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Placer County officialdom is not surprised that the Sierra Club and
Sierra Foothills Audubon Society have sued the the county over the
recently approved proposed Placer Vineyards project on 5,230 acres west
of Roseville.
When the county supervisors gave 5-0 approval to the project’s specific
plan to allow 14,100 residential units last month, they knew
environmental organizations would go to court, and that’s just what the
Sierra Club and the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society did last week.
The Audubon Club’s Ed Pandolfino stated, “With Placer County losing open space, farmland and wildlife habitat at an alarming rate, the supervisors missed a golden opportunity to abandon the ‘business as usual’ approach to land use.”
Added the Sierra Club’s Terry Davis, “We need growth that is more compact if we are to save some of the county’s remaining habitat and farmland. The supervisors had the regional growth ‘Blueprint’ (suggested by the Sacramento Area Council of Governments) and the pending Placer County Conservation Plan to show them the way to better planning, but instead of showing leadership, they just approved more of the same old sprawl.”
The environmental organization’s lawsuit is particularly critical of the supervisors for not requiring developers and property owners to preserve sufficient vernal pool grasslands either onsite or offsite.
In his news release about the lawsuit, Davis said the Placer Legacy open space and farmland preservation program identified more than 2,000 acres of vernal pool habitat in the project area.
“If vernal pools and grasslands are to be developed, state and federal environmental laws, as well as the pending Placer County Conservation plan, direct developers to preserve substantial acreage of comparable vernal pool habitat elsewhere in the county,” Davis stressed, charging that the county “is allowing developers to do little offsite habitat preservation.”
Supervisor Rocky Rockholm, in whose district the project area is located and who made the motion to approve the plan, said he and his board colleagues are certain the county will prevail in the lawsuit.
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