By Frank Landis, Conservation Committee Chair
News (and retreads)
Otay Ranch Village 13 has been put off until maybe October. In August (after I wrote the last article) they launched a few thousand words at the environmental community in the service of convincing us that following established protocols to someday buy carbon offsets through established registries instead of on the open market would somehow make it all legitimate. I just turned in my comments on this, with help from others in CNPS (thanks again!). The comments were rather pointed.
There are two fundamental problems with the idea of carbon offsets, aside from serious questions about whether they work, whether the registries double or triple book the carbon being sequestered, and whether paying to grow trees in northern California and keep them alive for a century is a viable concern, given all the terrible wildfires they’re dealing with. Beyond these utterly practical problems, I’d point to two conceptual issues. The first is the notion that there’s an endless market of carbon offsets available to the discerning developer, and that they can therefore pay someone else to deal with their little emissions problem. Hopefully you know the punchline to this: if the world had an endless supply of places to take greenhouse gases out of the air, we would not have a climate crisis in the first place. Unfortunately the opportunities are increasingly limited (some are literally up in smoke as we speak). Therefore, each of us has to do our share, wherever we are, and limit our use of what sequestration opportunities remain.
The other problem is that most of our decision-makers appear perfectly willing to add more carbon emissions to the county, persuaded by promises of future sequestration that really don’t stand up to much scrutiny. This increased burden is being shared by all of us, in the form of weird weather, smoky air, increasingly unstable water and food supplies, and increased fire threats. One would hope that new developments, at least, wouldn’t add to the problem, but they still do.
Speaking of which: Fanita Ranch is now scheduled to go tothe Santee City Council on September 23, and I’m writingbefore that date, as usual. This is another attempt to put a bunch of single family homes in a high fire area that’s a wildlife corridor with a number of rare plants...
...Wouldn’t you love it if I had something different to say about a sprawl development? So would I, but to continue...
The interesting kicker here, aside from the accusations of vote buying that have floated around the media, is that the developer pulled the project and did an emergency redesign for political reasons. It seems that one of the two access roads runs on or next to property owned by a Santee City Councilmember, who would have to recuse themselves due to benefiting financially from the project. Shades of Bill Horn and Lilac Hills Ranch. Anyway, their solution isn’t to wait until that council member is out of the way (as with Horn and Lilac Hills), but rather to eliminate that road from their plan and to put money into widening SR-52. All this without changing the EIR.
This causes its own problems. My understanding of the California Fire Code (2016) is that except under certain special conditions, developments of more than 30 homes have to have two access roads that are at least half the width of the development apart. And by width, they mean the longest dimension of the development. Fanita Ranch more-or-less failed this requirement before it nixed its second road, and so far as I can tell, it utterly fails it now. And the Harmony Grove Village South development got thrown out by a judge for having a similar single-roadevacuation route earlier this year. So I’m not clear whetherthe Santee City Council will have a timely attack of conscience and order the developer to modify the design and the EIR, whether they will bull it through on the council meeting and trigger litigation, or whether they will simply delay and hope for a miraculous solution to happen. We will see.
And about the November election
Sadly, there is no statewide initiative banning leapfrog sprawl and forcing the wealthy to pay their disproportionate share for the mitigation of climate change. Still, we need to act. Leapfrog sprawl isn’t just unsustainable, it’s a too-flammable traffic jam link in overpriced homes to far away jobs, in areas that may run out of water and which barely have enough solar power to keep the lights on. We need to come up with alternatives, and part of that is making it politically infeasible for these disasters-in-waiting to be built.
Fortunately for us, this is a really critical election where we can make a difference at multiple levels. For example, if the Third Supervisorial District changes parties, the balance on the Board of Supervisors changes toward democratic, and we (hopefully!) will get planners who do a proper job with problematic projects. Even if you’re not in the Third Supervisorial District, I think you probably realize that this is the most important election in decades, possibly in your lifetime. The choices we make in November will be long-lasting and irreversible.
CNPS does not advocate for a particular party, but we do advocate for native plants, for the ecosystems they need, for a climate that supports them, and for human safety. I hope these are values you will work and fight for.
We also can speak up in favor of ballot measures. The suggestions below are my own, not those of the chapter or organization.
Statewide and Countywide measures: I do not see any that directly affect CNPS interests.
City of Oceanside: Measure L, NO. The North River Farms project rezone. The environmental community is firmly lined up against this. I recommend a NO vote if you are an Oceanside resident.
City of Poway: Measure P. This is about The Farm in Poway development, which is proposed to be built on the closedStoneridge Country Club. On the one hand, I’m not one torecommend development. On the other, infill development is what we need if we’re going to house people sustainably. On the third hand, the local residents are up in arms because the green space of the fairways contributed to their home values, while more houses do not. This is an essential controversy of our time: to become more sustainable, we do need to switch from growing out to growing up, and that means closed country clubs may well have next lives as housing developments, just as other shuttered facilities will be densified and grow taller.
City of Santee: Measure N YES. “Shall an ordinanceamending the Santee General Plan requiring voter approval for development actions that would increase residential density or intensify land use over that currently permitted by the General Plan be adopted?” Oh yeah, we need this one! Fanita Ranch has been boomeranging between the City Council and the Courts for decades now, and this will help stop the infinite permutations of that project. While I’m leery of voicing a CNPS endorsement about the two Santee term limits measures (Q and R), there’s a good argument to be made that having a normal turnover of elected officials might make for different styles of decision making. While not all long-term incumbents are bad, they are a common problem in getting needed changes through a well-gamed system.
And then there are the other asks for everyone reading this between now and November:
Get politically active
Vote
If things get weird after the vote, insist on the rule of law by every means you can
Political activity isn’t just registering to vote, it’s knowing the issues, donating money, phone banking, writing get-out-the- vote letters, all that stuff we shy plant lovers hate to do. But right now it has to be done. We need every municipality in California to be working to make this state carbon neutral and keep it livable for us and our descendants. You can help disempower the groups that are pushing against this if you get active this fall and follow through.
Thanks.