Bill Hocker | Oct 4, 2017

At the Oct 4th 2017 Planning Commission meeting, Comm. Cottrell asked Dir. Morrison once again about the evaluation of the cumulative impacts of all of these projects that they are approving and why those cumulative impacts are never considered as part of the discussion in individual projects, a question her previous colleague, Heather Phillips, was also quite concerned about.

As long as the cumulative quantities (of wineries, acerage, housing or jobs) aren't pushed beyond the predictions of the 2008 General Plan EIR there is no need he responded. Individual projects are evaluated only for localized impacts.

Interpreting the complexity of the EIR is not an easy process, involving as it did evaluating some 7 alternatives, bits and pieces of each making it into the final General Plan. This "Preferred Alternative" document seems to come as close as anything to summarizing the chosen bits. Under "Vineyard Development and Agricultural Processing" (p. 2.0-9) 225 new wineries are anticipated between 2005 and 2030, 9 per year very close to the reality thus far. The number was probably arrived at as an extension of the previous pattern. While the average capacity of each winery was assumed to be 50,000, the amount of visitation per winery, i.e. impact in the growth of the tourism industry, was never specified. Marketing, i.e. tourism, is hardly mentioned in the EIR beyond references to the WDO. In a meeting some time ago Dir Morrison indicated that while the number of wineries approved was in line with predictions, the amount of visitation requested in the last so many years had well exceeded historical requests.

Dir Morrison implied in his response to Comm. Cottrell that localized and cumulative impacts were exclusive. In the wording of the Preferred Alternative document the distinction is a bit more ambiguous: "As with vineyards, localized impacts -- both project-specific and cumulative -- would still require careful review when specific projects are proposed." How far into the future or how far from the project are localized cumulative impacts to be looked at before they are no longer localized?

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