By JP Theberge with Tommy Hough
As we get closer to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors hearing on Lilac Hills Ranch on Wednesday, June 24, I wanted to share a few thoughts, including details on the recent approval given to Lilac Hills by the San Diego County Planning Commission on June 12, in spite of the county fire chief and county staff recommending against it. "Quintessential Sprawl" The Lilac Hills project is quintessential sprawl: a housing subdivision in a remote, rural area of the county near Valley Center, accessible via narrow, winding roads surrounded by highly flammable habitat that has burned repeatedly over the years. You may recall Lilac Hills was previously presented as Measure B on the countywide ballot in 2016. San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action were a key component of the coalition that opposed Measure B four years ago. At the time, the developer chose to bypass the Board of Supervisors to take the project straight to the voters, but county voters soundly rejected it on Election Day by a two-to-one margin with 730,000 votes against the development. This time around, the developer is hoping to get a simple majority on the Board of Supervisors to approve it, despite county staff and even Chief Tony Mecham, the director of the San Diego County Fire Authority, recommending that supervisors deny approval of Lilac Hills. The gravity of this is unprecedented, as the county fire authority has typically been notorious for rubber-stamping similar projects. Similarly, the main objection of county staff is the project is inherently unsafe due to wildfire concerns, compounded by an inability to secure easements for vegetation management along the main egress on West Lilac Rd. While the developer is offering $2 million for "brush abatement," the expectation is the Lilac Hills HOA, or other management entity, would manage the actual clearance on West Lilac Rd. in perpetuity, even though there's no legally-binding mechanism requiring it. In addition, the exisiting road is simply not designed, and was never intended, to evacuate a community the size of Lilac Hills safely and quickly during a wildfire. Wildfire Realities So why did county staff suddenly reverse themselves after years of saying Lilac Hills was safe? One reason is that since 2016, wildfires in Northern California, including massive conflagrations in Santa Rosa (Sonoma County) in 2017 and Paradise (Butte County) in 2018, have put renewed focus on evacuation infrastructure. Two lawsuits filed against San Diego County by the Elfin Forest Harmony Grove Town Council also prevailed for the plaintiffs, due to unsafe conditions and faulty analysis of evacuations. In fact, the county conducted its own studies on Lilac Hills fire safety, independent of the developers' fire consultants, and found the project would, indeed, create a fire entrapment risk. So let's pause for a moment. At this stage, a county commissioner voting in favor of the Lilac Hills project would essentially be saying, "There is no amount of danger to the public bad enough for me to vote against development in the backcountry." June 12th Planning Commission Meeting Nevertheless, planning commissioners steamrolled county staff earlier this month by forcing a motion counter to two alternate options presented by staff. According to the motion proposed by Commission Chair Douglas Barnhart (representing Jim Desmond), "Recommend board not deny project based on fire safety issue. Board director should propose that applicant's project be conditioned to ensure funding for vegetation funding in perpetuity without the need for easements." The motion passed 5 to 2, with commissioners Yolanda Calvo (Fletcher) and Michael Beck (Jacob) opposed. As per usual, Commissioner Michael Seiler (Cox) seemed as if he was going to vote against it, only to vote for the motion when Vice Chair Bryan Woods (Jacob) and Barnhart added the motion to recommend a condition of approval, i.e. the ongoing "brush abatement" funding. This may not be a particularly difficult obstacle to overcome before the full Board of Supervisors, especially since other wildfire issues not addressed by the planning commission appear to be far bigger and of far greater concern, like the overall lack of evacuation routes. It's likely the pro-sprawl supervisors will not see this condition of approval as particularly problematic. Desmond, Gaspar, and Cox will vote for approval of the Lilac Hills development unless significant pressure is put on them to do otherwise. Jim Desmond's Valley Center Pledge During the D-5 supervisor race in 2018, then-candidate Jim Desmond stated he would not support Lilac Hills if it didn't have adequate emergency infrastructure. At the D-5 candidates forum in Valley Center on May 4, 2018, Desmond said "Unless it has the infrastructure that's necessary for their emergency access, ingress and egress and it provides that for the rest of VC. I would not support it. Unless it comes with that infrastructure and brings you that extra benefit of emergency access. If it is adequate and the fire department signs off on it, then I would approve it." It will be politically problematic for Jim Desmond, with plenty of bad optics, to approve Lilac Hills when the fire chief says it's not safe, especially after he explicitly stated he would not do so if county fire was not in approval. Desmond would do we to remember that 80 percent of the voters in his district (D-5) voted against Lilac Hills in 2016 – Republicans and Democrats. So while it may seem out of the purview of a partisan Democratic club, one action item you may want to consider is to convince Republican or right-leaning friends, family, or colleagues in D-5 to write comment letters calling on Supervisor Desmond to "keep his word" on Lilac Hills. In fact, this might be the ONLY thing that forces Jim Desmond to vote against it. This is also problematic for Supervisor Kristen Gaspar, even though Lilac Hills isn't in her district. Voting against fire safety can and will come back to haunt her in the all-important D-3 race against Terra Lawson-Remer this fall. But despite the electoral risk, there is absolutely no reason to expect Gaspar will do anything but vote to approve Lilac Hills. She has always voted in developers' interest, even against county staff recommendations, and received close to one million dollars' worth of support via industry-related PACs during the 2016 election. This is one moment when they will expect to collect. What Can You Do? Take ACTION Today! Submit a comment via the county's e-comment system by 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, June 24. You'll want to support the agenda item, because the agenda item is to DENY the project. Support staff's recommendation to deny. You can also send a longer letter to the Board of Supervisors via e-mail, but you'll want to do so by Sunday night in order for it to be considered: You can also send messages directly to your supervisors as a constituent:
Please be sure to "attend" the San Diego County Board of Supervisors hearing virtually this Wednesday, June 24, and call in a comment (maximum of three minutes). Instructions do so are here. Make sure you register by 8:30 a.m. the morning of June 24 or you won't be able to comment. Remember: We want to support the agenda item because the agenda item is to DENY the project. Support staff's recommendation to deny. You can also tag your supervisor on social media via Twitter: And via Facebook: JP Theberge runs a public opinion and market research firm and serves as the director of Grow the San Diego Way, providing data and analysis on housing issues in San Diego County. JP also serves on the board of San Diegans for Managed Growth. He lives in Elfin Forest. Banner photo by Tommy Hough
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By Tommy Hough and Mark Jackson San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action were part of the coalition that opposed, and defeated, the Lilac Hills Measure B proposal in 2016, and we similarly stood fast against backcountry sprawl in our advocacy for Measure A earlier this year. But being a zombie project, the proposed Lilac Hills development near Valley Center has never really gone away – it's just been repackaged, even as county staff and the county fire authority have "determined the project is unsafe and is recommending denial of the project." This Friday, June 12, at 9 a.m. the Planning Commission will hold what our friends at San Diegans Against Lilac Hills Ranch describe as an "unprecedented" hearing on the Lilac Hills Ranch proposal, with it being the single item on Friday's Planning Commission agenda. Take a moment now to submit your comments to the Planning Commission, and be sure they're in by 7:30 a.m. Friday morning to be considered. According to the San Diegans Against Lilac Hills Ranch team, the protocol to speak at the Planning Commission hearing is as follows:
BE AWARE: The hearing is live while on the phone, but if you're watching the video streaming it will be delayed by 45 seconds. Utilize the phone audio, not the streaming audio. Click here to review Friday's agenda and the relevant county documents. By Mia Taylor with Tommy Hough The Trump administration has unleashed a new series of assaults on the environment, public health, and wildlife over the past 48 hours, announcing four actions that will result in dramatic curbs on long-standing, effective environmental regulations, threaten recovering marine areas, and endanger millions of wild birds.
"It's impossible to overstate just how cruel and pernicious Trump's presidency is for our environment and our climate," said club president Cody Petterson. "Every day he unravels protections that took decades of struggle and effort to achieve." The latest attacks on the environment cap an end-of-the-week assault unleashed by the Trump administration. "With the nation's attention on COVID-19 and the protests sweeping our nation, the Trump administration is accelerating its headlong race to the bottom to dismantle our nation's post-war legacy of environmental protection," said Petterson. Club co-founder and former president Tommy Hough was equally blunt. "This administration's environmental nihilism and hostility to conservation knows no bounds," said Hough. "If it grows, this administration will kill it. If it is preserved, they seek to exploit it. This is an administration that just enabled trophy hunters to murder bears and other wildlife in their wintertime dens. It is cruelty incarnate." Hough also noted the timing and petty returns. "With the attack on MPAs, Trump is hoping to dial in Maine's electoral votes in November. With his assault on clean air he's again looking out for his Big Oil and Big Gas benefactors. And cowardly using the biggest pandemic in 100 years and greatest civil unrest in 50 years to give 'cover' to these rollbacks is pure political swamp cynicism." All of these moves come as Trump's poll numbers decline and his chances of re-election dim. Faced with the demise of his administration, Trump is dramatically stepping up his attacks on our nation’s conservation heritage, and decimation of wildlife and the environment. "The extractive industries that dictate Trump's environmental policy will try to destroy as many of our regulations and wild spaces as they can," said Petterson. "It's essential we not only fight tooth and nail against these efforts, but loudly impress upon our elected officials and candidates the central importance of quickly repairing our ravaged environmental regulations and protections if we are able to liberate our nation's capital from the corporations that have looted it over the last four years." Photo by Tommy Hough
By Cody Petterson
Since its inception, the San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action have been committed to protecting our environment, confronting the climate emergency, and advancing environmental justice. The core of the environmental movement is a belief in the oneness of life, in the fundamental interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, and of our value and entitlement to life, dignity, and freedom. We are also Americans who believe in the equality before the law that our Constitution guarantees us, and in the dependence of our government on the consent of the governed. We categorically stand with communities of color in their demands not only for justice, but for an equitable share of this nation's wealth, health, and opportunity. We stand likewise with those who have taken to the streets to demand genuine remedy, and we condemn the egregious, militarized, disproportionate use of force against overwhelmingly peaceful protesters. We encourage our members to participate in whatever ways they believe appropriate. The struggle for sustainability is inextricable from the struggle for equity. By Mia Taylor and Tommy Hough
This week marks the inaugural #BlackBirdersWeek, an occasion borne from a racist incident that occurred over Memorial Day Weekend in New York's Central Park, involving New York City Audubon board member Christian Cooper. Four days after that incident, which sparked national outrage and highlighted the inequities and potentially dangerous challenges persons of color face even when enjoying the outdoors, a coalition of scientists, birders, and outdoor advocates launched a campaign to encourage birding and related outdoor activities among persons and communities of color under the name and hashtag #BlackBirdersWeek. Co-organizer Corina Newsome, a graduate student at Georgia Southern University studying the Seaside Sparrow, took to Twitter with a video to announce the event, and said African-American outdoor advocates shouldn't be deterred by those who have attempted to make public outdoor spaces hostile. "This effort was borne out of a large friend group of black scientists and outdoor explorers who want to make sure the world knows black birders belong here," said Newsome. "We are thriving, and our community is growing. We want members of our community who might be interested in birding and outdoor exploration to know they are welcome here." Newsome went on to add, "For far too long, black people in the United States have been shown that outdoor activities are not for us. Whether it's the way the media chooses to present who is the 'outdoorsy' type, or the racism black people experience when we do explore the outdoors, as we saw recently in Central Park. We've decided to change that narrative." As reported in Audubon Magazine, the week-long event kicked off on Sunday and runs through Friday, with five days of virtual happenings each with a unique theme and hashtag. By Tommy Hough The San Diego County Board of Supervisors will consider enlarging the Otay Ranch Village 14 project site near Jamul, along with a land swap with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in order to accommodate the Otay Ranch 14 plan, at the board's next meeting this Wednesday, June 3rd, at 9 a.m. While the proposed land swap adds greater acreage to the Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve, the area to be traded away is far more ecologically sensitive with a greater density of rare habitats, endangered species, and a location in the center of a critical regional wildlife corridor. Please write a letter or virtually attend the meeting to voice your objection. It's unlikely the supervisors will change their 2019 decision to move forward with the plan or reject the land swap, but a robust turnout will illustrate the level of concern over the project when it arrives at the state Wildlife Conservation Board for consideration in August. There's more information about participating in Wednesday's meeting here. Photos courtesy of Dave Hogan By Cody Petterson and Tommy Hough Over Memorial Day Weekend a man named Christian Cooper, who serves as a board member for the New York City Audubon chapter, was involved in what has become a nationally-covered incident that highlights the inequities and potentially dangerous challenges persons of color face – even while enjoying the outdoors, and even while engaging in activities as benign as bird watching. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police the same weekend, the incident has become another focal point in the latest national discussion on racism in the United States. It's quite clear this incident could have quickly grown into a confrontation that may have ended in a far more destructive manner. Audubon quickly issued a statement of support for Christian, and San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action would like to add our support, by way of these remarks from club president Cody Petterson: "Americans of color continue to experience unacceptable risks and impediments to their enjoyment of our natural, outdoor spaces. We are committed to making our parks and outdoors, and the environmental movement in particular, safer and more welcoming to communities of color. SDCDEA stands in absolute solidarity with Christian Cooper. We hope he and his family are safe and well after this frightening encounter that was needlessly, deliberately escalated." By Tommy Hough
Thanks to everyone who dialed in for our virtual May mega-meeting on May 20th, featuring 15 area environmental leaders. If you were unable to dial in virtually or simply couldn't join us for the entirety of the meeting and hear from every guest, club president Cody Petterson has prepared video links from Zoom to the first and second halves of the three-hour virtual meeting reboot:
Each video segment runs approximately 90 minutes. By Tommy Hough It's a great time to be a polluter. From the moment Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, his cabal quickly became the most anti-environmental administration in modern U.S. history. It was a surprise to no one. We expected the worst from Trump, and he's delivered. On election night 2016, at the moment the results were clear and the bourbon was beginning to flow, I sat down and wrote my emergency list of "Conservation Points That Must Be Addressed Prior to Inauguration," like National Monument designations, moves to shore up Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, protection of the Wilderness Act and Antiquities Act, etc. Boy, was I thinking small. Trump's team had a game plan, and it was a determined effort to rid every federal agency of every last vestige of competence, fact-based rationale, or anyone who could plausibly say "no," and instead, turn our hallowed insititutions into instruments of lazy absurdity to give credible cover to a radicalized, lawless vision of America in the service of a corrupt banana republic ruling family. They were thinking big, and familiar. The pencilnecks in Washington never saw it coming. Within days of Trump taking office, the EPA was turned upside down and promoting coal (!) and the benefits of mercury, the hallowed National Park Service was bullied into doctoring inauguration photos, and the Interior Department announced plans to either modify the boundaries or entirely do away with 27 National Monuments, essentially undoing the entire reason National Monuments are established in the first place. Unprecedented you say? Well, the boss said so. Precedent would receive no attention or respect from this administration. Not that his supporters care. And despite all of Trump's characteristically confused bravado pledging to make America great and revive oil, fracking, and even coal in the face of abundant, rational, and profitable (!) renewable energy opportunities, in the days after the election Trump apologists admonished us that Donald Trump was "an American," wishfully hoped that "nothing will change," and that his administration would follow what Chief Justice John Roberts has called "settled" law. They've done anything but. Trump's packing of federal courts, and quite possibly, one to two more seats on the Supreme Court should he be reelected, or should a tragedy befall one of the justices between now and January 2021, ensures even more wretched, absurd decisions for decades to come, even if we get lucky and bump Trump and his Republican enablers out of office in November – and assuming they actually leave town in January without tanks in the street. According to the New York Times, "After three years, the Trump administration has dismantled most major climate and environmental policies." Ever the champion of fossil fuels, Trump has described the countless policies he has done away with as "burdensome" to the fossil fuel industry and other extraction businesses. After all, it's so hard to be a billionaire or a multinational corporation in America. This breathtaking, ongoing assault on America's environmental heritage includes the undoing of 64 long-standing regulatory policies, with 34 more rollbacks in progress for a total of 98. Presidents from FDR to Obama prided themselves on policy they'd passed. Trump, and his rudderlessly embittered supporters cheer every little thing he tears down. So much for the vision of a guy who made a name for himself building buildings, however tacky they are. I never imagined Team Trump and their GOP enablers would be able to manage an enforced brain drain and literally gut federal agencies into the ether, but that's what they did. For years Republicans whined that government is inefficient, and government can't possibly be an asset to the citizenry. They were so intent on demonstrating this premise they elected Donald Trump to make sure reality fit the pipe dream. I always figured the cabal would need someone around who had a clue in case of a real emergency. Instead, those few civil servants remaining who have a clue and demonstrate it, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, get death threats from emboldened lunatics instead of thanks. I never imagined modern, Obama-era agreements to limit poisonous emissions from power plants and ensure more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, all made in conjunction with industry leaders, would be gutted as swiftly as rules pertaining to clean air, water, and toxic chemicals. But of course, failure of imagination is what led to disasters like Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The era of modern American conservation can be traced past LBJ and FDR to the hearty, workaholic activism of President Theodore Roosevelt on behalf of wilderness and open space, President Benjamin Harrison's creation of the U.S. Forest Reserve system in 1891 to stop the wanton destruction of western forests, and President Abraham Lincoln's donation of Yosemite Valley to the state of California in 1864 for the purpose of establishing a park in the Sierras. Trump has put an end to that grand tradition of American conservation, of pride in America's natural heritage. This is a man, after all, who stares at eclipses and is visibly uncomfortable outside. Prior to becoming president, the only time Trump spent outdoors was while walking from his limo to the front door of the building he was entering. Like all of his toxic behavior, Trump projects his contempt and disgust for our natural world onto us all. To be fair, the golden era of American conservation was already a little wobbly by the time James Watt threw a wrench into it in the early 1980s leading the Reagan administration's Interior Department, but the preservation of the Stanislaus River, 1984 Wilderness Act(s), 1994 California Desert Protection Act, 1994 Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), and 2001 Roadless Rule were still ahead. The slope became increasingly slippery during the George W. Bush years, and during the Obama administration the lunatic GOP Congress routinely ran rough drafts of today's conservation rollbacks by the White House, knowing full well Obama would veto them. As I said in presentations at that time, they were just getting the wording right and waiting for a Republican administration. Ultimately, Obama ended up preserving more federal land than any president before him, so Trump inherited a federal preservation system ripe for exploitation and abuse. As the administration quietly closed off 24 million of acres of public land in the Intermountain West for oil and gas exploration, they loudly announced plans to open some two million acres of conservation lands managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with the absurd claim Trump was "expanding" areas for hunting and fishing. Wait, he closed off 24 and gave them two, did you see that? The pencilnecks will never understand. But that's not the only American tradition Trump has desecreated and jettisoned. Children remain in cages. Families legally seeking asylum remain separated. Concentration camps are a reality in our nation. Cruelty has been empowered. Walls are being built, have been built, bulldozed over cactus and sliced across wilderness and protected habitat. Convicted war criminals and federal criminals are pardoned, murdering racists and actual Nazis are "fine people," while honorable naval officers who put their crew's safety ahead of the president's fragile ego are fired. The post office's effectiveness is a problem for those who believe government should not be. People of color are humiliated and then murdered in full view of their neighbors while jogging in deadly, outrageous "citizen's arrests," or while doing nothing more suspicious than sleeping in their own beds at night. Children are in cages. Children are in cages. Tell your friends, tell your family, especially in the states that matter – vote this November. Don't ever accept what's changed, and what's been done to this nation since January 19, 2017. It is not, and will never be acceptable. Tommy Hough is the co-founder and original president of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action. He currently serves as vice president for policy. The Trump administration has reappointed conservative activist and long-time public lands foe William Pendley as acting director of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for the third time this year, extending his status through June 5. The announcement, made Tuesday by Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, is part of the administration's ongoing assault on our nation's federal public lands and decades of conservation progress. The BLM is charged with managing more than 245 million acres of federal public land, including dozens of designated Wilderness areas, National Monuments, and thousands of square miles in Southern California. Shortly after Pendley was first appointed acting director in July 2019, he announced plans to physically move the BLM out of Washington, D.C., to Grand Junction, Colorado, ostensibly to more easily coordinate with oil and gas interests far away from oversight in the nation's capitol. Thousands of federal employees were forced to move or quit, in what has amounted to another agency-wide purge of capable, career, non-partisan agency administrators. Beginning with his earlier service under Interior Secretary James Watt in the early 1980s, Pendley has long advocated selling off public lands to the highest bidder. As acting BLM director, Pendley has further enabled oil and gas exploration on hundreds of thousands of acres once off-limits to such activity, including within the former boundaries of two radically-redrawn National Monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante, which was established by President Clinton in 1996, and Bears Ears, established by President Obama in 2016, both in Utah. Before taking over the BLM, Pendley repeatedly sued the agency he now leads while serving as the head of a conservative legal foundation. "This is why elections matter. This is why so many of us were so opposed to Trump," said club co-founder and former president Tommy Hough, who now serves as the club's vice president for policy. "Our nation's environmental and conservation legacy is on the edge of the abyss, largely due to the destructive ignorance of the Trump administration and the hostility of congressional Republicans to all things conservation, despite the fact the BLM's management role has previously been embraced and upheld from administration to administration." San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action is among dozens of organizations that opposes Pendley's continued leadership of this national agency, and the forced erosion of competence in so many of our federal agencies and oversight arms. For the BLM, it is essential to have leaders who believe in competent, science-based management, and can be relied upon to best serve the interests of the public and our environment by appointing the most responsible administrators to manage and preserve our public lands. "As a candidate, Mr. Trump never made any secret of his desire to gut federal agencies," said Hough. "Look at what's been done to the EPA, the Forest Service, and the National Park Service. They chased away anyone with a science background, and anyone who could say 'no' in an official capacity." Photo by Fred Rogers
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Green Thoughts
The blog component of San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action welcomes content from SDCDEA members, guests and leadership. Archives
October 2023
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