LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Planning Commission on Thursday gave the go ahead for the preparation of a final environmental impact report for an expanded vineyard and new winery project near Hidden Valley Lake.
With District 3 Commissioner Gladys Rosehill absent for the meeting, after a discussion that lasted more than two hours the other four commissioners reached consensus to move forward with the final environmental document for Wild Diamond Vineyards.
Wild Diamond Vineyards LLC, owned by Florida attorney Robert Bowling, has applied for major use and grading permits, and a lot line adjustment to build the project at 15087, 15591, 15663 and 158078 Spruce Grove Road, just north of Hidden Valley Lake.
There currently are about 41 acres of vineyard to the property, according to county documents.
At full buildout, the vineyard would be 148 acres, with a 17,850-square foot winery that would produce up to 52,800 cases of wine per year, an 11,340-square-foot tasting room with commercial kitchen and retail sales, and self-guided interpretive center.
The Thursday meeting featured the second public hearing the commission has held this month on the project. On Aug. 11, it also took public comment on the draft environmental impact report, or EIR, which Wild Diamond Vineyards attorney Tina Wallis said was first submitted to the county in February.
The draft environmental impact report can be found online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Community_Development/Wild_Diamond_Vineyards_Project_Draft_EIR.htm .
Wallis said former Planning Director Rick Coel had been willing to accept a mitigated negative declaration for the project, but Bowling had volunteered to pay for the environmental impact report at his own expense, which so far is upwards of $250,000.
Bob Brown of SHN Consulting Engineers and Biologists of Redding, the firm Bowling hired to complete the document, sat alongside Wallis and went through the document and key areas including chemicals, noise, water, aesthetics and traffic.
They also had several experts on hand to give their opinions on specific aspects of the project.
During that testimony, it was stated that the project's ongoing water usage is estimated to be 1 percent of the groundwater within the storage area, and will come from a different groundwater basin that the Coyote Groundwater Basin that supplies Hidden Valley Lake.
Steve Greenberg, Ph.D., who lives in Hidden Valley Lake, questioned the adequacy of the work done to study noise impacts, pointing out that people already are complaining of machinery noise, even without the more than two dozen special events the project seeks to host annually.
Pointing out the project's close proximity to Hidden Valley Lake, where an estimated 6,000 people – or about 10 percent of the county's total population – live, Greenberg said they needed to protect the community.
Kirk Cloyd, the new general manager for Hidden Valley Lake Community Services District, said he thought the document's study on hydrology was well done.
However, he suggested that there be a baseline monitoring report for impacted creeks, streams and tributaries. He also wanted to know about any off-site wells under Wild Diamond Vineyards' purview.
Otherwise, Cloyd emphasized that the community services district was neutral on the project.
Like Cloyd, geologist David Adam, another Hidden Valley resident, wanted to know more about spring discharges and data. Later in the meeting, he would bring up the safety issues on Spruce Grove Road.
Victoria Brandon of the Sierra Club said several of the group's existing concerns – such as buffers and tributary setbacks – were addressed. She said rare plants such as the Konocti manzanita would need a maintenance and monitoring plan.
“The remaining thing is the noise,” she said.
While she said the analysis sounds thorough, she said she's been in that room before with angry neighbors due to amplified events and music.
While she said the Sierra Club didn't think that a lot of the extreme concerns about the project's impacts are warranted, she suggested the developer set up a complaint process so people's concerns can be addressed.
Elizabeth Montgomery, who lives about half a mile from project, said she was there to represent the community outrage at the project.
She read from a statement from Southern California attorney Amy Minteer, an expert in the California Environmental Quality Act, regarding Wild Diamond Vineyards' draft EIR, which Minteer said attempted to hide behind a failure to disclose and analyze impacts to support its claim that it would have no impacts.
Montgomery said there have been multiple complaints about existing impacts that haven't been addressed in the draft EIR or at the Thursday meeting.
To say there will be no environmental impact when there already have been impacts is a discrepancy that Montgomery said should be addressed. An impact that she said she had personally endured was smoke from burning vegetation cleared from the property, which she said had caused her to sleep under a blanket with air filters going.
She also said she planned to submit a petition with more than 200 signatures asking for a hydrology study suggested by Adam.
Thomas Nickel, a director for the Scotts Valley Water Conservation District, said large vineyard developments like Wild Diamond Vineyards will harm watersheds.
Nickel said vineyards will harm the county’s habitat. “Where do we stop?” he asked, citing the number of vineyards already in the county. “Enough is enough.”
Hank Lecher, who has a ranch next door to Wild Diamond Vineyards, said a lot of the comments at the meeting were about activities already permitted on the property, adding he has never experienced any smoke coming off that vineyard.
When he first heard of the project, he said he called Bowling, who he said is a very nice guy who has been accommodating of neighbors' concerns.
“I think that you can count on him to responsibly and appropriately mitigate any concerns that you might have and any recommendations that you might come up with,” Lecher said.
Addressing biological assessment issues
One of the matters that had been brought to the commission's attention at the Aug. 11 meeting – and which was cited by several people testifying on Thursday – was the use of a preliminary biological assessment done by Steve Zalusky, principal biologist for the locally based Northwest Biosurvey, who was hired as a subcontractor to SHN.
Zalusky told Lake County News in an interview this week that in speaking at the Aug. 11 meeting he did something he had never done before – raise concerns about how his work was used.
However, he also has emphasized that he has nothing to say about the project's merits – positive or negative. “We must be an objective third party.”
On Aug. 11, he had told the commission, “Having a client rewrite our reports to suit their own needs completely defeats the purpose of our third party review.”
He said the text, tables and maps his firm completed were lifted, attribution stripped and placed under a separate cover that claimed SHN authored it. In his 19 years as a consultant, Zalusky said he had never seen anything like it.
This week, he explained, “Our biggest concern was that we made it very clear in our contract that if they wanted a report in May or earlier, it could not be anything other than a preliminary biological assessment.”
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has protocol for botanical surveys that require that a floristic level botanical survey must be done throughout the season and into July, Zalusky said, adding he had made it clear in his work that such a survey should be done.
He said the reference to his work being a preliminary survey was removed from the final report submitted by SHN, which also turned it into a natural resource assessment.
Zalusky said he had no idea if there are rare plants in the project area, as a full survey wasn't completed within the necessary time frame this year.
He said his firm followed up in July to do an additional survey and was told it was done. “Maybe they did have one done, I just don't know,” he said. “Nothing in the public record of hearing that says that a second survey was done.”
Assistant Resource Planner Peggy Barthel told Lake County News that county staff had requested Zalusky's full report from SHN in order to review it, but that it hadn't been provided. However, Wallis said Thursday that a full biological study had been completed.
Throughout Thursday's meeting, Montgomery and other people testifying in opposition to the project had raised Zalusky's previous comments as cause for concern.
During the commission's discussion, commissioners said their major concerns had included issues such as water and the study area raised by Zalusky.
However, by Thursday, Zalusky – who gave brief additional testimony – said the bulk of his concerns had been addressed, explaining that the primary issue had remained that a full season biological assessment be done. “That's the one issue that we feel needs to be resolved.”
Wallis explained that the study had been prepared and would be included in the final EIR. She said the project also has input from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on that study, and the agency is satisfied with it.
With those matters resolved, the commissioners said they were comfortable directing the preparation of the final document begin.
The commission intends to have more hearings on the project at its upcoming meetings on Sept. 8 and Sept. 22. Planning staff said the final EIR could be turned around in just a matter of weeks, based on the applicant's previous estimates.
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