The Paso Basin Land Use Management Area Planting Ordinance—understandably often shorthanded as PBLUMA—is now slouching toward the SLO County Board of Supervisors after receiving a beat-down from the county Planning Commission of a kind seldom seen in these parts.
Here's a taste from their recommendation of rejection:
"The benefits of the proposed planting ordinance do not outweigh the significant unavoidable impacts identified in the environmental impact report. ... Increased groundwater extractions facilitated by the proposed planting ordinance risk the State Water Resources Control Board taking over the groundwater sustainability plan process if sustainability is not achieved."
At this point, even the legendary arrogance of this board may not be enough to scale Mount PBLUMA, a pinnacle of environmental ignorance that tries to solve a problem by ignoring a bigger one and would trigger a landslide of unintended but obvious consequences.
Faithful followers of this column may recall this "disaster in waiting" from its cameo appearance in my September installment on the deficient Paso Basin Groundwater Sustainability Plan (Time's up, Sept. 15), which noted that the planting ordinance, as created by Supervisors Debbie Arnold, Lynn Compton, and John Peschong, "will greatly expand pumping rights for ag zoned land in the basin via a permit to pump up to 25 acre-feet of water per year for new plantings."
Or as the environmental impact report prepared for the draft ordinance put it: "The proposed planting ordinance would decrease groundwater supplies such that sustainable groundwater management of the Paso Robles sub basin would be impeded."
Oops. Well then, "mitigation measures" are necessary, a thankless task for the environmental consultants. But not the kind of measures that might, you know, fix the problem while also possibly impacting the profits of economic interests or otherwise impeding the smooth flow of commerce. Just the kind of mitigations that make it look like something is being mitigated ("for the life of the project, maintain the unpaved roads, driveways, and/or parking area with a dust suppressant") but don't touch the reality of the increased drawdown of an overdrafted basin. Because tomorrow never comes.
As it turned out, the economic interests the board majority was catering to hated those mitigations. And environmentalists and resource agencies hated everything else. And we all let the Planning Commission know it. Perhaps the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it best, echoing the environmental impact report: "We are perplexed that the county would consider adopting an ordinance that could severely impact steelhead and its critical habitat and impede sustainable groundwater management."
Whether they ignore their planning commissioners and put their ordinance on the books so a future board can kill it, or they bow to reality, letting it die quickly and simply extending the current 1:1 water use offset program until the groundwater sustainability plan is in place, this board's legacy is secure. This is the board that slavishly serves the interests of the off-road vehicle lobby at the Oceano Dunes, gave a platform to delusional charges of voter fraud in the 2020 election, withheld the benefits of community choice energy from county residents, eliminated the position of climate action program manager (because problem solved), tried to violate the state law governing the creation of subdivisions (before the Sierra Club put a stop to that), lobbied Sacramento with a shopping list of voter suppression measures, drove the nail in the coffin of affordable housing by repealing the county's inclusionary housing ordinance, and gerrymandered the supervisorial districts in an attempt to secure permanent minority rule.
They are not shy.
The Sierra Club has long been proud to be a thorn in their sides. At the meeting where the board majority finalized its gerrymandering plan, Supervisor Compton name-checked us from the dais for our annoying habit of persuading people to stand up and be counted in large numbers opposing things Supervisor Compton wants to do, or in favor of things she doesn't. Before he ascended to the board, when Peschong was using his Tribune column to paint an imaginary scary picture of the future Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary and its ban on offshore drilling, we pointed to his oil-soaked curriculum vitae. ("Even I am not immune to mockery," he wrote in response.)
Now the ruling troika of Peschong, Compton, and Arnold—attempting to ignore the reality of a vanishing groundwater basin and go in the opposite direction of the state of California and the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act—is caught in a bear trap.
Several aphorisms come to mind:
• Droughts don't play politics.
• Nature bats last.
• The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.
This board has been a cautionary tale. This is what happens when elected officials care a lot about politics and power but have no use for sensible land use planning. Gerrymandering, yes; a sustainable water supply, not so much.
The public hearing on the Paso Basin Land Use Management Area Planting Ordinance will be heard before the County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Dec. 6.
Let your voice be heard. Δ
Andrew Christie is the director of the Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club. Reach him through the editor at [email protected].
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