just before going to this morning's CAO hearing at the grange i noticed a raccoon in the trap by the chicken coop. at the hearing i thought about what to do with that raccoon while watching the 4 county employees and their stacks of CAO paperwork. i was impressed by the intro presentation by the county. Janice Biletnikoff (hope i got that right) was eloquent, knowledgeable and well prepared. their formula for calculating setbacks was not the number crunching nightmare i anticipated. but even Dr. Adamus seemed to concede that the system is limited by it's exclusive reliance on nitrates data collected in different parts of the country "...because there is no other data out there..."
the planning commission seemed unanimously skeptical of the county's CAO plans. san juan planning commissioner Mike Carlson muttered that it "sucked" that the county wasn't spending any time collecting data from island specific soil samples rather than relying on the 2007 nitrate study cited by Dr. Adamus.
'skeptical' would be an understatement guaging the mood of the standing room only crowd. the public comment period never got too heated (while i was there) but it was obvious that folks are angry and frustrated with how the county is handling this CAO update. one exception was Stephanie Buffum from the Friends of the San Juans who very adroitly stuck to a convincing argument about how the CAO could accommodate the needs of those involved with agriculture. thanks for that but us farmers are few and the CAO's scope is huge.
for me the two most significant comments (there were lots of good ones) came from two retired california planners with a combined 56 years of professional experience in different parts of the state. both made it very clear that the county will face numerous court battles over the CAO and that settlements with property owners may force the county to purchase such properties. they also pointed out the flawed nature of the county requiring property owners to pay for their own wetland studies and that the county does not have any staff that can interpret the data once collected.
so what to do with the racCAOooon? at the end of the day i can let the raccoon loose up in the vast Roche Harbor acreage above my farm without bad repercussions for my chickens i hope. but its clear to me after today's grange hearing the current update of the CAO needs to be killed. jay ibold
'skeptical' would be an understatement guaging the mood of the standing room only crowd. the public comment period never got too heated (while i was there) but it was obvious that folks are angry and frustrated with how the county is handling this CAO update. one exception was Stephanie Buffum from the Friends of the San Juans who very adroitly stuck to a convincing argument about how the CAO could accommodate the needs of those involved with agriculture. thanks for that but us farmers are few and the CAO's scope is huge.
for me the two most significant comments (there were lots of good ones) came from two retired california planners with a combined 56 years of professional experience in different parts of the state. both made it very clear that the county will face numerous court battles over the CAO and that settlements with property owners may force the county to purchase such properties. they also pointed out the flawed nature of the county requiring property owners to pay for their own wetland studies and that the county does not have any staff that can interpret the data once collected.
so what to do with the racCAOooon? at the end of the day i can let the raccoon loose up in the vast Roche Harbor acreage above my farm without bad repercussions for my chickens i hope. but its clear to me after today's grange hearing the current update of the CAO needs to be killed. jay ibold
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