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[Link to Smith-Madrone in article]
Copyright©New York Times
April 14, 2002
Lawsuits in Eden: Fury Over Napa Vineyards
By JOSEPH KAHN
NAPA, Calif., April 11 — This wine growing region
was once considered a vision of rural bliss. It was
America's Arcadia, an idyllic blend of commerce and
nature, where agriculture was boundlessly profitable
and San Francisco's bustle, though just an hour away,
was kept safely at bay.
It still looks that way, with its nearly perfect Mediterranean
climate, pastel inns and softly rolling hills, their
sides draped with a geometric filigree of trellises.
But for many environmentalists and residents here, Napa
is another prosperous community on the brink of destruction.
It is not just the three million tourists who visit
each year, stirring the resentments familiar in destinations
that become too popular for their own good. It is also
the residue of heavy industry: the 18-wheel wine tankers
competing for space on two-lane roads; the removal of
Douglas firs and redwoods for ever-larger vineyards;
the soil erosion that has clogged the Napa River, once
home to salmon and steelhead.
Napa's alternative to suburbia has itself become the
issue, as wine growers and environmental activists fight
for control of the valley's trees, fields and streams.
Community groups are fighting vineyard sprawl and what
they call industrial wineries; grape growers say the
groups threaten their livelihoods.
Environmental lawsuits against the vineyards and the
county have tied the hands of Napa's planning commission,
which has begun requiring voluminous studies of water,
soil, forests and fish before granting permits to expand,
replant or open vineyards. Owners say approvals take
years if they come at all, costing them dearly.
The battle has spread with California's wine culture,
into neighboring Sonoma and down the Pacific Coast.
"More and more people look at a vineyard and see
a quarry," said Lee Hudson, who has cultivated
grapes in Napa for 30 years.
Hudson Vineyards has 200 acres of lowlands in the valley
and has been trying to expand plantings by 50 percent.
County officials have said no. Cows graze the alfalfa
and barley on one of Mr. Hudson's prime meadows, where
he envisioned grapes for premium chardonnays and syrahs.
He called this madness for wine country, where farmland
sells for up to $189,000 an acre. "There are people
here who hate the wine industry so much they'd rather
I build a feedlot or a slaughterhouse," he said.
While wine has become big business, this conflict has
the intensity of a family quarrel. On one side are green,
antiurban alumni of the University of California who
have come to Napa to live. On the other side are green,
antiurban alumni of the University of California who
have come to Napa to farm.
Most vineyard owners live amid their vines. Many farm
organically and use pesticides sparingly. Agriculture
does not get much cleaner, and they resent the charge
that they pollute.
It was in fact an alliance between grape growers and
environmental activists that prompted Napa to declare
itself an agricultural preserve in 1968, the first place
in the United States to do so. Wine was merely a hobby
then, but the policy kept Napa from becoming another
Bay Area bedroom community.
"If I weren't growing
grapes I'd probably be a tree hugger," said Charlie
Smith, who co-founded Smith-Madrone Vineyard on
Spring Mountain in the early 1970's after graduating
from the University of California at Berkeley. "But
I want the right to use my own land."
Yet environmentalists argue that the wine business has
run amok. Vineyard owners have plundered Napa's hillsides,
they say. Too many have planted on steep inclines, making
for prized Zinfandels but creating erosion. Some vineyard
owners cut forests anywhere it suits them, leaving beige
scabs where old-growth trees once provided habitat.
"You should hear the thunder when they cut up the
hills," said Chris Malan, a community advocate.
"The boulders come crashing down, the snakes and
bobcats are fleeing, the trees are falling.
"For anyone who cares about the quality of life,
it rocks you."
Ms. Malan is a mental health worker who became an amateur
environmentalist after her grape-growing neighbor stripped
a ridge in view of her back porch. She began renting
planes, taking aerial surveys of vineyards to compare
them with blueprints submitted to the county. She kayaks
along private stretches of the Russian and Napa Rivers
to peer into farmers' backyards.
Though she speaks of the environment with more passion
than technical precision, her inquiry formed the basis
of a lawsuit backed by the Sierra Club in 1999 against
Napa and five vineyards. In a settlement late last year,
the county agreed to apply California's rigorous environmental
code strictly and assess each vineyard's impact on soil,
water and wildlife before issuing permits.
Gridlock ensued. With more than a hundred applications
pending, the county has denied permits unless vineyard
owners pass lengthy environmental inspections, like
those required of chemical manufacturers and oil refineries.
Farmers say these cost tens of thousands of dollars
for even the smallest operations and could even require
them to uproot vines if problems are unearthed.
Ms. Malan and other community leaders have pushed an
initiative they hope will appear on the November ballot
that would compel vineyards to plant at least 350 feet
from prime streams and 1,000 feet from wetlands, a requirement
that farmers say could shave 10 percent off their cultivated
acreage.
At a well-attended community meeting one recent evening,
local residents joined San Franciscans with weekend
homes in Napa to discuss the petition. Several people
complained that it did not go far enough. They wanted
tree cutting to stop completely. Organizers said they
would have liked to do that, but were advised by lawyers
that only a narrower effort to protect watersheds would
withstand legal challenge. No one asked about the effect
on grape growers.
Even so, the wine industry is not about to disappear.
Napa has 270 vineyards covering 45,000 acres of the
most complex and hospitable soil for wine grapes anywhere.
While a recent glut has reduced wine prices at the low
end of the market, a premium Harlan Estate Cabernet
sells for $475 a bottle, and the Napa appellation ensures
a premium for even the lowliest table wine.
Moreover, some of the biggest names in Napa, like the
corporations behind the Mondavi and Hess brands, remain
relatively quiet, their hundreds or even thousands of
acres safely "in grapes" on the valley floor.
The environmental push poses a bigger threat to boutique
vintners who increasingly seek to cultivate on hillsides,
sometimes on grades of up to 30 percent, where yields
are low but the grapes robust.
So the dispute has an internecine side, with hillside
vineyard owners suspecting that some colleagues in the
valley are staying out of the fray — or even secretly
backing environmentalists — to limit competition
and keep a tight lid on the valuable Napa name.
While that may be true, the politics of wine has turned
tannic for everyone, including the biggest players.
Ms. Malan has set her sights on stopping Australian-owned
Beringer Blass Wine Estates from building a 1.5-million-square-foot
winery and expanding plantings on 115 acres of what
she calls "precious wetlands." In nearby Sonoma,
community groups have singled out the industry goliath,
E. & J. Gallo Winery.
Gallo bought the Sonoma ranch of the late actor Fred
MacMurray — rocky, heavily forested land that rises
over the Russian River. When bulldozers upended trees
and rearranged the landscape to ease planting, even
some grape growers cried foul. They pressed the county
to reject plans for Gallo's two-million-bottle winery
and have sought to slow conversion of the ranch.
"There is a revolution going on against the industrial
vineyard," said Martin Griffin, a longtime grape
grower who helped found Friends of the Russian River.
"When you do it like they do it, you might as well
build subdivisions."
Like Mr. Griffin, many vineyard owners are environmentalists
themselves, and most are apologetic about opposing green
groups. They say they have only a few "bad apples,"
as Tom Gamble of the Napa Farm Bureau put it, who ignore
the collateral impact of their work.
But they argue that it is really the environmentalists
who have run amok. No one has shown that grape growing
drove the fish from the Napa River, they say. Most fish
runs ended in the 1950's, long before the wine industry
took off. They acknowledge that planting vineyards requires
cutting down trees, but say that the Napa Valley remains
unusually forested for a prime agricultural area. They
also question if trees are the best use of the land
under the new world's Bordeaux.
"This is not Yosemite," said John R. Guilliams
of Guilliams Vineyards. "Napa is, and should be,
about wine."
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