Supervisor Hopkins goes rogue on the environment again
(Please email your supervisor and say NO to Hopkins and yes to a better Local Coastal Plan).
Coastal protections
EDITOR: Protecting the Sonoma Coast hasn’t been easy, but as a community we bucked developers by passing laws and regulation that have kept us from losing a wild and beautiful environment. It hasn’t been easy, yet, we have prevailed.
One of our recent successes was to expand the national marine sanctuary along the entire Sonoma Coast into Mendocino County.
The Gulf of the Farrallones marine sanctuary was a last step in preserving the coast because our forefathers put strong site-specific land protections in place early on to ensure we didn’t bend to developer pressures.
Until now, when Supervisor Lynda Hopkins appears to have convinced the Board of Supervisors to believe in the opinion of a hand-picked committee over their own planning commissioners, who voted to keep the area protected by keeping the Local Coastal Plan in place.
She may think an advisory committee carries more weight than the Planning Commission, or she may like the developer’s plans for expansion. I’m hopeful the majority of the board will think otherwise when they take a closer look at what it will mean if they do away with the site-specific protections that have kept this part of our county the envy of all others.
LYNN WOOLSEY
PetalumaYes