I haven’t been writing much on the winery as of late, so I thought I’d provide a quick update.

The Use Permit process is running its course, which is what you must get out of the way before you can even get a construction permit. We’re currently hiring all sorts of consultants to provide the county with information they deem necessary to allow us to build. Included among these are a visual assessment report, an archeological study, a water availability study, and many more are sure to come. My good friend Chris Jones at Del Starrett architect has been dutifully shepherding me through this process. If you’re reading, thanks Chris!

I’ve attached the Visual Assessment report Chris created for the county below for those interested. There’s maps and pretty pictures and stuff.

Click to enlarge and read the pdf report…

And now for a bit of a rant…

When the county does their first pass on your proposed building site they try to alert you as to what will be required. One of the first pass items is a referral of our plans to the Northwest Information Center at Sonoma State University. The NICSSU is designated by the California Historical Resources Information System as the site of the California Historical Resources Inventory. Essentially, if there are historical resources out there on your land, they should know about them.

Last week the NICSSU sent a letter to the county stating that they had no record of any cultural resources at our location, and that they had no studies on file.

As a landowner, you might think this is good news. After all, you certainly don’t want to ruin anything of historical or cultural significance, and additionally you would be quite pleased that you wouldn’t be out-of-pocket for any mitigation measures that might have to be undertaken if such items of significance were in fact located on your property. A win-win as it were.

And you would be mistaken. You see, if there is no record of anything of cultural or historical significance on your property, and no records of studies conducted, you are worse off in most cases than if there were (the exception being if there were sensitive items requiring very expensive mitigation already on file).

To understand this, you have to understand how the county thinks about these matters. Or more precisely, how the county views the unknown.

According to the county and the NICSSU, a lack of evidence is not exculpatory. In fact, you are guilty until proven innocent. Therefore a lack of evidence means that you must conduct a study to verify the fact that there is no evidence.

Genius! Keeps the consultants fed to be sure.

Anyway, quite a bit of the county’s regulations are structured this way so it wasn’t a complete surprise to me. For those of you out there longing to build a winery, it is definitely something to keep in mind though. Knowing it will happen ahead of time helps keep your mind flexible, and ready for all illogical possibilities.