Yolo County Update
by Vicki Murphy

1. Wilderness Study Designation (WSD) is one of two major programs that will adversely impact Yolo County. The WSD for the Cache Creek Watershed was introduced in the Senate by Barbara Boxer’s S2535 and Hilda Solis’ HR4948. Rep. Mike Thompson removed Cached Creek from his HR4949, but it is still up for discussion and may be included. The Bills call for, amid the hundreds of thousands of California acres targeted, a Wilderness Study Area in the upper Cache Creek Canyon area. Bob Schnieder is the leading local advocate of the Wild and Scenic/Wilderness Study. A Wilderness Study Area Designation does not allow for any modern tools to be used within the Area. It would give a wink-wink to mercury loads from Bureau of Land Management properties (Harley Gulch and Bear Creek ) that are known contributing tributaries. The responsibility of minimizing or removing mercury deposits will instead, fall more heavily to entities downstream. Bob Schnieder, also the Board Chair of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, which establishes, monitors and reports Total Maximum Daily Loads of all pollutants, including mercury, was asked by FWA to conduct a scientific peer review of CV scientists at their DV Board of Director meeting on June 6. Our request was immediately referred to counsel and was then placed on the July agenda as a “discussion” item only. It is troubling that such an important agency chose not to clarify an obvious land use conflict by ignoring a valid request for scientific opinion to be made available to our legislators so they could have made a more informed vote.
2. The Habitat Conservation Plan/NCCP is the second program of major importance to Yolo County residents. By a most innovative “bundling” of governmental bodies, Yolo County’s Gaining Ground Committee will bind urban governments together with California Department of Fish and Game and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the formation of the Yolo County HCP/NCCP. This plan will gather up the city limits of each of the cities and turn them all into one collective, county-wide sphere of influence body, called a Joint Powers Authority (JPA), forever bonding all Yolo County land used to the state and federal agencies. They will be exchanging development and mitigation deals. One representative from Winters, Woodland, Davis and West Sacramento, maybe UCD, plus two Supervisors are to make up the JPA. The Technical Advisory Committee will be made up of the same players, but may allow for one environmental and one agricultural representative. Such impenetrable insulation around this urban-biased JPA provides no voice for the people in the rural areas that will be impacted by all JPA decisions. If the HCP/NCCP is adopted, the rural areas will virtually become chattel of the cities and the wildlife agencies to be used as they see fit. Cities currently have highly defined City Limits, but with the adoption of this Yolo County HCP/NCCP, Yolo County farms and ranches will be completely vulnerable to both urban and agency exploitation.