Finding a reliable water supply for the Monterey Peninsula is important, so let me alert listeners to a meeting being held tomorrow, Tuesday, December 1st. The Governance Committee for the Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project will be holding a special meeting at 10:00 a.m. in the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District Conference Room, located at 55 Harris Court, Building G, in Monterey.

The “Governance” Committee does not actually “govern” the proposed water project, which is under the control of the California American Water Company, as overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission. The various elected officials on the Governance Committee, however, are able to affect decision making. Tomorrow, they will be providing Cal-Am with their advice on which contractor should construct the slant wells that will deliver ocean water to a proposed desalination plant. The cost of the proposed contract is on the order of twenty million dollars, and one imponderable is the fact that Cal-Am’s right to take water from the proposed wells is being contested. If you think that there might be a problem in spending something like twenty million dollars of ratepayer funds to construct wells to obtain water the rights to which are being challenged, maybe you’d like to attend the meeting.

There is more information at kusp.org/landuse.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Agenda, December 1, 2015 Governance Committee
• Details On Slant Well Contracts
• Salinas Californian Article On Slant Well Contract
• Monterey Herald Article On Slant Well Contract
• Monterey Herald Article On Legal Challenges To Slant Wells

Match.com can hook you up with potential partners. The Land Use Report can hook you up with important meetings. Tomorrow evening, the Santa Cruz City Planning Commission will hold an important meeting at City Hall.

The Sea and Sand Inn, located on West Cliff Drive just above Cowell’s Beach, is hoping the Commission will approve the installation of a “soil nail wall,” which may or may not have some aesthetic impacts on the City’s most well-used beach. A few years ago, despite the protests of tree advocates, the Seaside Company, which owns the motel, cut down some heritage trees on the Sea and Sand Inn property, and there is at least a good argument that this has had an impact on bluff stability.

Another item that would affect West Cliff Drive is also on the agenda. The City proposes to install a combination pull up and dip exercise bar in the landscape area on the east side of the parking lot closest to Its Beach. Lots of people think that the City’s West Cliff Drive walkway is just fine the way it is (I was out there on Thanksgiving, and it was getting a lot of use). If you have a position on the first step towards turning West Cliff Drive into a parcourse, you will probably want to show up tomorrow evening.

Finally, the Planning Commission is going to consider possible amendments to the City’s Downtown Recovery Plan. This will affect the future of the the Santa Cruz Downtown, also an important topic.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Planning Commission Agenda – December 3, 2015

I don’t always talk about meetings, here on the Land Use Report. Sometimes I talk about wetlands. Let’s talk about wetlands, some of the most biologically productive parts of our natural environment.

As noted in a recent article in the Salinas Californian, the City of Arcata has used wetlands adjacent to the city to treat sewage waste, with a double payoff in terms of the habitat value that the wetlands have created. There may be some opportunities to do something similar in Monterey County. The City of Watsonville has already found that its sloughs and wetlands support a growing tourist interest in birding.

At Elkhorn Slough, researchers have been concerned about how salt marsh habitat has turned to mud, eliminating the benefits of this wetland environment. The Salinas Californian quoted Kerstin Wasson, a research coordinator at Elkhorn Slough Reserve, as saying that <quote> “people drained the wetlands to make farmland. When they did this, they caused the ground to dry, shrink and sink. ... The marshes became mud.” Now a $6.5 million project is aiming at restoration.

Wasson said restoring the marsh helps everyone, human and otherwise. For example, the marsh shelters otters, which reel in tourists. “Even if you don’t care environmentally,” Wasson said, “it’s a big economic engine in this region.”

Get links to more information at kusp.org/landuse.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Salinas Californian Article On Elkhorn Slough Salt Marshes
• Salinas Californian Article – Wetlands Clean Water The Natural Way

I believe most professional planners would agree that the California Coastal Commission sets the “gold standard” for planning agencies. One reason is that the Coastal Act articulates some very specific policies which are “mandatory,” as opposed to “discretionary” in form. Policies that are structured as “discretionary,” which are quite common at the local government level, aren’t really “policies” at all, since they contain a built-in exit that allows the local agency to disregard the policy if the agency wants to approve a particular development.

For instance, if the so-called “policy” states that the agency should prevent the conversion of agricultural land to urban uses “to the greatest extent feasible,” very common language in zoning codes, the local agency can always determine that it is not really “feasible” to protect farmland when an attractive development opportunity presents itself. If you really want to protect farmland, you have to have a policy that says something like, “commercially viable farmland shall not be developed or divided.” Period!

The Coastal Commission is meeting in Monterey, starting on Wednesday, December 9th, through Friday, December 11th. I have links to the agenda at kusp.org/landuse. I invite you to review the agenda, and then to attend the Commission’s meeting, to see that “gold standard” planning agency in action.

More Information:

• Land Use Links
• Gary Patton’s Two Worlds Blog
• Coastal Commission Agenda