an orderly manner” (2-1, 2).  But growth is never orderly. Look at history or into our own lives. We all have experienced periods of expansion (or defeat) followed by periods of consolidation. Orderly growth bears no relationship to reality; it is strictly an intellectual construct. Again, like the Frankenstein monster, or Agenda 21, it has no soul. The document also realizes the improbability of the plan with: “Specific economic, legal, social, technological, or other considerations, including provisions of employment opportunities for highly trained workers, make infeasible the mitigation measures or project alternatives identified in the Final EIR” (1-3). The EIR for our General Plan is not about guiding growth, but rather from preventing anything from happening. Since anything one would do has an impact, its best to do nothing. Our General Plan EIR is not a plan for development but rather a prescription for paralysis.

Note: The citations given are from the document. As I read through this monster, I will post my thoughts since it seems improbable that they can summarized into a few paragraphs.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett