Bill Hocker | Sep 9, 2016

An invitation to show your support for the preservation a significant piece of Napa County native oak woodlands for future generations.

Sept 10th, 2016, from 10:30am to 2:00pm in front of the Hall Winery at 401 St. Helena Hwy



The DENW website issues page discussing the impacts of the project is here

Walt Ranch Erosion Control Plan Appeal

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The appeal of the approval of the ECP on Walt Ranch has been filed with the county to be heard by the Board of Supervisors. It is an interesting read, and sets out the many issues not addressed in the final EIR.

There will be three public hearings later this fall-- three opportunities for public commentary. The appeal and all supporting documents may be found on the DENW website, at http://denw.info/appeal-filed-by-circle-oaks-homeowners-and-water-boards/

Walt Ranch Winery?

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David Heitzman just sent this Dallas Morning News puff-piece on the Hall's love affair with wine:
Craig and Kathryn Hall pen business love story about winemaking

The journalist has described the Halls previously as a power couple who brought to Napa a Texan sense of excess-in-all-things with the Hall Winery project. In this current article they sound more like Ozzie and Harriet at the kitchen table.

It's the end of the article that piques the interest of the Napa community bearing the brunt of the Hall's love affair:

'Included in the 4,000 is 2,300 acres zoned for agriculture that the Halls bought in 2005. Some locals are up in arms now that the Halls have shown intentions to build a winery on part of it. The controversy has the couple dumbfounded.

"Kathy and I think of ourselves as environmentalists. Our Texas friends think of us as crazy, tree-hugging, liberal Democrats," he says.

"I'm totally OK with that moniker, by the way," she says.

Craig launches into why the protesters are completely off base.

Kathryn rolls her eyes. "This is a part that I cut in the book. Who wants to sit through this long story?" '

The building of a winery wasn't mentioned in the EIR for Walt Ranch. Is this a slip of the journalist's pen (conflating vineyards and wineries) - or are the Halls more open with the locals in far off Dallas, Texas than they are with the locals here? Given the concern about the future development of the property, that Napa County has chosen to ignore, it was an interesting, and alarming, note in the story.

As interesting to me, perhaps, was the Texan conception of a tree-hugger, which seemed to point to the relative difference that Texans and Californians might place on the environment. The Hall's are, of course, planning to hug 24,000 trees to death on the Walt property. (It brings to mind those other Texas plutocrats blindly wishing to inflict the din of private helicoptering into our environment.)

The Hall's seem to have been accepted by the Napa power establishment as "one of us", so its a little peevish for regular concerned citizens to call attention to cultural differences. Most all of us are immigrants here. But when an article like this surfaces that looks at a local situation from a foreign perspective one can't help but comment.

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