DATE:  NOVEMBER 5, 2007
TO:  DEBBIE DAVIS, DAVIS ENTERPRISE EDITOR
FROM:  VICKI MURPHY
RE:  CAPAY VALLEY GENERAL PLAN
                                       

The Capay Valley is already zoned ‘agriculture’, and most ranches are in Williamson Act contracts, but the Yolo County General Plan and the Capay Valley General Plan want to impose even more restrictions that profess to ‘protect agriculture’.  

On pages 6 & 7 of the Capay Valley General Plan and the maps show “parks and tribal lands” and “Parks and Open Space of the Capay Valley”.  When did all the working ranches become a park and open space? 

Next, Ag Districts are being proposed that will severely limit building on undeveloped properties.  Your dream house on the hill may not comply with the new Ag District rules, so it should be built along Highway 16?  Yolo Hikers don’t like to see rooftops while in their outdoor reveries. 

Ag District development also triggers a permanent conservation easement on the parcel.  What if all upscale neighborhoods and backyards in Winters, Woodland and Davis, were designated “Backyard Districts” and offered up for possible public use as has every parcel in the Capay Valley?   

Wait!   There’s more property control on the horizon!  The western ridge top of the Capay Valley is part of the Blue Ridge Berryessa Natural Area (www.brbna.org) whose boundaries flop over onto private lands all along the upland areas.  The BRBNA professes to have no corporate structure or real authority, but it has big plans to increase their already massive boundaries to 800,000 acres. 

Tuleyome, the new BRBNA partner, will be the entity assimilating easement and Land Trust properties into the BRBNA.  Remember how the County planned to have Tuleyome manage the Conaway Ranch?  They were going to cash in on easements then transform it into park lands.  Off the tax rolls, out of the private sector.

This is all really quite retro-revolutionary!  As landowners look to easements for a way to save their ranches from the realtor or development, we’ll be getting sucker-punched if easements prove to be the vehicle that returns us all to the European model of ‘no-such-thing-as- private- property’ from which our ancestors fled.       

Vicki Murphy, Director
Family Water Alliance
Brooks, CA

For more information on the BRBNA, be sure to check out the links below:

FWA Website: Our Issues: BRBNA

Blue Ridge Berryessa Natural Area: www.brbna.org,

Tuleyome: http://tuleyome.org

Yolo Hiker: http://www.yolohiker.org/

Yolo County General Plan: www.yolocountygeneralplan.org

Capay Valley General Plan

Wildlands Project: www.wildlandsprojectrevealed.org and http://wildlandsproject.org

Rewilding Project: http://www.sweetliberty.org

To view FWA's educational brochure on the BRBNA, click here.

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