Sierra Club
Redwood Chapter Newsletter
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Sonoma Group Report Suzanne Doyle | |
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General Plan Update - Option 3 Sonoma County's General Plan Update process is coming to an end later this year. "Option 3", prohibiting timberland to vineyard conversion in 194,000 acres of forest, may go to the Planning Commission as early as July, and then on to the Board of Supervisors who will make the final decision. The Sonoma Group has been campaigning hard in support of Option 3. Please see Option 3 Protects Sonoma County Forests for more details. Rohnert Park Casino The Graton Rancheria is moving ahead with the federal environmental studies that it must make in order to have the casino site near Rohnert Park taken into trust as tribal land. It does not yet have a Gaming Compact. Meanwhile, the Sonoma Group is sending a resolution to higher levels of the Sierra Club. This resolution asks that Club resources be used to lobby the governor's office to include environmental protections in new Gaming Compacts as they are written or re-negotiated. Apparently, more environmental safeguards are being included in the most recent Compacts approved by the state. But there are questions about the level of enforcement of public safety and environmental regulations even when such regulations are written into the Compacts. "Mitigation", to the governor's office, may be just a matter of enough dollars. |
California Tiger Salamander (CTS) The cities of Santa Rosa and Rohnert Park are suing U.S. Fish & Wildlife to take the tiger salamander off the endangered species list. Using the lawsuit as pressure, the city of Santa Rosa also has assembled a Strategy Team to discuss which parts of the county will be designated as CTS habitat. The Strategy Team has representatives from state and federal agencies, cities, the county, landowners, business interests, the Laguna Foundation and the environmental community. A Sonoma Group Sierra Club member, in consultation with other groups, is representing the environmental community on the strategy team. He has not yet had his questions answered about how the committee will make decisions, whether the environmental community has any veto power and exactly what results the team hopes to achieve by June 15, its end date. It will be interesting to see how well this diverse group can work together to solve the difficult problem of creating a habitat recovery plan in a largely built-up area. See Save the Tiger (Salamander) for more details. |