Photo: Mountain of dirt piled up at Hawes Ranch by David Ledger
As many of you may know from our Action Alert, a hearing on the proposed Hawes Ranch Amusement Park came up with little warning from the Planning Department. The notice for the public hearing at the Board of Supervisors came out with a 10-day notice from the date of publication in the Record Searchlight. Most of the neighbors and concerned area residents only received notice by mail four to seven days before the hearing. It almost appeared that the Planning Department wanted to have the least amount of people learning about the hearing and being able to attend. Holding the hearing six days before Christmas was just icing on the cake.
This is a project under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and they almost always require a 20 to 30-day notice, so this would have most likely led to a successful lawsuit if challenged. Everything about the Hawes amusement project has had many violations of zoning, building, health and safety, and fire code violations over the years. One Fire Department citation to the Hawes Ranch had 10 fire code violations listed, some were multiple violations of the same code, so much more than 10 violations in all.
Several years ago the Planning Commission approved a Negative Declaration (NegDec) under CEQA meaning no need to even study whether there was any need to protect the environment. This is on a parcel of land that ran into the water of the Sacramento River where there are five protected species with a riparian oak woodland. Usually, NegDec’s are only declared on bare land that previously had a building on it or was under one acre in size. This zoning change is 145 acres.
Because of SEA’s letter and other comments since that meeting, without notifying SEA, the county sent out an environmental consulting firm that found monarch butterfly caterpillars on some milkweed. These are species the USFWS is now taking comment on for listing as threatened.
SEA and many residents wrote emails and phone calls of complaint and met with Supervisor Tim Garman in Anderson and he relayed our complaints to county staff. Garman will be running for Kelstrom’s seat in District 5 in two years. I think he picked up more than a few votes.