Gary Margadant | Aug 1, 2015 on: APAC

Ag Preservation Advisory Committee (APAC) update

Months of discussion with the 17 members of the County’s Ag Protection Advisory Committee (APAC) led to a unanimous decision at their July 27th meeting to support a staff recommendation for all wineries in the county to submit an annual report verifying compliance with the Winery Definition Ordinance’s 75% grape sourcing rule and certifying the amount of wine produced and compliance with all conditions of approval, including marketing, as stated in the winery’s use permit. Finding consensus on this issue represents major progress as APAC struggles through a lengthy list of concerns related to growth pressures and policy changes to balance tourism impacts, quality of life and ag preservation issues. APAC members also unanimously voted to support stricter limits on the use of variances in approving new or amended winery use permits.

APAC will meet two more times and will finalize their recommendations to the Planning Commission by Sept. 2nd. The remaining meetings will focus on “Framework X”, a matrix of multiple policy recommendations for wineries in the county’s Ag Preserve and Ag Watershed zoning districts. The matrix covers a wide range of winery permit issues including, production capacity limits, estate grape requirements, winery development area coverage limits, visitation and marketing levels, hours of operations, hold and haul winery waste restrictions and more. All of the staff reports, information and minutes of the APAC meetings can be accessed at: http://napa.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=27