![\"foothillsconservancy\"](\"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/foothillsconservancy-1.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cWe are truly disappointed that after a 10-year process, the county approved a general plan that fails to protect everything that makes Amador County a special place to live, work, retire and visit,\u201d said Foothill Conservancy Executive Director Cecily Smith. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan doesn\u2019t protect our scenic beauty and community character. It will not stop rural sprawl. It greatly underestimates the amount of land that will be converted from agricultural uses. It will lead to gridlock on local roads, place lives and property at risk from wildland fire, create more air pollution, brighten our dark night skies, potentially destroy critical habitat for plants found nowhere else on earth, allow the conversion of working ranches and forests to developed uses, and continue to allow the proliferation of ugly \u2018small box\u2019 retail stores along our highways. We love our county, and we think local residents deserve better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The general plan will remain in force while the litigation is pending. The lawsuit is only the fourth suit filed by Foothill Conservancy since its founding in 1989. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d always prefer to work in a cooperative, collaborative way to find solutions to local challenges,\u201d said Smith. \u201cThat\u2019s what we do on river and watershed issues, forest issues, salmon restoration, and more. But the county apparently wasn\u2019t interested in doing that for the general plan. That left us with no alternative but litigation. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe offered to meet and work with the county to address the serious concerns raised by our organization and its members, many other Amador County residents, local cities, CalFire, CalTrans, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribal interests, and others. But in the end, county chose to approve a plan that won\u2019t set our county on a path to prosperity or protect our quality of life and natural environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foothill Conservancy was actively engaged in the Amador County General Plan Update process from its launch in 2006 until its final approval on October 4, 2016. In addition to providing public education on the plan process, the Conservancy served on the General Plan Advisory Committee, participated in related public hearings, submitted detailed written comments, engaged local and statewide experts to make comments on the plan and EIR, and provided many examples from other counties demonstrating how the plan could be improved to reduce its serious environmental impacts. <\/p>\n
The county general plan fails to live up to its own introductory vision statement, which is similar to the Foothill Conservancy\u2019s own vision statement and land use principles. \u201cThe county supervisors chose to accept significant impacts on people and the environment rather than adopt a better plan,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe hope our litigation will lead to a more-positive result for Amador County\u2019s landowners, businesses, wildlife and visitors.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amador County, CA…On Thursday, November 3, Foothill Conservancy filed a lawsuit in Amador County Superior Court challenging the County of Amador\u2019s new general plan and related environmental impact report. The Conservancy\u2019s petition for writ of mandate asks the court to set aside the general plan and EIR, and revise the EIR to correct identified errors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1599,"featured_media":25374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amador-county","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/foothillsconservancy-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}