This is one of those incredibly important subjects that involves vast amounts of reading filled with enough details to bend your mind, spread over a mountain of pages that are guaranteed to put you to sleep. Yet there are many dedicated individuals who are passionate about this subject and all the rest of us are depending upon their good sense to guide us into the future. They could use some input from us. After all - it's our future as well.

I'm as guilty as the next person about not wanting to delve into the details of water, transportation, development, air quality, light pollution, etc. etc. So if we don't like what these decision-makers decide, we have no room to complain.

Two of the many people paying attention have written about the General Plan and are encouraging us to come to the hearings. We could do them, and ourselves and future generations, the favor of offering our perspectives.

The General Plan Update & Why it Needs to be Strengthened

By Stephen Fuller-Rowell

Sonoma County residents support a General Plan that protects our quality of life: clean air and water, our natural resources and our world-renowned landscapes.

General Plan scoping meetings six years ago were packed. Water was a high priority for many who spoke. Since then, the fervor has waned, and it's time to get active again. Unless we effectively plan and manage growth in balance with our water resources, our quality of life will worsen. We can adopt policies that will reduce significant and unavoidable impacts to our water resources and to the environment. However, this will happen only if citizens get involved again.

Now is the last chance to make our voices heard.

The proposed Water Resource Element will be the subject of a Board of Supervisors' public hearing on Monday, August 27, in the Glaser Center at 547 Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa. The Water Resource Element public hearing that day will be in two sessions starting at 1:30 pm and resuming again at 6:00pm.

The public hearing on the Open Space and Resource Conservation Element, including riparian protection for our rivers and creeks, will start on Wednesday, August 29, at 6:00 pm in the Glaser Center. That public hearing will resume on Thursday, August 30, at 1:30 pm in the Board of Supervisors' Chambers at 575 Administration Drive in Santa Rosa.

What are the big issues?

Sonoma County needs a comprehensive water management plan. We cannot continue making decisions about using surface water from our rivers, about groundwater beneath the land and about wastewater disposal and reuse without considering the interconnectedness of these issues.

Groundwater recharge areas in Sonoma County need to be protected, and this protection needs to be incorporated into building codes. Our aquifers are the biggest and least expensive place to store winter rainfall. We cannot continue paving over our groundwater recharge areas that make this possible.

Groundwater levels are dropping in every part of Sonoma County that has been studied. It's time to get serious about the cumulative impact of 40,000 wells in Sonoma County. We cannot continue wasting our resources, deepening wells, and using ever increasing amounts of energy to pump water up from deeper and deeper wells.

Threats to our water resources also come from elsewhere. Language to control exports of water from Sonoma County must be strengthened. We cannot depend upon our State representatives to rescue us from the next scheme to ship our water south.

We need policies to deal with groundwater overdraft in all the areas in which declines have been documented. We cannot keep doing studies and writing reports; eventually we need to do something to address the problem and limit groundwater withdrawals.

More public education on water issues is needed. Everyday, there is another letter to the editor bemoaning the apparent hypocrisy of calls to conserve water when it seems that all the water saved will simply be used to supply new construction, rather than to benefit the environment. We need to give higher priority to water conservation, efficiency and reuse than to developing new water sources; we need to dedicate most of the water saved to the environment by leaving it untapped in source groundwater and surface water. We cannot plan conservation programs without buy-in from every water user.

It is also crucial that we pay more attention to water quality. The General Plan needs to include policies for public education to raise awareness of the need to pay attention to what we flush down the toilet and pour down the drain. Modern contaminants are unregulated and many pass right through our wastewater treatment plants. Many so-called solutions, such as modular package treatment plants, are unnecessarily complex and may require costly removal or replacement, often at ratepayer expense, when they reach the end of their intended service life. We need to establish a Citizens' Advisory Committee to conduct an ongoing review of wastewater issues, with particular emphasis on emerging and unregulated contaminants, and to present periodic public reports. We can no longer assume that someone else will take care of our waste stream.

We must protect the land beside our rivers and creeks - and this is not just for the benefit of fish and wildlife. Many of our riparian corridors are an important source of groundwater recharge. These areas need healthy native vegetation. We cannot continue to consider our habitat as less fragile than that of the other creatures with whom we share this planet.

Water use and global climate change are interconnected. Together with transportation, water management is one of the largest causes of greenhouse gas emissions. The generation of energy used by public utilities, agriculture and homeowners to pump and treat water and wastewater, is a major contributor to our heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere. Continued declining groundwater levels and ever increasing water consumption will result in significantly increased energy consumption and emissions. We cannot give low priority to protecting groundwater levels and conserving water consumption and expect to achieve our local and global greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.

It will be fifteen to twenty years before we have another General Plan Update. We will have to live with what the Board of Supervisors approves. It is therefore essential that you attend the hearings and let them know you want sound water management.

8 Meetings to Plot Our Course
into the Future - Be There!

By Rue Furch
Sonoma County Planning Commission

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors will begin hearings on the future of our county August 20th at 1:30 PM. The Board has scheduled 8 hearing dates to listen to public input. Meetings will be held at different times and locations so check the schedule for a day and time you can attend and be heard. You'll find it on line at:

http://www.sonoma-county.org/prmd/gp2020/pc-schedule.htm

General Plan 2020 will plot the course for all of us. You'll want to be there. We all need to be involved.

The General Plan is the guiding document for all Goals, Objectives and implementing Policies to be followed into the future. The decisions made this year will be with us for generations. Some things just cannot be undone.

There are many areas in this Draft General Plan (GP2020) that are of concern. I cannot list them all in this column, but I encourage you to go online at:

http://www.sonoma-county.org/prmd/gp2020/recdraft/index.htm

and look at the Elements (same as a Chapter). Pick one that is of interest to you and your neighborhood and read it. Then let the Supervisors know what you think. Show up at hearings and tell them what you like, what you think needs to be changed - and be as specific as you possibly can.

Examples of areas that need strengthening in order to preserve our quality of life are:

• Impacts of climate change - we need a comprehensive county energy plan.

  There should be no net increase in power-intensive uses. And not just individual businesses and housing. Think of the energy used to pump water, wastewater and to haul garbage.

• We need a user friendly transit system that includes more frequent service on better connected bus routes.

  This should link to the long awaited rail system.

  - The cities and county need an integrated transportation system that includes a bicycle network, and all cities and

• Water resources - please read the article titled "the General Plan & Why it Needs to be Strengthened" in this newspaper today. It focuses on some of the issues in the Water Resource Element. Many good points are made and I would add few to consider:

  - Watersheds need protection. Citizens who live in each watershed should be participants in a process of information collection and decision making in order to preserve their water supply and their way of life. This information would remain proprietary, and conglomerated would become part of the greater water budget.

  - New development should not be allowed to pave over the surfaces of our recharge areas. Each development can and should build so that there is no net loss of recharge capacity.

  - Water/energy decisions affect climate change, and climate change will affect the reliability of water supply and water quality.

• Agriculture and Open Space protection

  - we need stronger policies to support our shared goal of protecting our Agricultural economy and our open spaces.

  - Small family farms and our local grape growers need language that allows them to remain economically viable. Family owned farms need to be able to grow and sell their products. We all benefit from our local food supply.

  - Sonoma County's grape growers need to know that the crop they grow here will be processed here. Importation of grapes from other counties and/or regions does nothing to protect our local growers and maintain our own economy.

  - The loss of farmland is well documented and we must reverse the trend. And while the County should not be making crop choices for farmers, we need to make sure that our County policies encourage a diverse agricultural base, rather than embrace a monoculture.

  - We need a mapped baseline for existing tree cover, habitat and streams. Monitored over time, we will see trends and be able to reasonably establish mitigations for maintaining critical open space.

  - Community separators should be expanded to ensure that we preserve our city centered growth and our shared goal of maintaining our countryside.

This just skims the surface of what needs attention. As you look over GP2020 you'll see other areas of great importance. Get involved now. Too much will be lost by the "next time".

As a Planning Commissioner I've been involved with these issues for over 16 years, many years longer as an advocate for our future. As a citizen and a mother I've watched with concern as things have deteriorated wondering what would the future hold for my children? We all need to step forward together to have our voices heard.

Now I am a candidate for 5th District Supervisor and I hope to insure that our county is a place where we will all feel great about the world we leave to our grandchildren. I'd love to hear from you about the issues you see in your community. Look for my website at:

http://www.ruefurchforsupervisor.com

I look forward to hearing from you.