Farmers Sue to Block Santa Barbara County Oak Preservation Law

An oak tree preservation ordinance that was hailed in April as a breakthrough in relations between north Santa Barbara County ranchers and south county environmentalists is under attack as a potentially devastating blow to agriculture.

Ranchers and developers filed a lawsuit asking the courts to order county officials to conduct a new environmental impact review. The critics had promised to challenge the law’s legality the day it took effect, calling the initial impact study incomplete.

County officials and the head of Santa Barbara’s Environmental Defense Center said last week that the lawsuit has little legal merit and will merely inflame continuing animosities between residents of the rural north county and the more urban south coast area of Santa Barbara and its environs.

“We are going to defend the law,” said Alan Seltzer, a deputy county counsel. “We believe the environmental review is legally adequate. It reflected a consensus of the county and was within the discretion of the Board of Supervisors to adopt. It was endorsed by a working group of agricultural and environmental leaders.”

The law approved this year bans clear-cutting of valley and blue oak trees on ranchland without a permit. But it allows ranchers to self-regulate all but very large oak tree removal projects by planting replacement trees -- 15 for each fully grown tree that is removed.

The lawsuit was filed in Santa Maria by the Santa Barbara County Cattlemen’s Assn., the Center for Environmental Equality and the conservative Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business.

It charges that the ordinance essentially will turn many open-space and agricultural areas into virtual oak tree museums, contributing to an already-declining agricultural capability throughout the county.

“The board tried to present this as a great example of consensus, because there were three ag representatives and three environmental representatives,” said Andy Caldwell, a spokesman for the Coalition of Labor, Agriculture and Business. “But the ag members only approved a management plan and a threshold for replacing trees. The environmental impact report was never put before them.

“One reason we are suing is that this law is really going to keep large areas of land out of agriculture at a time when the state estimates we are already losing 1,000 acres of ag land a year” in Santa Barbara County, Caldwell added. “They are telling farmers: Don’t chop your trees down, because we like looking at them.”

The oak tree preservation issue was the subject of bitter conflict for almost six years before a settlement was reached in April after county supervisors appointed a six-member committee of agriculture and environmental advisors to help work out a compromise that could win approval from both halves of the county.

Although the compromise plan still left some opposition on both sides, it was seen by supervisors as a positive step toward softening animosities that had led to increasing friction between northern county farmers and developers and south county professionals and academics. The antipathy has produced a drive to split the county into two halves at the Gaviota Pass, each half with a population of about 200,000.

When the law was passed in April, Supervisor Naomi Schwartz cited it as proof that northern and southern factions could unite to solve county issues instead of turning every dispute into another reason for northern secession. Supervisor Gail Marshall, who had set up the advisory group, called it a “shining example of collaboration.”

But the new legal challenge will keep county divisions alive for at least another six months. It will take that much time for the county to prepare a record of the history of the dispute to submit in court, Seltzer estimated.

Linda Krop, chief counsel for the Environmental Defense Center, predicted that the county would prevail whenever the issue was finally put before a judge for a decision.

“The county did a very thorough job on this over the past three or four years,” she said. “They studied the issue intensely and there was a lot of environmental review. The environmental impact [study] was very thorough. The county most definitely should prevail on this.”