|
Dual counties: Finding land is like finding a needle in a haystack |
|
|
Saturday, 27 October 2007 |
By Stacey Powells
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
Much of the wide open space of undeveloped private land in the Eastern Sierra is isolated. It is usually surrounded by federal and/or Los Angeles Department of Water and Power lands, and may contain wildlife and other natural resources that would make development on these lands near impossible. This comes as difficult news for those people who might be determined to leave urban decay for a slower paced life and who think they can drop a few million and have their own piece of paradise at the foot of the Eastern Sierra in Inyo or Mono County.
The need for housing has increased dramatically in recent years. In an attempt to address these issues, the Owens Valley Interagency Committee (OVIC), a group of Eastern Sierra federal, state and local agency heads, formed a subcommittee in 2005 to explore the feasibility and logistics of developing a collaborative land tenure adjustment plan for the region. On the subcommittee are Byng Hunt representing Mono County, Scott Burns with the Mammoth Lakes Planning Department, Garry Oye from the U.S. Forest Service, Bill Dunkelberger with the Bureau of Land Management and Clarence Martin from LADWP. Inyo County Supervisor Linda Arcularius has also attended several meetings.
With more and more people coming north, the demand for isolated private parcels is growing. According to Bill Dunkelberger, who drafted a briefing for the committee, the development of these isolated parcels may be at odds with both counties' general plans and citizen desire to encourage growth adjacent to existing communities. “Creating new subdivisions on these isolated parcels can also result in significant new demands for county services and infrastructure,” Dunkelberger stated. Additional pumping to provide water to these isolated subdivisions has the potential to impact aquifers and dependent ecosystems. The City of Los Angeles already diverts a significant amount of the surface and groundwater from the region.
The subcommittee's vision statement is as follows: “Federal and state agencies, Inyo and Mono counties, local tribes, interested citizens, organizations, private land owners and land trusts will collaborate to: explore and develop options to create a landownership pattern in the Eastern Sierra that better complements collaborative regional goals while preserving private property rights—focusing on opportunities to concentrate development around existing communities and infrastructure; provide workforce housing; maintain agricultural opportunities; protect water and other natural resources and open space; and consolidate agency lands.”
Dunkelberger presented the principles for development of the regional plan:
1. Full participation and buy-in by the counties, citizens, tribes and all land administering agencies is critical;
2. Process should honor both counties' desire to avoid any significant decrease in private property and tax base. Private property will be acquired and/or exchanged through willing sellers only.
For more information, the inventory and a database are mostly complete and available online, courtesy of Mono County, at http://gis.mono.ca.gov/LandTenure.
|
|
Last Updated ( Saturday, 03 November 2007 )
|
