I lived most of my childhood years in Santa Clara County. In the very early ‘60’s, when I graduated from Palo Alto High School, my family moved to Santa Cruz County, and that has been my county of legal residence ever since. I’m pretty attached to it.

I must say, though, that since I’ve been working in Salinas for about the past six years, I’ve grown pretty attached to the Salinas Valley and the rest of Monterey County, too. It has some pretty spectacular geography, and some pretty nice people. If I seem to be getting nostalgic, it’s because I recently ran across an older column by Dave Nordstrand, a writer for the Salinas Californian. The column is entitled, “A bird’s eye view of Salinas’ transition.”

Nordstrand goes back to Salinas in 1960, and carries us forward with the changes since then. He notes he doesn’t want to call it “progress.” In fact, he says, reviewing the last forty plus years, “there’s no sign of human intelligence at the controls when it comes to issues of traffic and green space and water availability. Where’s the vision beyond the expediency of the moment?”

My father and mother left Palo Alto in 1960, because the Santa Clara Valley was being consumed by just that kind of “expediency of the moment.” By now, it’s all gone. Here, in the Salinas Valley, it isn’t all gone yet, and there is just a bit more time to get beyond the “expediency of the moment.” But there’s not too much time, and no time to waste!

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

The column that touched off this Land Use Report is dated February 9, 2005, and is entitled, “A bird’s eye view of Salinas’ transition.”

You can revisit and enjoy Dave Nordstrand’s past columns from the Salinas Californian by typing “Dave Nordstrand” into the Google search engine at www.google.com, or by using the “Search” box on the Californian’s website at:
http://www.californianonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

You can contact Dave Nordstrand at 831-754-4268 or by writing to him at Box 81091, Salinas, CA 93902  

The Natural Resources Projects Inventory is a collaborative effort between the California Biodiversity Council and the University of California at Davis Information Center for the Environment. The idea has been to gather accurate information on thousands of conservation, mitigation and restoration projects being developed and implemented throughout the state. The result of all the work is a comprehensive electronic database, searchable on the Internet, and affectionately called the NRPI.

Maybe most of the listeners to this Land Use Report aren’t going to rush right home to search the database. If you’d like to, however, all the references can be found as part of the transcript for today’s Land Use Report. Just click on the Land Use Report link at www.kusp.org.

But do think about taking a look at the NRPI database. I’m serious. If we truly want to protect and preserve the spectacular natural environment of California (and the polls say we really do), then we’ve all got to become a bit more familiar with what’s hurting our environment, and what we can do to stop the pain, and get things going in the right direction. We can’t really delegate citizenship. We’re all responsible, not just the scientists. But it is great to know that these scientists are at work, and to read some of their real success stories on the NRPI list.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

The Natural Resources Projects Inventory
http://www.ice.ucdavis.edu/nrpi/

California Biodiversity Council
http://ceres.ca.gov/biodiversity/

University of California at David ICE
http://ice.ucdavis.edu/

Watershed Projects Inventory
http://endeavor.des.ucdavis.edu/wpi/default.htm

California Ecological Restoration Projects Inventory
http://endeavor.des.ucdavis.edu/cerpi/

Calweed Database
http://www.ice.ucdavis.edu/weeds/default.htm

Today, I’d like to alert you to another web-based information resource for those who care about our environment. The California Coastwatcher website and email bulletin is a project of the Sierra Club. If you’d like to see what sort of information that the Coastwatcher is providing, and to get on their email list, you should click on the Land Use Report link at www.kusp.org. And I do recommend signing up for the Coastwatcher bulletin. It’s a great way to find out what is happening at the California Coastal Commission, and to learn about other issues that affect our coastal and marine environment. Decisions made by local governments in the Central Coast Region are having a profound impact on our marine resources. Furthermore, some of the land use issues that have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people are in the Coastal Zone. Population densities tend to be highest near the coast, and that’s where some of our most sensitive resources are found.

Unless you’re willing to “trust the government,” a proposition that both political “conservatives” and political “progressives” have some problems with, you need to know what’s going on. The newspapers (and especially the television news shows, with their tight time constraints) may not even mention issues of truly major import. If you get on the Coastwatcher list, I guarantee you’ll start learning more about what’s happening along the California coast.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

The California Coastwatcher
http://www.coastwatcher.org/

Most of these Land Use Reports focus on things that ordinary citizens can do to become more engaged in land use policy issues. But I also like to highlight items of particular interest to the “development community.”

It’s often thought that environmental and citizens’ groups and the “developers” are naturally antagonistic. But it doesn’t have to be like that. If the community establishes a set of policies that direct development where the community wants it to go (and puts in place policies that prevent development from going where it isn’t appropriate) then developers who carry out projects consistent with the community’s adopted policies are actually doing what the community wants, and the community should be helping them.

This concept is sometimes called “smart growth.” I call it “good planning.” What’s required is an up-front policy decision by the community on what it wants, rather than a system that is so “flexible” that the decisions are all made at the very last minute, at the “project level.”

One policy that is pretty universally part of the “smart growth” or “good planning” pantheon is to mandate the reuse and restoration of contaminated sites (called “brownfields”). Developers, particularly, need to know how they can meet community clean up requirements, and bring such sites back into the local economy. If you’re a developer who might be interested in that, the transcript of today’s Land Use Report has a reference to an upcoming conference you might want to attend.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information:

Information on the Brownfields 2005 Conference is at
http://www.brownfields2005.org/en/index.aspx

As we convert our natural and open space lands for urban uses, we should use that land “efficiently.” You can call this “smart growth” if you like the phrase. It’s probably more accurate to say that it would be “dumb growth” to convert the land and not use it efficiently.

Our normal patterns of urban growth, however, are pretty dumb, because they do not maximize land use efficiency. Just as an indication, LandWatch Monterey County took a look at land use efficiency in Monterey County in 1999, and we gave the County an “F” grade. As of 1984, 134 acres of land were needed to accommodate every 1,000 new persons. From 1984 to 1996, 159 acres of land were used to accommodate every 1,000 new persons. This means that the amount of land used for urban purposes was growing faster during that period than the population itself, which means that each person was using more not less land on a per person basis. Other counties, interestingly, had much better land use efficiencies. In San Benito County, only 109 acres of land were converted to accommodate every 1,000 new persons. In San Luis Obispo County, only 60 acres of land were converted to accommodate every 1,000 new persons. And in Santa Cruz County, which had an adopted growth management program, only 40 acres were used.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information:

“Land Use Efficiency”
http://www.landwatch.org/pages/publications99/
Stateofcounty1999/302landuse.htm