Bill Hocker | Jul 20, 2016

7/20/16
Commissioners

My name is Bill Hocker, 3460 Soda Canyon road. My wife and I are next door to the proposed project. We‘ve been there for 22 years.

We have concerns about the impacts of a large event center in our backyard. Ours has been, until now, a remote residential, agricultural community.

We ‘re concerned about the 6-mile road that links us to the outside world. More traffic will only make an already degraded and dangerous road more so. Much is made of the 88 truck trips to be saved. Little is made of the tens of thousands of trips up and down the road each year to bring equipment and goods and employees and tourists to such a remote place.

As immediate neighbors, we’re concerned about water. A second larger well is being added. A 100,000 g winery and a 100 people/day will consume water not consumed before. Efforts to recycle some of that water won’t mean much when our well runs dry.

We’re concerned about the amount of earth to be moved - enough to cover a football field 20 feet high. We’re concerned about dust covering our properties and the grumbling and beeping of construction equipment for a couple of years. And we’re concerned about the spillage and erosion of all that dirt into adjacent creeks on our property and theirs.

We’re concerned about the waste water treatment plant proposed on our property line: 2-100,000 gal, 25 ft high storage tanks and a large treatment machine. We’re concerned about the noise of the motors and pumps operating every day.

We’re concerned about the noise of cave ventilation fans always humming, and the noise of vans and cars coming and going in the parking lot, and the noise of revelry and clinking tableware long into the night. In this remote place there is often absolute silence. Noises are very noticeable here.

We're concerned about the sweep of headlights from the parking lot, and of the outdoor lights needed for a factory and nighttime events, and of the glow from the large tasting room windows. You can still see the milky way and satellites passing overhead here. We’re concerned about a light polluted future.

And we’re concerned about the planet. Much is made of this LEED certified building. LEED, of course, doesn’t measure the energy spent for a couple of years to build this massive project, or that needed for the tens of thousands of trips up and down the 6-mile road each year, or, that needed to build and demolish the relatively new mansion on the property, and probably not even much of the energy needed to keep all those pumps and motors and fans going all year long.

And we’re concerned about the precedent this project sets: about other entrepreneurs building wineries here to make wine that is already being made elsewhere and to sell wine that is already being sold elsewhere whose real purpose is to add profit from the remoteness of our neighborhood as a tourism experience. It will not take many tourists before the remoteness and rural character are gone.

We, of course, have many more concerns - more than we have time for here.
Given all these concerns, we can’t support this project. We respectfully ask that you refuse this application.

Thank You

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