LAKEPORT – Concerns about setting a possible precedent by allowing a development project to move into the agricultural lands north of Lakeport have united some groups that often express divergent points of view.

In particular, both the Sierra Club Lake Group and the Lake County Farm Bureau have come out against Mark Mitchell's Eachus View Estates Subdivision, which went before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

The project proposes splitting up a 90-acre agricultural parcel into four residential parcels between two and three acres each, plus a 76-acre agricultural parcel.

The board held off making a decision until its Feb. 5 meeting.

Robert Gayaldo, president of the Lake County Farm Bureau Board of Directors, wrote a letter dated Jan. 10 to the Board of Supervisors, asking them to reject Mitchell's project.

The Farm Bureau also had opposed the project in its original form, Gayaldo explained, because of conflicts with the General Plan and Lakeport Area Plan regarding protection of prime agricultural soils. “As listed these soils are conducive to the production of walnuts or wine grapes,” Gayaldo wrote.

Even in its modified form, the Farm Bureau protests the project because of its conflict with planning policies, according to Gayaldo.

One remaining issue remains the project's proposed 50-foot buffer between the residential parcels and nearby agriculture, said Gayaldo.

“This has been a consistent concern from the Farm Bureau on all proposed developments that have been proposed adjoining agricultural lands,” wrote Gayaldo. “The Lake County Agricultural Commissioner recommended a 300-foot buffer, which we support.”

Gayaldo wrote that, although the new General Plan hasn't been accepted, he suggested it can serve as a guideline for decisions on projects such as Mitchell's.

In particular, the plan's Agricultural Element Committee suggests maintaining 40-acre minimum lot sizes in agriculturally zoned property, maintaining the zoning of all presently zoned agricultural property in the new plan and larger buffers.

Similarly, Sierra Club Lake Group Chair Victoria Brandon pointed to “adverse impacts on agriculture” in a letter to the Community Development Department dated June 27, 2007.

Mitchell's plan modifications offered only a “marginal improvement,” Brandon wrote.

Adverse impacts on agriculture wouldn't be reduced, said Brandon, particularly since the inadequate 50-foot agricultural buffer was not increased and no buffer was planned between a six-acre parcel surrounded by the subdivision.

“Even more consequentially, by allowing a residential rezone on prime agricultural soils we would be broadcasting the lamentable message that the community's expressed intent to preserve this resource as a precious and irreplaceable heritage can be disregarded with impunity,” Brandon wrote.

Other concerns cited by Brandon significant potential for a drain on the Scotts Valley aquifer; the fact that the biological survey the Department of Fish and Game recommended was not completed; possibility of destruction of rare plants and other biological resources; and degradation of Eachus Lake and its associated wetlands.

“No degree of downsizing can change the project's location outside the North Lakeport urban growth boundaries, or its distorting effects on the patterns of orderly growth in the vicinity,” said Brandon.

Brandon asked the county to reject the project; failing that, she requested that the county have an environmental impact report be required before the project can move forward.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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