Best Family Winery Proposed for Sebastopol

OPINION & PERSPECTIVE OF GAZETTE READER AND ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST

Square Peg, Round Hole

by Lyle L Kauman
As if there aren't enough, another unsound project is on fast track for Sonoma County approval. This time, the location is in the west Sebastopol area, on the south east corner of the intersection of Highway 116 Occidental Road. What now has one of the area's picturesque apple orchards is soon to be uprooted and replaced with a wine tasting and events facility, a large grape crushing and warehousing facility, a picnic area, and what those viticulture would surely recognize as a very small vineyard fringed by decorative planting.

But unlike other winery developments, this project is being planned for two corner lots in a long standing, peaceful, rural residential neighborhood. Plans include a small, three acre vineyard, a 5,000 square foot tasting room facility, a 33,000 square foot production facility, and a picnic area. The buildings alone cover a total area of almost one acre! That's a huge project for such a small site.

So what has the neighbors concerned? Isn't this a matter of good planning and property owner's rights? The neighbors who've reviewed, and a few from out of the area, all say, “NO!” But why?

Included in the plans, the proponents propose a winery crush facility and a regular events venue, all to be situated on a property made of two conjoined lots, totaling only 7.61 acres. That's small, even by the General Plan standards that call for a 10 acre minimum for such facilities. Permitting this can only be done with a precedent setting amendment or variance, definitely an erosion of the General Plan's original intent. Nevertheless, the Planning Commission has recommended approval to the Board of Supervisors. With such planning oversight, one can only wonder whose
neighborhood will be next.

The Planning Commission has additionally ignored its responsibility fully to study in quantitative terms the cumulative negative impacts this project will have on the environment, the immediate community, and the neighboring communities affected by this development.

Notification of this project has been poor. Although the project has been a concept for many months, it's only recently that neighbors have been informed of it, and not all who are nearby at that! Nevertheless, at this “eleventh hour”, this project has stirred up a neighborhood to join and fight this inappropriate and ill conceived development in order to save the peace and quiet of homes, property values, and the very quality of neighborhood environment. Not only are there prevailing neighborhood concerns about noise, traffic, safety, public use, and water and septic impact and management, there are additional concerns, ranging from green house gas issues to impacts on the two area schools that have been overlooked by the Planning Commission and
needing to be fully addressed. Indeed, the very fact that planning documents state there are no schools in the vicinity when there are two in proximity to the project which are recognized by both locals and other Sonoma County agencies does not speak well for planning!

With only about 100 feet from facilities to several neighboring residences, issues of day and night noise levels are key. Neighbors are concerned that seasonal production activities during the annual crush will take place 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for eight weeks, leaving many wondering how they will ever manage to get a reasonable night's sleep. With delivery trucks allowed to queue nightlong before the crush facility, and within easy earshot of neighboring residences, the project's site remains inappropriate, projected noise levels mitigated insufficiently with small plantings that would not provide adequate sound buffer. Neighbors wonder why the county could allow this, especially since other project garden areas have a 200 foot set-back from the vineyard requirement! Is the health, comfort, and consideration of
visitors more important than that of local residents? On top of this, project proponents state plans to host industry events on a regular basis throughout the year.

Area residents, having bought into a residentially zoned area, had never anticipated that a residential parcels would be rezoned to Diverse Agricultural, thereby creating negative impact and disturbance to their quiet enjoyment, to which they feel they are entitled. While some may be in support of wineries of proper size and location, they nevertheless call only for responsible growth. This, they say, is irresponsible!

Riding foremost above noise, traffic, and zoning is the number one concern to all nearby residents: Water! Although the project has many environmentally friendly features, and water conservation measures, the project's water feasibility studies are based on 36 inches of annual rainfall, and they make no mention of the current drought situation, and this in an area where the source of all domestic supplies is through wells, in the groundwater. With no drought restrictions or policies written into this project, especially when Sonoma County is issuing water reduction policies and encouraging drought awareness and conservation, why does this project lack provisions that insure the well-being of existing water users? Has the planning commission considered that large scale use by the project ownership may greatly impact neighboring wells? Local residents hold this to be of major concern. while the planning commission did not. But who lives with the wells, the planning commission or the established residents?

Area residents contend that concerns over water quantity and quality in their existing residential wells, plus those of noise, traffic, and environment were not fully addressed or even taken into account, and for these and other concerns, an environmental impact report (aka, “EIR”) is in order. The planning commission asserted that reports submitted by the applicant proved the project posed no real concerns to neighboring residents or areas, yet to date there have been no
quantitative studies on how the hydrology of existing wells may be impacted. Without quantitative studies, it's anyone's guess as to the groundwater conditions. Area residents disagree with the Commission's assertions as they gather information and expert testimony to refute the applicant's reports.

With zoning variances, General Plan amendments, use permits, and new policies written and developed in effort to make this project compliant with county requirements, it continues to show many flaws. Like trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole, no matter how much it's twisted, the hole must become square or the peg round to make the fit. That's exactly what's happening here. The Planning Commission has recommended the project's approval to the Board of Supervisors, and the supes will be asked to change the General Plan to fit this project.

In approving, the Planning Commission cited the project's commitments both to “green building” and to employment opportunities as reasons for recommending the project, but how do low flush toilets serving increased public presence address environment, or what does employment of twenty people in a heretofore residential area do to preserve sound zoning and residential area planning? Nothing.

How can a winery production facility just move right into an existing neighborhood? Neighbors are outraged and contend that if the project was suitable for the site, the numerous zoning conditions would not be an issue before the Board of Supervisors. There was a time when apple trees surrounded the Sebastopol area, but the grapes brought higher profits, so the trees were destroyed, and vines were planted. The once abundant supplies of water and apples are quickly fading, but the vines continue to be planted. The face of the neighborhood will surely change if this project is approved. Aren't there enough wineries, vineyards and production facilities in Sonoma County? In fact, with a production facility directly across from this project site (at Vac-U-Dri), is yet another facility actually needed, the neighbors ask?

The Supervisors will meet on Tuesday, October 6*, 2009. Comments on the project
will be heard at 2:10 pm, followed by a vote on required legislative actions needed for approval.
*Please check to Supervisors' Agenda calendar prior to going - there is a note that this meeting has been moved to October 20th.
http://www.sonoma-county.org/board/agenda.htm

The area's neighbors are demanding further study in the form of an Environmental Impact Report. They are asking that all concerned citizens write to each of the Supervisors, asking them to vote “NO” based on the need for an Environmental Impact Report. They further encourage concerned citizens to show, with strong citizen presence at the October 6th meeting, that poor study and planning is not acceptable in Sonoma County. Visit http://groups.google.com/group/water-not-wineries/ for updates and information.

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Destroying the Horse We Rode In On: Mustangs in Danger

Deanne Stillman with Bugz, survivor of the 1998 Christmas massacre
of 34 wild horses outside Reno.

Photo by Betty Lee Kelly.

Deanne Stillman, the author of "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West," an LA Times "best book 08," winner of the California Book Award silver medal for 2008, and widely praised from the Atlantic Monthly to the Economist, is in Sebastopol for a signing at Copperfield’s Books on Thursday, May 14, at 7 p.m.

She will also be at Readers’ Books in Sonoma on Tuesday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m.

A COWBOY NATION TURNS ITS BACK ON WILD HORSES

By Deanne Stillman

It’s not news that America is a cowboy nation but it may surprise many that we are destroying the horse we rode in on. I refer specifically to the mustang, the animal that blazed our trails, fought our wars and serves as our greatest icon.

Since 1971 wild horses have been protected under the Wild Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Protection Act, a hard-won law spearheaded by Velma Johnston, aka Wild Horse Annie, a classic Nevada character whose life was changed when she saw blood spilling out of a truck, followed it down a desert highway, and then witnessed injured and dying mustangs being offloaded at a slaughterhouse. From that morning in 1950, she led a battle to stop the cruel round-ups, resulting in the passage of four laws, with the final one signed by Richard Nixon.

Under the federal law, horses were to be “considered in areas where presently found, as an integral part of the system of public lands.” Their management fell to agencies inside the Department of the Interior, primarily the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, which carry out periodic round-ups to cull the herds since most of their natural predators are gone from their ranges. Once taken, the horses are funneled into the adopt-a-horse program, which sometimes works for horses and people alike, and sometimes doesn't, resulting in fatal mishaps and other cruel disasters.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, there were about two million mustangs in the wilderness; today, according to the BLM, there are about 20,000 on public lands in the western states, with more than half in Nevada. Because the animals have been removed – or “zeroed out” – from at least 100 of their 300 official herd areas, contrary to the law’s provisions, they are on the brink of no return.

Ranching outfits often graze their cattle and sheep on lands where horses make their living, and many stockmen have long regarded wild horses as “pests” that steal food from their herds. They have tried to dismantle the wild horse and burro law through five administrations, while at the same time lone actors head into the wilderness to whack wild horses as well as burros (protected under the same law), yet are rarely found or prosecuted.

Under the Bush regime, large-scale corporate ranching operations had almost reached their goal of a mustang-free America, thanks to a rollback in the law in which culled horses that haven’t been adopted on the third try through the government’s controversial adopt-a-horse program – criminalized “three-strikers” – can be sold to the lowest bidder, along with mustangs over ten (not old for a horse). This meant a ticket to the slaughterhouse - and the rule still prevails. The rollback was aggravated by a media that often parrots the view that the mustang is an invasive species. In fact it is native to this continent, linked by mitochondrial DNA to horses of the Pleistocene.

Beyond that, horses are North America’s gift to the world. They evolved in the West, then crossed the Bering land bridge and died out on their native turf in the Ice Age, but not before they had established themselves in many other lands. They returned with conquistadors in the 16th century, and it was as if they had never left. For the next 300 years, their descendants were pressed into noble and bloody service. By the end of the 19th century, the West was no longer wild, and it was time for them to go.

A hydra-headed horseflesh industry arose and flourished until Wild Horse Annie came along. Self-valorizing mustangers ripped into the herds, trapping the horses in remote areas and then selling them for chicken feed, dinner in France, or wars. So many horses were taken from 1920 to 1935 that the era is known in some circles as “the great removal.”

But the round-ups didn’t stop then, and there are now more wild horses in the pipelines than on the range. Last year, the BLM announced that it was planning to "euthanize" 30,000 stranded mustangs because there's not enough money in the budget to keep them. Madeline Pickens came forward and offered to save them, yet so far, the BLM has not permitted her plan to move forward.

Many of these horses should not have been taken from the land in the first place, and in my travels across the country, I have learned that if there's one thing Americans are happy to spend their tax dollars on, it's the preservation of wild horses. They understand that our greatest road trip car is not called the Mustang for nothing and what it says about us if we can't take care of the real thing. To that end, a new bill was recently introduced to make sure that the wild horse has a permanent home on the range. It's HR 1018 and it's coming up for debate on the House floor soon. “We need the tonic of wildness,” Richard Nixon said, quoting Thoreau when he signed the law. “Wild horses merit protection as a matter of ecological right – as anyone knows who has stood awed at the indomitable spirit and sheer energy of a mustang running free.”

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Meet the author of “Mustang” at Copperfield’s Books

Critically acclaimed author Deanne Stillman comes to Copperfield’s Books, 138 N. Main St. in Sebastopol on Thursday, May 14, at 7 p.m to sign her latest book, "Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West" (Houghton Mifflin).

"Mustang" is a narrative nonfiction history of the wild horse on this continent, from prehistory through the present, with chapters about Cortes and the 16 horses that launched the conquest; the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the horse that survived it, and the ongoing war to wipe out the wild horse by way of massacres and round-ups. The LA Times named "Mustang" a "best book 2008," and it’s a winner of the California Book Award silver medal for 2008. It has gotten great reviews in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, Economist, Seattle Times, NPR's On Point, and many other places. Michael Blake ("Dances with Wolves") calls it "stunning" and the late Tony Hillerman called it "remarkable."

Stillman began work on "Mustang" in 1998 after learning that 34 wild horses had been gunned down outside Reno at Christmas time. At the time, she was finishing up her book "Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave," an LA Times "best book 01" which Hunter Thompson called "A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer." There was an arrest in the horse massacre; three of the accused were Marines and one was stationed at Twentynine Palms. Having grown up around horses, Deanne was drawn to the story. She spent 10 years on the wild horse trail, following it across time as it evolved in North America, went extinct and returned with conquistadors, partnered with Native Americans, fought our wars, blazed our trails, and continues to serve as our greatest icon of freedom.

"Mustang" has been a driver in the grassroots campaign to preserve wild horses and burros and is one of the things that led to the introduction of HR 1018, the new bill that seeks to expand wild horse and burro protection for the first time since 1971. Stillman has been traveling the country since her book was published, and has learned that when it comes to the mustang, most Americans agree: we must preserve our heritage.

Stillman will also be appearing at Readers’ Books in Sonoma on Tuesday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m.

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FORUM: The Myths of Monotheism

Got a Point of View? An Opinion on a subject? Feel like getting on your Soap Box? This is the place. Please send your thoughts to vesta@sonic.net. This FORUM submission is on Monotheism from the perspective of an Atheist. Enjoy!

The Myths of Monotheism

By Tony Adler

Friday, December 26, 2008 Boxing Day

From my point of view as an Atheist and somewhat of a historian, I feel it incumbent upon my self to offer others a modicum of truth and thereby give them the opportunity to understand and see religious myth for what it is. Those of the faith often ask with astonishment, “Don’t you believe in God?” The question is an oxymoron, since in reality there is not a god to believe in or not.

As an historian I much prefer polytheism to monotheism. It has been shown that Gods and Goddesses do not have to exist in reality in order to do good or perpetrate murder and mayhem, for that matter. My own favorite deities were the Egyptian, Greek and Roman in that order. Of course to understand the Judea Christian story one must journey deep into the mists of time to Mesopotamia and Babylon and look at the myth of Gilgamesh which gave birth to the book of Geneses. Of course Abraham came from this area and brought with him the worship of Shamech, the Sun God and the story of the great flood from the Babylonian history. There is Archeological evidence that in Neolithic times the area between the two rivers did suffer a devastating flood that changed the topography and eliminated two other rivers.

Since the Israelites Came out of Egypt and spent generations in Babylon one has to look at how they and their religion grew out of these influences. The Babylonian God of the sun Shamech was the name given to the eternal light, Nur Tamid which burned in the Jewish temple. The Egyptian name for this God was Aton Re, and in past cultures was part of Isis the Mother Deity of Egypt known to the Greeks as Aphrodite and the Romans as Venus.

Venus is the morning star known astrologically as Virgo or Lucifer the bringer of enlightenment i.e. knowledge. In Neolithic Mesopotamia she was Inanna the snake god of love and fertility, or Enki the god of earth and water Enlightenment was anathema to the early Christians consequently knowledge was of the Devil. It still is.

Ancient Hebrews known as Hyksos or Haribari meaning Shepard Kings frequently attacked Egypt around the Delta and eventually took over that era and ruled Lower Egypt for 108 years, their 15th dynasty having six kings. They introduced Egypt to the horse and chariot and the compound bow. These people were monotheists, practiced circumcision and eschewed pork. They were eventually defeated and driven out, though many were egyptianized and remained keeping their own god.

If we can jump ahead to the 18th Dynasty in 1353 and to the Pharaoh Amenophis III and his correspondences with Tushratta, the king of Mitanni We must look at the preserved Amarna letters, which are available to read to this day in cuneiform on clay tablets. These are in the Berlin Museum of Egyptology together with the bust of Nefertiri who looms largely in this history and as you will see she became the actual founder of the present day Christian monotheism.

King Tushratta had a fifteen year-old daughter of great beauty whose name was Tadu Heba. King Tushratta proposed this girl for wife to the 43 year-old Pharaoh Amenophis III. She was accepted and journeyed into Egypt taking with her great wealth and servants, and her sun god Shamesh. Her marriage to the Pharaoh lasted until his death eleven years later after which she married his son Amenophis IV aged eleven. Because of her great beauty the Egyptians gave the Queen the name Nefertiri which means, “She who walks in beauty.” Nefertiri introduced her religion of the Sun God Shamesh who in Egypt was a minor god Aton to her young husband, and upon adulthood and under her influence the young Pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaton and decreed that this was to be the one god of Egypt and that Amun and all other gods were to be deposed. He created a capitol city dedicated to Aton and plunged Egypt into a bloody civil war to enforce his new religion.

As history shows this monotheism brought on a plague of intolerance and violence under which our planet suffers to this very day. The remaining Hyksos and Haribari took to this religion, but went underground when it was stamped out by Horemheb after the death of Akhenaton and his follower Tutankhamen

Monotheism festered in Egypt until in the 19th. Dynasty in 1269 when their mobs robbed the Egyptians and set off into the desert crossing the sea of reeds into Canaan. They had changed the name of their god from Aton to Adon meaning Lord or in Hebrew Adonoi meaning our lord. The followers of Adon under Moses became violent killers and sacked the land of Canaan murdering men, women, and children and all their animals. From this religion spread out a long history of war and bloodshed until the Romans lead by Pompeii conquered the land in 63 BCE. In Roman times the legend of Jesus arose, though there is no historical proof that he ever existed. He is not mentioned by Josephus in his history of the period.

Christianism became a cult that flourished in Rome, and became violently opposed to Roman Mithraism, smashing their temples and destroying their artifacts. Purges were instituted against this violent monotheistic cult, but it survived, later to be imposed on Rome by Constantine who actually founded the Catholic Church and laid down its dogma in the fourth century C.E. in Nicia.

In the 6th century Islam also sprang from this root. From this time on these two monotheistic religions have split into various cults and continued brutal warfare against all and sundry and especially against the Jews who were their founders, The first Crusade was instigated in the 12th century by Pope Urban II when he ordered his armies to wipe out the Cathars an intellectual and advanced religious group in the South of France. They were all burned alive, and their goddess was Isis. Later the Knights Templar were also murdered for their treasure The Crusades and the inquisition made the whole world run with blood and permanently drove a wedge between Islam and Christianity.

Freemasonry sprang from the Templars, and in fact founded our constitution remaining true to Isis or Virgo if you like and trying to keep religious influences out of our politics. However the Monotheistic religions are still to this day murdering millions in the name of their various cults. These cults are responsible for the overpopulating of our planet, for the subjugation of women today and throughout the ages, for slavery, pedophilia in the Catholic Church, and Protestant puritanical attitudes toward sex contraception abortion and even stem cell research. In my estimation dogmatic religion is a curse on the world which thrives in ignorance and darkness, and in my view the only way to survive it is through a diligent search for knowledge through free and comprehensive education based on historical truth with the goal of total enlightenment. Lucifer i.e. Knowledge can never be evil.

Tony Adler
Cotati

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