Note: I recently acquired the rights to my second Napa book, The Far Side of Eden. I think the struggle over the hillsides at the outset of this century covered in the book is relevant to the current discussion of development that includes new wineries and winery expansions, and I decided to run excerpts here. The series begins with the June postings in the drop-down menu to the right.
Known all over the state, either reverentially or contemptuously as CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act stated that any project affecting the environment, if it involved “discretionary” decisions by local officials on the specifics, had to be first opened to public comment. The other sort of decision, “ministerial,” was for more standard projects and unsuited to those in Napa County because of the variety of the projects themselves and the terrain. Virtually all vineyard development in the hills involved discretionary approval, and to date there had been no public comment on erosion control plans.
Lippe asked Chris for her documentation relating to new vineyards, acquired some erosion control plans from the county planning department, and reviewed it all. He was “dumbfounded,” he later said, to discover that the plans were apparently illegal. “There’s evidence all over them that the county was exercising discretion.”
By that he meant that the planning department had approved projects on their merits without giving the public a chance to weigh in, as required. The irony was that if Napa had not passed a good hillside ordinance requiring certain safeguards and review, all the projects could have been treated as ministerial, rubber-stamped, and exempted. It was the provisions of Napa’s hillside ordinance, more stringent than in the rest of California, passed years before and requiring erosion control plans, that had opened Napa up to such potential litigation. From the time the ordinance was passed, Napa County should have been complying with the California Environmental Quality Act, and it wasn’t.
If the county thought that its already strong hillside ordinance rendered public review unnecessary, Lippe thought, the county was wrong. Even if there was more “environmental protection in Napa because of the hillside ordinance than elsewhere, the requirements of CEQA still applied.
There also existed the possibility of suing individual property owners. If vineyards had been planted in the hills without environmental impact reports, then those same vineyard owners were presumably as liable as the county was. There were plenty of owners to choose from, including vineyards developed in the last few months with nothing more than a declaration from the authorities that they would have no negative impact on the environment. They belonged to all kinds of people, from big boys like Beringer to little start-ups nobody ever heard of to cult producers like Jayson Pahlmeyer.
You could almost throw a dart.
*
A month after meeting with Lippe, Chris and her associates in Concerned Citizens for Napa Hillsides began combing through erosion control plans filed with the county and then comparing those plans with what had taken place on the ground. They needed photographs of work done in the early stages of vineyards to buttress their assertions that the actual work had not conformed to specifics put forward in the erosion control plans. Neighbors came forward with photographs of their own of what was taking place on adjacent properties. Chris saw the relationship between the county and the developers as one big administrative scam. “What was being done by the engineers and the attorneys,” she told people, “and what the county was approving, was not what was happening on the landscape.”
An almost religious fervor pervaded the search. To back up paper evidence, she had the growing stash of photos showing ecological assault and some scientific evidence from ongoing studies financed by the Mennen Environmental Foundation. Damage to invertebrates, fish, and waterway channels downstream from vineyard development was obvious, all fodder for any future legal action. And there were moles in at least two public agencies in the county providing additional raw data. This all went into the spinning hopper that would eventually spit out a verdict on whether or not to sue.
Chris was adamantly for it, as she had always been. The lawyers were cautious, and the Mennens in between. They now had more than seventy potential targets, should they decide to move. They started narrowing the possibilities, to increase their chances of winning if they did go to court; the criteria that emerged from these sessions were simple: no mom-and-pop operations; vineyard plans that could be challenged within time limits set down by the California Environmental Quality Act; and real, demonstrable environmental damage.
The photographs of early stages of development were crucial. Vivid pictorial evidence could, if need be, prove to a judge that damage had been significant before it was obscured under a sea of trellises and young vines. No decision would be made until all the legal research was in and the lawyers could predict near-certain success. Everyone agreed on all these things. Napa Valley had supposedly the best erosion control and land conservation regulations in the United States. The publicity about any such lawsuit in this, the darling of the wine world, destination of billionaires, would be widespread, and the criticism of the suit relentless. The stakes were just too high, both for the environment and for the environmentalists, to screw up.
However, the Mennen Environmental Foundation couldn’t sue. Its bylaws and tax-exempt status prevented this, although the foundation could, and did, finance the research for the potential suit. It would have to find an organization willing to front as plaintiff if the backers and the lawyers ever decided to file, and finding the right organization was crucial. Public perception of environmental lawsuits was generally good; almost as important as the cause itself was the reputation of the organizations behind it. This could be a factor in the final outcome, and in the outcomes of possible subsequent lawsuits: the more important the organization—the older, larger, more respected, more popular, and more committed—the better.
(Next: Enter the Sierra Club)
Lippe asked Chris for her documentation relating to new vineyards, acquired some erosion control plans from the county planning department, and reviewed it all. He was “dumbfounded,” he later said, to discover that the plans were apparently illegal. “There’s evidence all over them that the county was exercising discretion.”
By that he meant that the planning department had approved projects on their merits without giving the public a chance to weigh in, as required. The irony was that if Napa had not passed a good hillside ordinance requiring certain safeguards and review, all the projects could have been treated as ministerial, rubber-stamped, and exempted. It was the provisions of Napa’s hillside ordinance, more stringent than in the rest of California, passed years before and requiring erosion control plans, that had opened Napa up to such potential litigation. From the time the ordinance was passed, Napa County should have been complying with the California Environmental Quality Act, and it wasn’t.
If the county thought that its already strong hillside ordinance rendered public review unnecessary, Lippe thought, the county was wrong. Even if there was more “environmental protection in Napa because of the hillside ordinance than elsewhere, the requirements of CEQA still applied.
There also existed the possibility of suing individual property owners. If vineyards had been planted in the hills without environmental impact reports, then those same vineyard owners were presumably as liable as the county was. There were plenty of owners to choose from, including vineyards developed in the last few months with nothing more than a declaration from the authorities that they would have no negative impact on the environment. They belonged to all kinds of people, from big boys like Beringer to little start-ups nobody ever heard of to cult producers like Jayson Pahlmeyer.
You could almost throw a dart.
*
A month after meeting with Lippe, Chris and her associates in Concerned Citizens for Napa Hillsides began combing through erosion control plans filed with the county and then comparing those plans with what had taken place on the ground. They needed photographs of work done in the early stages of vineyards to buttress their assertions that the actual work had not conformed to specifics put forward in the erosion control plans. Neighbors came forward with photographs of their own of what was taking place on adjacent properties. Chris saw the relationship between the county and the developers as one big administrative scam. “What was being done by the engineers and the attorneys,” she told people, “and what the county was approving, was not what was happening on the landscape.”
An almost religious fervor pervaded the search. To back up paper evidence, she had the growing stash of photos showing ecological assault and some scientific evidence from ongoing studies financed by the Mennen Environmental Foundation. Damage to invertebrates, fish, and waterway channels downstream from vineyard development was obvious, all fodder for any future legal action. And there were moles in at least two public agencies in the county providing additional raw data. This all went into the spinning hopper that would eventually spit out a verdict on whether or not to sue.
Chris was adamantly for it, as she had always been. The lawyers were cautious, and the Mennens in between. They now had more than seventy potential targets, should they decide to move. They started narrowing the possibilities, to increase their chances of winning if they did go to court; the criteria that emerged from these sessions were simple: no mom-and-pop operations; vineyard plans that could be challenged within time limits set down by the California Environmental Quality Act; and real, demonstrable environmental damage.
The photographs of early stages of development were crucial. Vivid pictorial evidence could, if need be, prove to a judge that damage had been significant before it was obscured under a sea of trellises and young vines. No decision would be made until all the legal research was in and the lawyers could predict near-certain success. Everyone agreed on all these things. Napa Valley had supposedly the best erosion control and land conservation regulations in the United States. The publicity about any such lawsuit in this, the darling of the wine world, destination of billionaires, would be widespread, and the criticism of the suit relentless. The stakes were just too high, both for the environment and for the environmentalists, to screw up.
However, the Mennen Environmental Foundation couldn’t sue. Its bylaws and tax-exempt status prevented this, although the foundation could, and did, finance the research for the potential suit. It would have to find an organization willing to front as plaintiff if the backers and the lawyers ever decided to file, and finding the right organization was crucial. Public perception of environmental lawsuits was generally good; almost as important as the cause itself was the reputation of the organizations behind it. This could be a factor in the final outcome, and in the outcomes of possible subsequent lawsuits: the more important the organization—the older, larger, more respected, more popular, and more committed—the better.
(Next: Enter the Sierra Club)
To order Napa:
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