Napa at Last Light

by James Conaway

  He opened the envelope and took out a sheaf of paper. “These are copies of a step-by-step outline for opponents of Cal Fire’s review system. Environmental comments are unlikely to stop this, but submitting different drafts can slow the process. You can win lawsuits on procedure, so delay as much as possible” so the agency will make a misstep and open itself to legal challenge. “They hate losing in court.”

  After the meeting broke up Randy offered to take Rick Coates to see Wildlake, and he agreed. They drove over Howell Mountain from Pope Valley, and Randy took him deep into wilderness that had the same effect on Coates that it had had on John Hoffnagle. As they shook hands afterward, Randy felt that he and the others had an ally with the knowledge and experience to get this thing stopped.

  3.

  The next day Randy was to telephone individual members of the Land Trust board and remind them of an extraordinary meeting being held by the board about whether or not to challenge Mike Davis in court. If they did challenge him it would cost money, and possibly split the membership.

  Karin wouldn’t give Randy individual Land Trust members’ cell numbers because she hadn’t been authorized to do so. Such were the intricate steps in the long, close-up dance of environmental opposition, particularly in the crucial early stages when large egos and large fortunes are at play. Randy understood that she was taking no chances, waiting to see if the field broke open and some light beckoned. Karin repeated, “I’m worried about the Land Trust’s reputation. We’ve never taken a position before on land development,” and hung up.

  “This time,” Randy thought, “you’ll have to.”

  He found some members’ numbers by calling the tasting rooms of wineries the members owned, and having to deal with women no older than his daughter Krissy. Most had never heard of this old-timer telling them “I’m looking for . . . ,” as if just anybody could get the phone number of the proprietor in the exalted firmament of vintners, and provided little help. He continued calling while making salsa from the proliferation of bright red tomatoes piled next to the sink—lumpy heirlooms and other varieties, all awaiting the knife. Already cut up were onions and peppers—Anaheims, jalapeños—and these, too, were periodically fed into the blender, puree all over, and Lori driven from the house by the mess.

  Cradling the old landline receiver with a shoulder, Randy wrote down one hard-earned number and then punched it in. “I want you to be aware of . . . ,” he said to the man who answered, and launched into a description of the mayhem Mike Davis might wreak on Wildlake. “There’s no way really to measure how much physical effort and energy would go into this development,” Randy said, “but it’s huge.”

  The pot on the stove burped and spat, and he turned down the heat while he talked. Two-thirds of the volume of the potential sauce must boil away, carefully watched all the while so the bottom doesn’t burn and spoil the flavor. The member’s voice finally emerged from the speaker: He couldn’t make the meeting, he said. He was sorry. “Since you’re not going to be there,” Randy said quickly, “maybe you could tell some other members.”

  At last he punched in what he and Karin thought was the most important number of all, that of a former board member who possibly owned the largest acreage under vines of any individual in three counties, Andy Beckstoffer. Despite being a Republican who put business before most other things, Beckstoffer had been on the right side of environmental skirmishes for decades and a significant contributor to the Land Trust. His attentions were desired in this fight.

  Randy had known Andy for decades, during which they had found themselves thrown together at Land Trust and other events. Now Randy told him that he and the Trust’s attorney were hoping Andy would call Mike Davis directly and let him know the depth and social complexity of the project into which Davis was about to step. It was a yellow jackets’ nest, and disapproval would follow, possibly ruining his reputation before he ever got established in the valley.

  Andy knew vineyards and could speak to the drawbacks of what some considered to be Davis’s potential frost pocket on Howell Mountain. Also one that would disastrously impact a hard-won wilderness that had its own broad, enthusiastic band of defenders. Beckstoffer knew the complex loyalties among growers, vintners, and a broad cadre of professions dependent on them; he could authoritatively point out various reasons Davis might want to reconsider. Back off from Wildlake was the message, choose a Howell Mountain vineyard site somewhere else, like the one Randy had suggested on good land near the college in Angwin. Let Wildlake be.

  Beckstoffer agreed to make the call. “But I want somebody on the Trust board to call and ask me.” More protocol. “And I can’t do it today.” Beckstoffer was on his way up to his vineyards in Lake County and, because fire had closed the roads, was swinging far to the west so he could drive up the coast.

  If Beckstoffer made the call, it didn’t have the desired effect. But by then the Land Trust had decided to take a stand; the fight had gone public.

  * * *

  Since Alan Galbraith had recently been elected mayor of St. Helena he was still finding his way around the small-town bureaucracy. Many of his constituents knew he had been an attorney in Washington, DC, before retiring and moving west with his wife in 2008. Few knew just how large and influential his firm, Williams & Connolly, had been, or that he belonged to a socially prominent New England family well known in academia and politics.

  Visitors to the Galbraiths’ shady residence in St. Helena saw the array of carved wooden elephants lining the mantelpiece and were likely to assume that Galbraith was a dedicated Republican. A few knew that Alan’s father had been the distinguished liberal economist and author John Kenneth Galbraith, as well as a close friend of William F. Buckley, and President Kennedy’s ambassador to India, where the carvings had originated.

  A member of the California bar, Alan Galbraith had come west often on business and married into the Coombs family, with its long-standing involvement in county affairs, including the founding of the city of Napa. Alan put time in on the St. Helena planning commission and backed responsible growth, which meant restraints on projects that might significantly alter the town’s character, like short-term rentals that could be destructive of neighborhoods. So elephants on the mantel weren’t necessarily a key to unlocking Alan Galbraith’s politics.

  He had left the meeting on the front porch of the Eiseles’ house in Chiles Valley concerned. The following Monday he asked the city engineer what he thought about the proposed timber cutting high on Howell Mountain. The city engineer didn’t like the sound of it. The downstream Bell Canyon Reservoir that supplied the city didn’t need more sediment from on high. St. Helenans still remembered when the Viader Vineyards, under the same sort of development proposed by Mike Davis, had dumped sediment into the reservoir after a heavy rain a dozen years before. The fallout from that calamity had been considerable, and both officials were afraid it could happen again.

  The city engineer wrote a letter to Cal Fire asking for a delay in granting the permit, and so did Mayor Galbraith. The city had just enough income to cover services, but nothing was set aside for a disaster like the loss of good freshwater for the town.

  * * *

  After wrestling with the specter of discord within the Land Trust—and a possibly damaged reputation beyond it—Karin Troedsson had decided to defend its largest, most arduously acquired, incomparable holding, Wildlake. She contacted the seasoned warhorse of environmental campaigns, the drolly named Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger in San Francisco, the favorite law firm of the late Volker Eisele and other activists who had been involved in the winery definition fight, Measure J, and other significant battles. She wanted a good letter of protest from a seasoned litigator, and hoped that would be enough, for there was a large difference between sending such a cautionary letter and the actual filing of a lawsuit. This was something Karin had no intention of doing, if Mike Davis refused to back off, but Randy Dunn, she felt sure, would.

  With remarkable alacrity,
Karin thought, the firm sent to Cal Fire’s chief forester in Sacramento, and to the head of Cal Fire’s Northern Region in Santa Rosa, a thirty-three-page tour de force that bristled with acronyms and dismantled the agency’s argument that the trees could be legally cut:

  The most fundamental flaw in these documents is their failure to comply with these laws’ mandates to provide an accurate account of the environmental setting . . . the Property lies within a regionally significant, 12,000-acre wildland complex that includes lands managed by California State Parks, the California State Lands Commission, the Bureau of Land Management, the Land Trust, and the Biological Field Studies Association. Despite this fact, the DEIR [Draft Environmental Impact Report], TCP [Timber Conversion Plan], and the THP [Timber Harvest Plan] all give the incorrect impression that the Project sits in a predominately agricultural area, and improperly attempt to minimize the conservation value of the surrounding lands.

  The arguments, though long and complex, seemed irrefutable. But what California’s greens like Rick Coates knew—and many latecomers to this fight would soon learn—was that Cal Fire could be indifferent to moral, aesthetic, social, environmental, and even legal arguments opposing timber cutting that did not seem certain to prevail in court. Particularly when, for other reasons—like crushing expense—the arguments were unlikely to ever get there.

  Karin also wrote to the agency. “For the first time in our 40-year history, The Land Trust of Napa County is submitting the enclosed comment letter regarding a pending application for vineyard development . . . as a concerned neighbor that abuts this proposed project . . . [the] Timber Conversion Plan improperly indicated that The Land Trust does not object to their application, and we feel an obligation to publicly correct that misrepresentation.”

  Within days Davis sent out a letter of his own urging a select fifty of the Napa Valley Vintners members to copy, sign, and pass it along to Cal Fire on the last day of public comment. “I have reviewed all 900 pages of documentation and found nothing that should stop your approving this project,” Davis wrote, revealing either a lack of awareness of the valley’s past land-use struggles or a calculated decision to ignore them. He hadn’t mentioned Wildlake, or the overlay of historical, social, and environmental issues involved, and had wrapped the project in what sounded to many like Tea Party rhetoric: “In the United States we have a distinction between public and private lands just so projects like Davis Estates’ can move forward.”

  Davis concluded: “Here are just a few of the now famous Napa hillside wines: Mayacamas, Stony Hill, Harlan Estate, Bond, Dana, Ovid, Continuum, Ladera, Joseph Phelps, Outpost, Cade, Diamond Creek, Pride and Dunn. Who’s to say that Davis Estates Friesen Vineyard”—the proposed name—“won’t be the next new worldwide ‘cult’ wine that brings attention and revenue to the Napa Valley wine industry?”

  Reading that, Karin Troedsson concluded that peer pressure was no longer a viable means of bringing people into line with the common good. Others who read it went further, suggesting that shame was dead. For Rick Coates, it was notable that Mike Davis had been a discus thrower, and he concluded that for Davis the real pleasure lay not in the feel of the discus itself, or in the throwing, but in the distance thrown and winning. That’s what this was all about.

  * * *

  Rick Coates, after explaining the inconsistencies, obfuscations, and outright dishonesty of Cal Fire, sometimes felt like an ancient oral historian. Others thought of him as a character in a Sophoclean tragedy, declaiming on the action of a cruel and arbitrary god. What he had to say to largely powerless citizens like Mike Hackett and Randy Dunn sounded, if read aloud, like tortured verse rising from the cinders of bureaucracy’s cremation site:

  Only after the recommendation for approval is made does Cal Fire read and respond to public comment.

  This is an exercise only to satisfy the legal requirement to respond.

  Employees assigned to read the comments have a list of standard responses.

  The responses attempt to justify the department’s decision.

  The “science” quoted is either junk, cherry-picked, or discredited.

  Legitimate research is distorted, misrepresented . . .

  The entire process is fraudulent.

  Coates could have compared these points to Thomas Jefferson’s about the arbitrary and unjust actions regarding the American colonies by King George III, written early in Jefferson’s political career and underlying much of the reasoning behind the later Declaration of Independence. Coates knew the science was “junk” because he had taken the time to read the articles quoted and, having done research himself, knew the difference between good and bad.

  If Cal Fire employees encountered a comment suggesting they had made a legal error, they would halt the process, attempt to correct the error, and then reopen the Timber Harvest Plan to public comment for ten days. Every time they had to do this they got more annoyed and prone to making mistakes.

  Coates also knew that the Cal Fire recommendation would eventually end up on the deputy director’s desk, and that he would sign it on behalf of the director, a pro forma arrangement unless there was a serious political price to pay. Which was why these citizens had to figure out a way to get Wildlake before the public, and soon. Time was running out.

  V.

  CAPELL CREEK

  A landscape is to be transformed against the wishes of those living in it, and corporate and environmental advocates clash with an intensity not seen before.

  INTERLUDE:

  Arise!

  The board of supervisors is meeting in a new venue off Corporate Drive south of the city of Napa, instead of downtown where a recent earthquake damaged the county administration building and left the historic courthouse in plastic-shrouded rehab and side streets full of rubble. The hearing in progress concerns the controversial project involving vineyards and maybe houses on steep hillsides where water is scarce and roads narrow.

  Signs on sticks are in mostly middle-aged hands—SAVE OUR WATER, SAVE 28,616 TREES, FORESTS = HEALTHY AIR, and my favorite, WATER OVER WINE, a succinct summation with biblical resonance. If that’s really the choice then the answer’s obvious but, as with everything having to do with the environment, it’s also devilishly complicated and ways to ameliorate or bypass restrictions almost infinite.

  People come to the podium one at a time to voice displeasure and regret for loss of oaks, productive wells, habitat, and community. A grape grower, channeling Jefferson, says, “Agriculture’s the highest and best use of the land. Let’s keep it that way.” He points out that recent legislative changes have allowed event centers at wineries, part of every new business plan now. They mean more traffic, more arable land taken out of production, more demand for water and waste disposal, and more pollution. Vintners who praised preservation of agricultural land when applying for permits, and agreed to abide by current law, now can’t live without an event center.

  “We have a diminishing quality of life,” says another speaker in a down vest. “We’ve lost our way, people are talking of leaving.” The familiar activist Chris Malan stands to say, “I’m lucky to live here, but do we want to continue to strip our land? It’s a moral question,” and gets applause.

  The project under consideration is the Walt Ranch high on the eastern side of the valley, 2,300 acres, of which about five hundred will be “disturbed,” meaning cleared, and three hundred of those are to be put under vines. The fear is that houses will soon follow, vineyards having become stalking horses for serial McMansions and more ambitious development.

  The Walt property belongs to Craig Hall, a former owner of the Dallas Cowboys but primarily a developer and a significant player with extensive connections in Texas. He’s also a “vintner,” the symbolic term evoking wine and history that once softened commerce’s sharp elbows, but no more. Though relatively few vintners actually make wine, winery owning is assigned roughly the same cachet as collecting art, and the Halls do that, too, much of the latter re
portedly from Eastern Europe where during the second Clinton administration Kathryn Hall was ambassador to Austria.

  She’s a Democrat and friend of Bill, but her husband’s political beliefs, like most things about him, are ambiguous. They are among the wealthiest couples in a valley known for them, and Kathryn—an attractive woman in tasteful white knit—drove to this meeting in her familiar blue Porsche roadster with the khaki-colored top. I approach and ask her if she’ll discuss the Walt project with me after the meeting.

  She goes off to consult with her lawyer and her winemaker, since in recent years winemakers have come to perform increasingly ambitious lateral arabesques for their employers. Not only do winemakers tweak wines for the market, but they also serve as courtiers and confidants of vintners navigating Napa’s political thickets. The former ambassadress comes back and says, “We’re not going to talk about that.”

  Local activist Geoff Ellsworth leans against a wall, having progressed from St. Helena’s issues to the county’s. This morning he wears a tie and a seersucker suit, to all appearances a businessman jotting memos on a clipboard. Others in the room are, like Geoff, part of the perennial bloom of citizen activists who flare, flame out in various struggles, and flare again. They’re clearly fed up with deforestation and vineyard development in the hills that demand much water, but they burn with a new intensity, and I’m struck by how many more there are than in times past. And by how much older they seem.

  Geoff says softly, “Projects like these are ruining the quality of life here. One woman was just weeping. People like her are the ones most sympathetic to keeping the agricultural preserve whole, but the preserve’s very existence has lulled us into thinking we’re protected when we’re not.”