Santa Cruz Lumber Rules
Santa Cruz County supervisors are clamping down hard on the logging industry, and have approved "in concept" new ordinances that limit logging near residences, helicopter harvesting, and logging near riparian corridors.
The ordinances are expected to be presented to the state Board of Forestry next year as proposed rules that would impact only Santa Cruz County. The county is one of a handful of California coastal counties that have special authority to propose rules to the nine-member board.
In recent years, as the price of timber has skyrocketed, the county's numerous small stands of redwood and douglas fir trees have been logged. Since many homes are located in mountains among the trees, residents have been upset by the increased activity.
In November, the Board of Forestry approved 11 rule changes sought by the county. County Principal Planner Mark Deming called them "minor procedural changes." The new rules imposed more requirements on helicopter operations and notification of nearby residents, and also reduced the hours that chains saws could operate near residences.
The county's Board of Supervisors is expected to return next year to the Board of Forestry with an additional 10 rule changes that the Forestry Board refused to enact at its November meeting. "We're hoping there's a different Board of Forestry," Deming said, since newly-elected Gov. Gray Davis appoints members of the board.
The Board of Supervisors limited logging in the county to certain zoning areas in August 1998. After the Board of Forestry failed to enact 10 of its propsed rules in November, the Board of Supervisors also enacted "in concept" new ordinances that limit helicopter use, prohibit timber harvests within 300 feet of residences, and limit logging within riparian corridors. While the ordinances won't take effect until the spring, they will be sent during that interim to the Coastal Commission for review, Deming said.
The Santa Cruz supervisors decided to impose stricter rules based on a 1995 appellate court decision, according to Mike Jani, Chief Forester for Big Creek Lumber.
In 1995, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled in Big Creek Lumber Inc. v. San Mateo County, 37 Cal.Rptr.2d 159 (See CP&DR, February 1995), that state timber laws didn't preempt San Mateo County from enacting zoning laws to control the location of commercial timber harvesting. The amendments created buffer zones by prohibiting timber harvesting in certains areas located with 1,000 feet of a residence.
Jani said that the proposed ordinances in Santa Cruz County are "much stricter" than those adopted by neighboring San Mateo County. He said the company is looking at the legality of the county's decision to adopt ordinances in concept and then sending them to the Coastal Commission.
The new rules adopted by the Board of Forestry in November still need to be approved by the state's Office of Administrative Law.
Contacts:
Mike Jani, Big Creek Lumber Company, (831) 457-5026.
Mark Deming, Principal Planner, Santa Cruz County, (831) 454-2580.
Monterey County voters rejected a general plan initiative while sending mixed signals on a general plan update adopted by the county. Voters also rejected a 1,100-unit subdivision during a special election on Tuesday.
The "no" side won all four ballot measures, even though two of the no votes conflicted with each other in the contentious and confusing election with a low turnout.
North Natomas
A lawsuit challenging a habitat conservation plan for Sacramento's North Natomas area has been filed in federal court by a group of environmentalists. A popular tool promoted by the Clinton administration, HCPs are intended to end disputes with landowners over plants and animals covered by the Endangered Species Act.
Under the Natomas HCP, an acre of land is to be preserved for every two acres developed in the area, a few miles north of downtown Sacramento along Interstat...
San Francisco Airport officials have proposed an airport runway expansion that has a novel tradeoff for environmentalists. In exchange for filling up to 1,400 acres of San Francisco Bay for new runways, the airport proposes to restore 29,000 acres of bay wetlands that are located east and south of the airport.
The proposal, which is to be formally presented at the end of January, is already proving controversial in the environmental community, and is strongly opposed by Cargill Salt, whose land could...
Despite a developers' decision to drop out of a 40-acre sports-themed project in Anaheim, city officials are keeping the project on track.
Known as Sportstown, the entertainment project is taking shape in the parking lot of the Big A, home of the Anaheim Angels baseball team, and close to the Arrowhead Pond, home to the major league hockey team, the Mighty Ducks.
In November, Cleveland-based developer Forest City Enterprises Inc. dropped plans to develop Sportstown, which is to include sports-theme...
The Second District Court of Appeal has reaffirmed its decision to overturn a $2 million takings judgment against the Coastal Commission - even after reconsidering the case in light of a California Supreme Court ruling in another coastal case.
However, the property owners' lawyers appear determined to fight on to the California Supreme Court on the very issue that caused the remand in the first place. Lawyer Thomas Banks said his client, Peggy Ann Buckley, plans to appeal the case to the Calif...
San Diego County's integrated waste management plan did not require preparation of an environmental impact report even though the plan called for the creation of new landfills and identified 10 possible sites for those landfills, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.
"There is no substantial evidence in the administrative record to support a fair argument that the county's adoption of the summary plan and siting element may have a significant environmental impact, and thus the county did not ...
The California Supreme Court has agreed to review an appellate court decision that ruled the City of Los Angeles should not be held liable for landslide-related damage to a property in the Pacific Palisades even though it violated municipal code requirements.
In Haggis v. City of Los Angeles, Supreme Court Docket No. S074364, property owner Paul Haggis argued that his house was damaged by a landslide triggered in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and later condemned and demolished by the city.
After t...
Requiring a landowner to provide an excess amount of infrastructure capacity - and reimbursing that landowner later with other county funds - does not fall under the state's conflict of interest laws if a county supervisor is one of the landowners, according to a new opinion from the state attorney general's office.
According to the attorney general, such a requirement - permitted under the state's Subdivision Map Act - is not a contract between the developer and the landowners and therefore does not ...
The City of South San Francisco isn't required to compensate a property owner for the city's own leasehold interest in the property - as well as the value of the property itself - in an eminent domain action, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.
The case involves South San Francisco's decision to take the property of the Mayer family by eminent domain - property that the city had already leased from the Mayers for use as a city conference center.
The Mayers leased the property to the city ...
The U.S. Forest Service should have prepared an environmental impact statement before awarding a series of contracts for timber salvage sales in the Umatilla National Forest in eastern Oregon, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
The Ninth Circuit's ruling - the latest in a long series of decisions on Forest Service operations in the Northwest - reversed the ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken, who had granted summary judgment to the Forest Service against the claims brought by...
In Riverside County, the county supervisors have never been big fans of federal endangered species regulations. So it should be no surprise that the board recently granted individual home builders a exemption basically excusing them from complying with those regulations. But the supervisors were forced to rescind those regulations once a judge ruled against them.. The issue arose in the southwestern part of the county, home to the Quino checkerspot butterfly, which last year was listed as an endangere...
A major land deal to preserve thousands of acres of Southern California desert land is in the works between a land conservation organization and the Catellus Corporation. Acquisition of the land is considered as significant for Southern California as the Headwaters Forest acquisition has been in Northern California.
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein threw her support behind the proposal in mid-December. Feinstein, a longtime supporter of efforts to create two national parks and a national prese...
