Protect San Benito County!

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Good planets are hard to find. Now, temperate zones and tropic climbs and through currents and thriving seas and winds blowing through breathing trees and strongholds on safe sunshine, good planets are hard to find. Yeah. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Hello, k squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again and you're listening to sustainability. Now, a bi weekly case good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. San Benita county is one of the unsung jewels of the central California coast. Most people know of San Juan Batista and the Pinnacles, but there is much, much more. Two mountain ranges, broad valleys, rangelands, farmlands and biodiversity. San Benito county is also close to Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay, and people are moving south in search of cheaper housing. Malls and sprawls are not far behind. Now a local movement is seeking to limit development with an initiative to require a public vote if agricultural, rural or rangeland is rezoned to residential, commercial or industrial use, a strategy already applied in several other California counties. During this show, we'll be hearing from Seth Abrams from Save Mount Diablo, a land trust active across the county. Chris Wilmers of UCSC, who studies cougars and bobcats that want to cross the road Val Lopez, chair of the Amamutsun, whose ancestral lands cover much of the county, and Andy Schiakoron of the campaign to protect San Benido county, one of the activists behind the initiative. Seth Adams. [00:01:58] Speaker C: Welcome to sustainability now. [00:02:00] Speaker D: Thank you for having me. [00:02:02] Speaker C: I want to begin by asking what save Mount Diablo is, what's its history and what it does well. [00:02:08] Speaker D: We're a 53 year old land trust that started as an advocacy organization up in Concord and Walnut Creek in the East Bay. And initially we were focused on expanding Mount Diablo State park in the center of the East Bay. And over time, we enlarged our geographic area over and over to protect bigger and bigger areas, to the point that we started with about 7000 acres on Mount Diablo itself. And now we've protected more than 120,000 acres north of Altamonte Pass. That's an area bigger than Point Reyes or the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. And for years, we said if Mount Diablo got cut off from the rest of the Diablo range, which nobody knew anything about, that we would lose a lot of the wildlife and its distinctiveness. And so over the last eight years, we've been expanding down the 200 miles Diablo range across twelve counties. [00:03:05] Speaker C: And what's your role at Save Mount Diablo? [00:03:09] Speaker D: I was the first staff person 37 years ago. Now I have 26, and I'm the conservation director, so I'm the big picture strategist and one of the people who's been pushing most for expanding our geographic area. I'm a biologist by training, but I'm an activist from birth. [00:03:29] Speaker C: I suspect a lot of people don't know very much about the Diablo range because it's at least down here toward the southern end. So maybe. Can you tell us about where it is, what it encompasses, what's there? [00:03:46] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:03:46] Speaker D: The reality is very few people know about the Diablo range, but it was designated and described by the California Geologic Survey in the 1860s by Whitney and Brewer and friends. And if you ask people, and I've asked people for years, they'll say, oh, Mount Diablo is the beginning of the Diablo Range. Maybe it goes to Mount Hamilton or something like that. It's really defined by the bay, the Salinas Valley and the San Joaquin Valley. And if you're going south on Highway 101, it's the area to the east. If you're going south on highway five, it's the area to the west. And what you see is the grassland hills. And it's only when you get in 5 miles and rise 500ft that you realize it's this incredibly rich, rugged, incredibly biodiverse and mostly intact landscape which stretches for 200 miles. It's the inner coast ranges, so the outer coast ranges, like Big Sur and the Santa Cruz Mountains, get a lot of water. The Diablo range east of the Salinas Valley is in the rain shadow of the intercoast ranges. And so it's a lot more arid. It's rocky, ruggy, rugged, excuse me. And evolution happens faster there. So because of the very dramatically diverse landscapes, topography, all those kinds of things, because of the dryness, there's a lot of rare and endangered species that are found there, and it's incredibly rich. But as I said, it's almost intact because unlike a lot of areas where there's been a lot of preservation, the Sierra, the Santa Cruz Mountains, only about 25% of the Diablo range has any level of protection. There are only two freeways that cross that Altamont Pass, Highway 580 and Pacheco Pass down near you guys, and otherwise no freeway crossing. So very few people get a view of it, very few people know about it. And we think it's going to be California's next great conservation story. [00:05:54] Speaker C: Who owns the land up there? [00:05:56] Speaker D: Mostly private ranchers, but one of the biggest landowners is the Bureau of Land Management. They own over 200,000 acres or manage over 200,000 acres. We, the people, own that land. State parks has not quite as much land. The Nature Conservancy is one of the bigger landowners. And as you get north, there are a lot more different kinds of agencies that own and manage land. The federal government obviously also owns Pinnacles National park, and that's one of the gems of San Benito county. [00:06:30] Speaker C: But it's largely, then largely inaccessible, unless you go in, I suppose, with four wheel drive or something like that. [00:06:38] Speaker D: Yeah, imagine that. Up in the east bay, we've protected more than 30%, or a third of the landscape. About a third is developed. If you get down into San Benito county, only about 19% has any level of protection, and only about 13% is actually accessible to the public. So up here, we have an embarrassment of riches of parks and trails and staging areas and things like that. In San Benito county, you typically have to go further to get to accessible public land. [00:07:13] Speaker C: Give me a broad picture view. Why do we need to protect San Benito county and who or what is threatening it? [00:07:19] Speaker D: Well, I think that both the federal and state governments have made a goal of protecting 30% of our land, water and oceans. And so we have state and federal goal saying that we need to do it in the first place. But I think if you back up and understand that the Diablo ranges are this incredibly rich, rugged, unknown area with huge, huge private ranches, part of the reason we need to protect it, it's so rich. It's so rich. Part of the reason we need to protect it is more of the Sierra is protected hours away from us than this giant mountain range in our own backyard. And then the thing about San Benito county is San Benito county is the largest piece of the Diablo range. It's incredibly beautiful, diverse and amazing, with cultural and historical sites and so on. So it should be a focus anyway. But it's the single biggest piece of the Diablo Range, and yet it has the population of the city of Walnut Creek, about 68,000 people. We have 3 million in the two counties in the east Bay. And it's at a time where conservation can happen very quickly and is likely to happen very quickly if we do the right things. It's deserving of amazing protection. It's incredibly rich. I mean, it's got the tallest mountain in the Diablo Range, San Benito Peak. It's got the longest watershed, the 109 miles San Benito river watershed. It's rich with resources. It's incredible with wildlife. Everybody knows about California condors, but the Diablo range is really a golden eagle, mountain lion, California condor, tuleok Freeway. It also tracks with the San Andreas fault, which creates all kinds of dynamic impacts or dynamic pressures on the system that leads to biodiversity. And the point of all of that is it's a superhighway for wildlife. It's one of the best wildlife corridors you could define, and it's one of the ones that's been identified over and over as needing to be protected because it's such a critical linkage. So we can make a lot of progress protecting wildlife habitat, especially in the time of the climate and biodiversity crises. Because it's north south, it covers hundreds of miles. It's got lots and lots of different elevation ups and downs, lots of different kinds of habitats. And so it's a perfect place for wildlife. And right now it's relying on a whole bunch of private land which could be fragmented and those wildlife corridors could be broken. Right now it's intact. [00:09:59] Speaker C: Is there any prospect of some sort of development going on in the range or in the foothills? [00:10:05] Speaker D: There's all kinds of prospects. There's a lot more pressure in the Bay Area, up at the north end of the range, and Contra Costa, Alameda and San Joaquin counties. But the biggest pressures on the Diablo Range and all of California are invasive species. Second, I'd have to say that the next biggest, biggest pressures are the huge and necessary conversion that we need to make to alternative energy. But location matters, and so there's tremendous pressures for windmills and solar farms, and that's going to both be one of the things that has to be managed and also one of the things that's going to drive preservation with mitigation for all of those different projects. We're seeing what's happening in San Benito with one subdivision after another and the sort of passing the buck that goes on from the city council to the board of supervisors. Bay Area counties have already sort of gotten the word that urban limit lines and growth management measures are one of the ways you manage growth is, say. [00:11:08] Speaker C: Mount Diablo looking at buying large tracts, then, of these ranches. [00:11:13] Speaker D: No, I wouldn't say that we're looking at doing it. We've actually enlarged our. The area in which we'll do acquisition more gradually than the area in which we'll do advocacy. So we're doing advocacy in the entire twelve counties, but there are other organizations and agencies which are going to be looking at protecting land. What we have done is we participated in the creation of prop for the climate bond on the November ballot, and for the first time ever, the San Andreas linkage and the Diablo ranger identified with some specific funding. So if that bond passes, knock on wood. There will be a large pot of money for protection of land in the Diablo range, including in San Benito county. [00:11:57] Speaker C: Well, is there anything else you want to tell us about? [00:12:00] Speaker D: One of the things people should really sort of focus on is San Benito is amazing right now, and that could be easily lost. You could have a situation in. Unless San Benito gets growth controls like the initiative. Protect San Benito is put on the ballot. San Juan Bautista and Hollister could grow together. They could. Development could expand from Gilroy south to meet Hollister. It could expand west to meet Salinas. And you could end up with one big San Jose sized city stretching from Gilroy or Morgan Hill all the way to Salinas. The way to combat that is with growth control measures. [00:12:41] Speaker C: What can people who don't live in and can't vote in San Benito county? [00:12:46] Speaker D: The second part I just really wanted to mention was you really have a choice before you do you want San Benito to be a sea of subdivisions or where there's just incredible amounts of traffic from all of the new development that's not being kept up with services, or do you want it to be a gateway for Pinnacles National park? You can have a tourist economy like Monterey. Monterey has 30,000 people and 4 million visitors a year on the weekends. So you can have a tourist economy where people come in and leave their dollars and then go home, or you can have a sea of subdivisions that just snarls traffic all the time. I personally think San Benito is more likely to be headed towards a tourist economy with economic development based on the amazing characteristics it has. But that's the choice before. That's the choice before people over development and stretched services or showcasing the incredible resources and parks and open spaces that you already have. [00:13:50] Speaker C: Okay, well, thanks very much, Seth, for being on sustainability now. [00:13:55] Speaker D: Hey, thank you for having me. [00:14:00] Speaker B: You're listening to sustainability now. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. And during today's show, we're hearing from four individuals with strong interests in protecting San Benito County. [00:14:10] Speaker C: Chris Wilmers, thank you for being my guest on sustainability now. [00:14:14] Speaker F: Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. [00:14:15] Speaker C: I asked you on the show to talk about biodiversity and wildlife in San Benito county. The county it's crossed from north to south. Bye. Galaban and Diablo mountain ranges. It has this connection to the Santa Cruz Mountains. It's under undeveloped across most of its area, and it's important for critical area for wildlife. So could you tell us what kind of wildlife live in those areas and how they range across them? [00:14:46] Speaker F: Yeah. So San Benito county, it's this amazing. Let's call it Wildlife wild Land hotspot, where, you know, it really comprises a large chunk of the Gavilan Mountains and the Diablo Range, which are sort of the substantial part of the coast ranges. And as you move south from southern California to north and northern California, you've got to go through either the Gavilans or the. Or the Diablo range. And so for wildlife species, it's both critical habitat and super important corridor connecting northern California to southern California along the coast. [00:15:32] Speaker B: Does wildlife travel a long distance? [00:15:34] Speaker C: I mean, coming through these parallel mountain ranges? How far do animals range? [00:15:42] Speaker F: Yeah, of course, it totally depends on the species. If you're, you know, migratory birds, for instance, would be going up and down the coast and using these ranges as they do it. You know, an animal like a deer probably isn't going to move back and forth between mountain ranges, but it's. It's still a super important corridor for animals over time to move north and south. So, for instance, mountain lions, which is the species which I probably spend the most time studying, they have this dispersal phase where the young animals are leaving mom for the first time and moving off to find a new territory, and they might move dozens or hundreds of miles to do so. And that's the way their genetics get spread around the landscape. And if all of a sudden there's a blockage and they can't move north to south anymore, that's going to create problems over time. [00:16:38] Speaker C: And they disperse because of competition from other mountain lions. [00:16:42] Speaker F: Yeah, it would be competition from other mountain lions. And also, you know, if they didn't disperse, then they'd have a hard time finding mates that they're not related to. And so, you know, if you're. If you're trying to find, you know, a mate that. That isn't your sister or cousin, you got to move some miles to do that. [00:17:04] Speaker C: So there are problems with development and other kinds of traffic issues in San Benito county. And tell us about this gap that the mountain lines, in particular have to cross. Yeah. [00:17:17] Speaker F: So, right where the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Gavilan range sort of meet up with each other, it's sort of right in San Benito county. And there's still a fair amount of wildland right there. But there's highway 101 that create some major obstacle, but is not an obstacle that can't be overcome. And there are plans in the works to build a wildlife bridge over the freeway, but then there's a lot of wild land there and some agricultural land that developers badly want to develop and would really critically threaten the wildlife corridor. And so there's a local group there, that local citizen group, that keeps fighting these poorly thought out development projects and winning, both at the ballot box and in court. But just as soon as they've won a victory, the developers reconstitute, sort of change the development plan ever so slightly and get it back on the books again. And so there's this sort of whack a mole process going on where development proposals keep popping up. The local citizens put initiatives on the ballot, they win by 60%, and the developers have to go back to the drawing board. And it just sort of keeps happening over again, like a game of whack a mole. [00:18:41] Speaker C: The area you're talking about is a sort of a jag from east to west on Highway 101. It's around where you go off to San Juan Batista. Right. On the one hand, and on the other hand, come over from Watsonsville. So it's a. And the highway itself only goes through a corner of San Benito county. But the rest of the county, or much of the rest of the county along Highway 101, is potentially developable as well, isn't it? And what sort of impact would that have on wildlife in the area if it were built up? [00:19:16] Speaker F: Yeah, so it sort of depends on which species you're thinking about and all that. You know, I'd say the whole 101 corridor from royal oaks to Gilroy is sort of part of this sort of larger wildlife corridor. And the more developed it gets, the more impenetrable it'll get to wildlife. You know, you don't just have mountain lions moving from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the Gavilan range, but you have. You could potentially have something as small as a salamander. Elk, for instance, have come from the Diablo range and found their way to the very base of the Santa Cruz Mountains there along the San Benito river. And so you have animals moving across this landscape and using various habitats and various pathways. And the more it gets choked up with housing, the less that becomes thought possible. [00:20:13] Speaker C: You track some of the big cats in the area. What have you found with your tracking? [00:20:20] Speaker F: Yeah, so we've been tracking mountain lions in the Santa Cruz Mountains for 17 years, and not one of them has been able to get out of the Santa Cruz mountains. We did have one animal disperse all the way to the location we're talking about, only to get hit by a car, we think, on Highway 101. And then after that experience, we went to that area in the. Near the town of Aromas, and we collared a bunch of bobcats with GPS collars, so we could see their sort of fine scale movements as it relates to Highway 101. And I think we call it twelve or 15 animals in that area. Not a single one of them was able to get across Highway 101, even though their territories bumped right up against it. And so 101, you know, it's four lanes of highway, there's quite heavy traffic along it at all hours of the day. It seems to really be a sort of impenetrable barrier right now to wildlife. [00:21:21] Speaker C: So there's a plan afoot to build some kind of bridger tunnel down there. [00:21:26] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah. So a sort of collaborative group of organizations like the land Trust in Santa Cruz county and the Peninsula Open Space Trust and pathways for wildlife and caltransitive are all putting their heads together to figure out the engineering and the best place to put a wildlife bridge that would connect the Santa Cruz mountains to the Diablo range. And that seems to really be in the works, has legs and probably will happen. [00:21:57] Speaker C: What do these things look like? [00:21:58] Speaker F: Yeah, so this is going to be a bridge, I'm pretty sure, rather than a tunnel, just based on the geology there. And, yeah, wildlife bridges are pretty impressive. You know, it might be 20 or 30ft wide and it'll be vegetated with native vegetation, you know, sort of similar vegetation palette to what you would find in close proximity to it. And. And then it'd be paired with fencing that would go along the highway in either direction for, you know, half a mile or a mile, so that animals coming to that area would hit the fencing, they'd sort of be directed to the bridge and then they'd cross on the bridge. [00:22:40] Speaker C: Would that then. I mean, would that allow animals that are north of the fence to simply try to cross more northerly? I mean, how heavily traveled is this area? Or will it somehow become, I don't know, not customary, but known or something like that as a place to cross? [00:22:59] Speaker F: Yeah. So you would have two types of animals crossing it. You would have animals who. That bridge is part of their home range. Right. And so you might imagine there might be some deer that would, like, cross it, maybe even on a daily basis. Right. Just their home range spans freeway and they're crossing it on a daily basis. Maybe a bobcat would do the same thing. But then you might have mountain lions. There probably won't be a mountain lion crossing it very frequently, but you would have these dispersal age mountain lions dispersing from the Gavilan range. They're getting. Going north. They hit this road, they're like, oh, what do I do. They find this way across it, and they keep on moving north into the Santa Cruz Mountains. And so you'd sort of have both styles of animals using it, both life phases. [00:23:51] Speaker C: Are there any mountain lines likely to head northward along that range? [00:23:56] Speaker F: Yeah, sure. I mean, there's. There's a mountain lion population in the Gatlin Range, which is south of that area, and there's a mountain lion population to the north of it and the Santa Cruz Mountains. And so I would expect animals to move both north and south. [00:24:10] Speaker C: Well, listen, thanks very much for. For being on sustainability now, Chris. [00:24:15] Speaker F: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. [00:24:22] Speaker B: You're listening to sustainability now. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. And during today's show, we're hearing from four individuals with strong interest in protecting San Benito county. [00:24:32] Speaker C: Well, Val Lopez, welcome to sustainability now. [00:24:36] Speaker E: Thank you very much, Ronnie. It's a pleasure being here. [00:24:40] Speaker C: So why don't we start by having you tell us something about the history of the Amamutin tribal, Bandaidheendeh and their ancestors in the central coast area, and the relationship of the various groups, in particular, to San Benito county. [00:24:59] Speaker E: Okay, well, I'm the chairman of the Amamutsum tribal band, and our tribe is comprised of the descendants of the indigenous peoples that were taken to missions, San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz. Our traditional territory today, you know, is comprised of. Starts at the southern end of Coyote Valley, on the interior valleys there, Coyote Valley, it goes down to pinnacles and then east to the ridge line of the Diablo range. And then coming east, it comes east, equal to where the Alcorn slough is and where the wat. And to the northern part of Watsonville. That's our traditional tribal territory. [00:25:57] Speaker C: Okay, so how much of that would you estimate is in San Benito county proper? [00:26:04] Speaker E: The entire amount. The entire amount of San Benito county, you know, well over 90. About 90% or more, is amusement territory. [00:26:14] Speaker C: So you have obviously have an interest in what goes on there. [00:26:18] Speaker E: Absolutely, yes. [00:26:20] Speaker C: And I saw there's also a Amamutsun land trust. What does it do? [00:26:26] Speaker E: Our land trust? You know, our creation story tells us that creator gave us the obligation to take care of our territory and our people learn how to take care of the territory by stewarding native plants so that they're very productive and provide the food and medicine and basketry and other resources that we needed for our way of living, provide for wildlife, etcetera. And creator gave us that responsibility. So our ancestors, for thousands of years, you know, did that work to do that. Then we were separated from the. From the our territory by the brutal history that we experienced, first with the mission and spanish period and the followed by the mexican period, and then the american California period. During that period of time, the population of our tribe decreased by over 98%. And so since the turn of the century in 1900, you know, we kind of lived quietly, under the radar, living in tents, you know, for quite a number of years. The first five years of my life, I spent a large amount of time living in tents with family members and with other tribal members. And we would travel, doing prop work and etcetera. And then little by little, you know, mostly in the Santa Clara, San Bernardino counties. But then as the ranches started getting sold off as ranchettes or development came in, we lost that ability. The majority of our members ended up in the Fresno Hanford modesto areas doing that continuing agricultural work. My dad went to World War two, and so he had different levels of different skill levels, and he transitioned to construction. And so I grew up in Morgan Hill. And so that's, you know, that. That's kind of a little bit of the background of our tribe and where we are now. I was elected chair in 2003, and I've been chair since that time. [00:28:40] Speaker C: And so does the land trust purchase land, or what does it actually do? [00:28:47] Speaker E: Well, I'm glad you re asked the question, because I didn't answer it the first time. So here's the answer. Our land trust. The purpose of our land trust is we had four prongs. We have four goals. The first one is to protect and conserve our traditional lands, particularly our cultural sites and our spiritual site. That's the most important goal of our tribe at our land trust. Then we conduct research. Research to learn about how our ancestors lived in prehistory times, to learn about the true history of our tribe and to restore the knowledge, the indigenous knowledge that was taken away from us because of that brutal history. Our traditional songs, our dances, our ceremonies, our places of power, etcetera. So that's the second thing. Research. The third one is education. Education of our tribal members as we learn that knowledge, to share with our tribal members so that they can carry that forward with them. But then also education to the public, so the public can know who we are, how our ancestors lived, and to learn the true history of the periods of colonization. And then the fourth goal is to restore traditional indigenous stewardship to the ground, to the lands. And that's what we do. We have a stewardship corps that works hard on the grounds every day to restore our native plants, to take care of the rivers, to take care of the oceans. We just. I was out with our stewards on Wednesday of this week, for example, and we were doing a lot of work to, related to monitoring of the muscle of the mussel beds near Davenport. [00:30:31] Speaker C: Oh, wow. What does that entail? [00:30:35] Speaker E: Well, you know, we work with a researcher from the Scripps Institute, and what we do is we go out and we do just real high definition of photography of the beds I see. And it develops 3d models and stuff like that that we can see. And then we do it continuously over periods of time. And then you can compare the changes to it, the health of the muscles, the quantity, etcetera, so that we can monitor the muscles and determine, look at the effects of climate change, look at the effects of. Of the muslims over periods of time and such. [00:31:27] Speaker C: Well, for a number of years now, the band and land trust have been leading a campaign to protect the area called Eurostock from being mined for sand and gravel. What is Eurostat, where is it? And what's the status of your campaign? [00:31:44] Speaker E: Well, thank you for asking that, Ronnie. Eurostock is the most sacred site of the amamutsan people, and our people had ceremonies there for thousands and thousands of years. Eurostock is also the home of our spiritual leader, who we know as Kuk shui. And we were, you know, over the years of, you know, since first contact, we were hoping and praying that Eurostock would not be disturbed with development and that some way, somehow we could always find a way back to that territory. And fortunately, Eurostock really was other than, well, there is. There is ranching there, cattle ranching, and then they have, you know, there were tar pits there, and so now those right there are being mined for oil. It's, you know, they have oil wells there on a particular. But that's located. That's a very small part of the ranch where that's going on. But in 2015 or 2014, rather, developers bought the property out of bankruptcy and announced their intentions to do sand and gravel mining at Eurostock. And they would actually take down four of our most sacred mountains and put big pits into the ground where our ceremonies were held. And that was totally unacceptable to us. Looking into that further, we saw that the regulations, the county regs, would allow that san and gravel mining to be permitted. It sounded like there would be no way to stop it. And we talked to a number of people, boards of supervisors, staff, people, attorneys, etcetera, and it was very clear to us, and it was actually told to us, that the only way to stop the mighty permit would be overwhelming public support and so that became our main emphasis of our work and such like that. So during that time, we put a coalition of just about every environmental conservation organization together to oppose Eurostock. We developed an online petition where we gathered over 25,000 signatures. We've had quite a few public sessions where we talk about the impacts, the environmental impacts, the impacts to the wildlife corridor. This is an essential wildlife corridor. North and south and east and west, south into the Gabalon Range and then east into the Diablo Range. This is a critical wildlife corridor area right there. And then we also talked to the cities and got cities to support us. So the cities of Saratoga, Campbell, Palo Alto, Santa Clara County, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, they've all passed resolutions to oppose the mind. We also talked to, the county has a human rights commission, and we talked to the Human Rights Commission of Santa Clara county, and they're the ones that are going to either approve of or deny the mining permit. And the Human Rights Commission of Santa Clara county wrote that, a letter to the board of supervisors telling them that this is a human rights issue and that their recommend, you know, and that their recommendation was that the mining permit be denied. And then there was a environmental impact report came out. The draft environmental impact report came out, and we worked together with the conservation organizations as such to try and develop a large comment, letter writing campaign so that they could write, you know, so that the public could write letters to the county, to Santa Clara county, notifying them to oppose the mining, the mining permit. We worked hard to recruit a really professional folks, a lot of academic professionals, a lot of people who work in certain scientific areas and stuff like that, to write letters, technical letters to the county as well, stating the reasons for water, hydrology, wildlife corridor, earthquake issues. It's being built right on a fault and earthquake issues and worker safety issues here. Then we also talked about the endangered species that are there, the red legged frog, Salamander, and then the wildlife corridor for the mountain lion and others. So we were very successful in that writing campaign. My understanding is, while over 10,000 letters were submitted to the county, many of them were very scientific and important, you know, air quality, noise, etcetera, light pollution at nighttime, because they'll be ready 24 hours. And so we, you know, we were quite happy with that response. And now we're waiting for the county. The county has to write a reply to each comment that they received, and that's what the county is working on now. And we believe that that final environmental impact report with the county's recommendation will be out in April or May of next year. [00:37:48] Speaker C: So it's taken quite a long time, and the company that owns the land is. Still hasn't gone bankrupt as a result of not being able to operate well. [00:38:02] Speaker E: It's a group of investors, and they've been together a very long time, and they've had a lot of successes over the years. You know, our guess is that they're well, well financed there. It's an investor group from San Diego. You know, they're not even from the territory. I got a. You know, they're. What they do is they buy distressed properties, try to find a way to monetize it and quickly make money for them, and then they sell it. They don't intend to run the mine. They don't intend to have any long term holding on to the land or anything like that. You know, they just want to flip it as quick as possible. The work of our tribe and our partners and conservation in the. In the local communities and stuff like that are slowing this process down, but it will come to a vote at some point in the near future. And so we got to keep the pressure up, and we got to keep working hard, keep, you know, keep working together. [00:39:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:39:04] Speaker B: One last question. [00:39:05] Speaker C: Are you trying to purchase the property? [00:39:08] Speaker E: We do not have those type of resources to purchase that property. We work with a lot of conservation organizations, and we're hoping that the lands can end up in conservation. And then long term, we would like to work with the owners of the property to possibly, you know, possible to find a way for our tribe to achieve ownership. But that's years or decades away before we could be in a position to do that, so. But we'd like to do is to have Eurostock be a tribal park, a tribal park where we can restore the landscapes back to its pre talk, pre contact conditions so that we can show the public the benefits and the care, etcetera, of our. Of our traditional native plants, show them about our native foods, native medicines, and stuff like that. Talk, you know, and restore fire to the landscape, for example, to show the benefits of fire. And then also, it'd be a location where we would talk about our tribe in the. Our tribe's history, pre contact during the mission spanish period, the mexican period, the american period, and to today, it'd be a strong education center, plus an opportunity for families to get out on traditional landscapes and see for themselves the difference there and the benefits that traditional stewardship brings to the land. [00:40:35] Speaker C: Well, Val, thank you for being on sustainability now. [00:40:38] Speaker E: You're welcome, Ronnie. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Very much. [00:40:44] Speaker B: You're listening to sustainability now. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipschitz. And during today's show, we're hearing from four individuals with strong interests in protecting San Benito County. [00:40:55] Speaker C: Andy Chakaron, welcome to sustainability now. [00:40:59] Speaker G: Thank you, Andy. [00:41:01] Speaker C: So San Benito is the fastest growing county in California and it's lost, I saw, 43 of its percent of its farmland since 1984. What's going on there? [00:41:11] Speaker G: Well, you know, we're really very close to Silicon Valley where the, you know, we're the county just south of Santa Clara county. And so there's tremendous pressure to house a lot of the people who work in Santa Clara county down here in San Benito. But there's also been a lot of pressure to do things like take that region's garbage for a garbage mountain, so to speak, at the John Smith landfill to mine our rivers and some of our other lands for gravel and sand, for concrete, for San Jose. I mean, it's basically, you know, there's an old porfirio dias quote about poor Mexico so far from God, so close to the United States. And I like to say poor San Benito, so far from God, so close to Silicon Valley. [00:42:03] Speaker C: It's interesting. There are only 64 and a half thousand people living in San Benito county according to last census. And that's a pretty low population density compared to the Bay Area. Where do the people mostly live and what do they do? [00:42:18] Speaker G: Well, you know, it's. It's kind of deceptive in that a lot of our county is Bureau of land management land, open space, you know, south county, beautiful, beautiful places in the areas around the pinnacles and other areas that don't have a tremendous amount of water but are really important areas. But most of the development happens in the northern part of the county, primarily around the city of Hollister and secondarily around the city of San Juan Bautista. We only have two incorporated cities in San Benito county. [00:42:54] Speaker C: Is that where most of the people live, then? [00:42:56] Speaker G: Yeah, Hollister. And the majority of the people live in Hollister and in communities around Hollister, in county lands. [00:43:04] Speaker C: I know it's very close to Gilroy as well. Is there overspill from Gilroy? [00:43:09] Speaker G: Well, that's the danger is that if we just continue to allow more and more development out on the farmlands in northern county we'll end up with Gilroy merging with San Juan Bautista and Hollister and all the way down to Salinas because there's tremendous growth along the 101 corridor and pressure to grow along the 101 corridor. [00:43:31] Speaker C: What's happening now in terms of development. [00:43:34] Speaker G: Well, what you've got going on in our county is that developers have an inordinate influence in our county. Big developers come down into our county, they essentially buy up farm arranged land areas that are zoned for something else, and then they get the supervisors to amend the general plan and change the designation to residential, sometimes to industrial, commercial, but generally to residential, and then they build subdivisions. Unfortunately, even though our general plan talks about protecting our open space and our ag land, it takes a small donation, frankly, to the campaigns of politicians to get them decide on the side of those developers. [00:44:19] Speaker C: Where's the board of supervisors on all of this? [00:44:22] Speaker G: Well, for a long time, the board of supervisors has literally never said no to developers. But recently, in the March election, we succeeded in shifting the majority of our supervisors in actually landslide elections. So that starting in January, not yet, but starting in January, when the last of them is installed, there'll be a three, two majority of folks who are generally in favor of slowing the growth. That could be transient. We don't know how long that will last. We hope that the people will continue to think that that's what they should have in power. [00:44:58] Speaker C: Well, tell us about your organization and its activities. [00:45:02] Speaker G: Yeah, our group is called Protect San Benito county. We have a political committee called campaign to protect San Benito, and we've been involved in working to protect the open space, the farmlands, the environment of San Benito county for over ten years. We started back in 2013 with an effort to stop fracking in our county. We were the first county in California to use the initiative process to ban fracking and other extreme oil extraction methods. And we were outspent by the oil industry, 20 to one, something like that. And we succeeded in passing a ban on fracking and a lot of these other kinds of oil activities with a 60% vote. And we've been involved in these kinds of issues ever since. Starting in 2020, there was an effort to essentially take all the on and off ramps on Highway 101. We have about a seven mile stretch of Highway 101 and turn all of these on and off ramps into. For those who know, the town of Prundale, the semi town of Prundale, shopping centers, hotels, gas stations, basically have a string of those which would have eventually merged and into one hellscape of development along this area. What we did when they were moving forward is we did a citizens referendum, and again, we were grossly outspent. But the people voted 60% that they did not want commercial nodes on the Highway 101 ramps to be developed. And shortly after that, we were faced with a huge development proposal by. It was called Strada Verde, and it was by a company called Newport Pacific Land Company, which got most of its money from greater China investors. And it intended to rezone over 2000 acres to initially what they called an innovation park. But we felt was basically a Trojan horse for opening up major development, which could eventually have become a city up there at the junction of 25 and Highway 101. They tried to do it by a citizens initiative and collected signatures at the beginning of the COVID period. And we succeeded in beating them, even though they outspent us again, grossly. We spent about $30,000. They spent $750,000, and we got a 60% vote by the people of San Benito saying they didn't want it. [00:47:44] Speaker C: So you have an initiative proposed for the November ballot. Tell us about that. [00:47:49] Speaker G: It's fairly simple and straightforward, and we ended up having a ballot question that was, I think, 36 words, which we had to fight to keep it that way, because it was straightforward and clear about what our initiative does. It says that any time there's an effort to redesignate, you can call it change land, from agricultural, rural, or rangeland, which is basically the open space and the ag land, to any kind of development, commercial, industrial, residential, or, for that matter, a garbage dump, it requires a vote of the people. So that's the first thing it does. And that is, we didn't invent this idea. Three counties, Napa, Sonoma, and Ventura counties, all near big metropolitan areas, all did this about 30 years ago, and it's been remarkably successful and popular in those counties. They've all prospered by protecting their open space and ag lands. They're in one of the most desirable places to live in the state. And so that's the primary thing that our initiative does. The only other wrinkle, if you will, is that it removes the commercial designations for the four nodes along Highway 101. Because after we prevailed in our referendum in 2020 regarding the nodes on Highway 101, the supervisors decided to go around us and used various other kinds of zoning to start approving these projects, even though the folks had voted against it in the county. And so what our initiative does, since they have not yet secured permits for these developments, is to pull back the designations that they've got to revert them to their original zoning, their original designations, and then subject them to votes of the people. So if any, they can still, but could still be developed, any or all of them, but they would have to bring them to a vote of the people, not go around the people. [00:49:47] Speaker C: Just one quick question about that what would be the size of the development that would be subject to a vote? I mean, I'm imagining if someone decides to build a house out on, you know, some land, would that then be subject to a vote or. [00:50:02] Speaker G: Absolutely not. There's a very wide range of activities allowed, in terms of range, rural and farmland. So people can build houses, people can build barns, people can build auxiliary units. You can even have things like small hotels and airbnbs. There's a lot of things that are allowed to under those designations. So our initiative doesn't touch that at all. What it touches is when somebody's coming in and deciding they want to take land that's zoned for agriculture and change its use. [00:50:38] Speaker C: The board of supervisors commissioned a consultant study of the. I think, of the impacts of your initiative. Can you tell us something about that? [00:50:48] Speaker G: Well, first of all, I've now gotten a better insight into why supervisors commissioned these reports. It seems like its primary purpose is to get a document that looks like it's somehow authoritative so that the opposition can quote from it. And it's clear that signals were sent to the consultant to basically do a hatchet job, in our view, and to imply that there was a lot of negative economic impacts to this. And I contrast it with what happened up in Solano county, which was a big story about the billionaires trying to create a big city up there. And they did a 9111 report up there, and I think it was a far more honest report. And it basically said that there were going to be tremendous costs to the people of Solano county in the billions of dollars. So this report that we got implied that the loss of the nodes along Highway 101 would result in anywhere from $750,000 a year to $15 million a year in lost revenues. And even at the hearing where they presented it, they said, oh, that was highly speculative, and they really had no strong evidence for where these figures came from. But there was a couple of suppositions that were really kind of ludicrous. They act as if they can read minds, that they can tell what the supervisors would or wouldn't vote for and what the people would or wouldn't vote for in terms of these nodes on Highway 101. And then, of course, you're looking at what kind of monies would be generated by any activities along this corridor. And I think one of the most interesting things is one of the supervisors asked, how come you haven't evaluated what the costs would be of developing these areas, these rural areas, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of police and fire service. And they said, well, we're assuming that impact fees would balance out all the costs for that. And the supervisor just laughed. He said, it's never happened before like that. In San Benito county, the best predictor of the future is looking at the past, that generally whenever a project comes forward, the first thing they do, the developers is start lobbying for lowering their impact fees. So what happens is those impacts get passed on to the people of the county. [00:53:31] Speaker C: Okay, well, good luck with the initiative, and thank you for being on sustainability now. [00:53:37] Speaker G: Thank you so much. [00:53:39] Speaker B: You've been listening to for sustainability now interviews about efforts to protect the landscape and biodiversity of San Benito county with Seth Abrams from Save Mount Diablo, Chris Wilmers of UC Santa Cruz, Val Lopez, chair of the Amamutsun, whose ancestral lands cover much of the county, and Andy Chia Caron of the campaign to protect San Benito county. If you'd like to listen to previous shows, you can find [email protected] sustainabilitynow as well as Spotify, YouTube and Pocketcasts, among other podcast sites. So thanks for listening, and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make Ksquid your community radio station and keep it going. And so, until next, every other Sunday. Sustainability now. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Not true. Currents and thriving seas, winds blowing through breathing trees. Strongholds on safe sunshine. Good planets are hard to find. Yeah. [00:54:55] Speaker E: Good.