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Saving Ground Water
Last evening my husband and I attended the November 16th public meeting on the winery/event center issues held at the Glaser Center in Santa Rosa. Perhaps 75% of the small family owned winery speakers centered their remarks on their overwhelming economic success through personal customer marketing their wine through their own custom winery events. Very few speakers addressed the issue of water but I was one of them. Here is the concern I expressed at the microphone late in the evening after many people departed for home.
Guerneville, Forestville and Monte Rio school districts from the Palm Drive Healthcare District. In the end, they unanimously passed a slightly edited version of the resolution.
“I am here as a spokesperson for the longevity and sustainability of Sonoma County’s groundwater. I am also a local author and illustrator of a children’s book written for all ages: “Saving Water” on how we all can learn to appreciate, value and conserve water that is so critical in this time of severe drought. As you can well imagine, I am passionate about saving water and I am deeply concerned about the vast amount of water it takes to support our county’s wine production. There is no way of measuring or knowing how much or how little water reserve is available in our ground water aquifer. To allow thousands of gallons per day to be extracted for the production of wine could make this drought last indefinitely. But there is an alternative method of growing vines. It is a well known fact that for centuries the wine growers of Europe did not irrigate their vines. It has been recently documented that the unirrigated vineyards’ yield may be slightly less but the quality of that wine retains the rich character of the region from which it is grown. Let us rethink the seriousness of this water issue and make the right decision for the right reason before it is too late.”
Paula Cumming Pearce Sebastopol
The Board of Directors of PDHCD made a mockery of an important Public Meeting with their deceit and duplicity on November 2, 2015. They spent precious time on a poorly written and inaccurate Resolution (No. 15-12) opposing the detachment of the
Then, to add insult to injury, they removed Action item 8 from the agenda. This was Resolution No. 15- 14 informing Sonoma West Medical Center that they are out of compliance with the MSA requirement of financial reporting. This Resolution should have been considered and discussed thoroughly. Instead, the Board accepted a last minute single page summary from Sonoma West Medical Center, Inc. and thereby dismissed the resolution entirely from the agenda.
If anyone wants to see a Board of Directors operate with complete disdain for the public that they are supposed to serve, they need look no further than the Palm Drive Healthcare District Board of Directors.
Gary Harris
Community Separators
I was surprised and thrilled to see the community separator story on the front page of the Sonoma County Gazette. Thank you so much. It is getting attention.
The whole issue was excellent, with several well written stories on so many key issues such as the Local Coastal Plan, Russian River water quality, creek clean ups!
You are really making a difference being the voice of Sonoma County.
Teri Shore
Regional Director, North Bay Greenbelt Alliance
Palm Drive Detachment
Kudos to MacKenzie
We have so enjoyed reading MacKenzie Nekton’s Occidental Oriented column. She has done a great job of calling out the current happenings while treating her readers to interesting little side bits and observations. How fortunate we are to have such a bright, dedicated and articulate high school student in our community that is willing to take the time to put together a community news column for the local newspaper.
LETTERS cont’d on page 4
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