Dan McFadden | May 26, 2014

[letter sent to BOS and Planning Commission Prior to May 20th meeting]

TO: Napa County Planning Commission

FROM:

Daniel McFadden, 2362 Soda Canyon Road
Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley and USC
Transportation Research Board, National Academy of Sciences

SUBJECT: Impact of winery developments in outlying areas of Napa County

DATE: May 20, 2014

Under its current ordinance allowing wineries to be developed on 10+ acre properties throughout Napa County, the Supervisors and the Planning Commission have put in place guidelines for development that fail to take into account the extraordinary costs that the county is going to incur as a consequence of siting large wineries in remote parts of the county.

First, these wineries are going to generate winery and vineyard truck and employee traffic during construction and operation that will strain capacity and accelerate depreciation of rural roads that were not designed to handle heavy loads. In some cases such as Soda Canyon, steep grades and tight turns make heavy truck traffic quite dangerous.

Second, when these wineries are licensed to operate tasting rooms, bringing in wine tourist traffic and/or tour buses, their operations on rural roads that fail to meet contemporary standards for safety, particularly in combination with industrial truck and employee traffic, is extremely risky. In considering these winery projects, the county would be grossly negligent if it fails to consider the cost to taxpayers to upgrading the public roads servicing these wineries to recommended standards for industrial developments. Further, there is a substantial probability of serious accidents on current sub?standard roads, opening Napa County to adverse publicity and substantial liability for negligence in approving unsafe developments.

I urge the Supervisors and Planning Commission to take full account of the cost to the county and its taxpayers of upgrading rural roads to meet capacity and safety standards for industrial wineries in remote areas, and of the liability risk of approving developments that put wine tourists in harm's way. I believe that failing to take these costs into consideration and scheduling the infrastructure investments required, or scaling down and limiting the scope of winery operations in remote areas to be consistent with existing road infrastructure, would be a grossly negligent dereliction of duty as public officials and public employees.

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