nothingugly

I’m not building a house, really. More like a giant pile of paper. Papers like subdivision maps, soil test results, perk maps, applications for minor subdivision, biology and geology reports, well water tests, botanical diversity analyses, and proctology reports. Sorry, not even my joke. But all of those things are required before we can subdivide, which is the precondition for applying for a permit to build.

Of all of these, the biggest hurdle is the dreaded California Tiger Salamander. Known as simply “CTS”, the California Tiger Salamander has been used as a lever to slow development. Any port in a storm, I suppose – people rightly object to these horrible McMansions appearing in what used to be cow pastures. Sadly, family projects like ours are what really get stopped. The builders can afford to get involved in “mitigation”, or the purchase of wetlands for preservation, typically at a ratio of 2:1 or 4:1. That is, for every acre of habitat they destroy, they buy two acres of wetlands from some clever hippies who DID take that deal to buy swampland… The cost of all of this is passed on to the buyer (at a 20% markup), who has some savagely complex loan to pay for all of this, and everyone makes money… right? We all know how this ends, but I’m not going to get into a diatribe about sub-prime loans.

Everything is controlled by the county, who stands to profit quite a bit from our project. $10,000 for the permit application to subdivide, and about $20,000 for the house permit. $30,000 if I build a larger home. The county would love to approve our permits. However, the CTS decision is in the hands of California Fish and Game. Fortunately, the biologist took a quick look at our land, mumbled “Give me a break” and dashed off a quick report saying, “Ain’t got none.” So now we wait… and wait. The most recent word is that Fish & Game is re-writing the standards for CTS in Sonoma county, and they’ll make a decision about our parcel only after they’ve done so. Holy ex-post-facto, captain! We’re told that, typically, it takes the state between 8 weeks and 6 months to make a decision. In exceptional cases, it can take more than two years. Of course, since they’re rewriting the policy, there’s no telling when they’ll get around to it (our biologist was told by the state: “We’ll get to it when we get to it.” Oh, we’re also told that a verdict of “no salamanders” from a state licensed biologist can mean a mitigation ratio of as low as 0.2:1. Apparently, you can’t PROVE you have no salamanders. It’s exact opposite of math – an example provides positive proof.
In the meantime, I’m getting my septic system designed and doing soil testing, choosing building sites, and refining my designs. It’s nice to not be in a hurry.

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Plat of LIVE OAK SUBDIVISION in the Rancho Roblar de la Miseria, Sonoma county, California.

We’re groping our way through what looks like just the very beginning of the Great Salamander Issue. The first step is to do a survey, to see if we really have salamander habitat. That then goes to the county and then…. who knows. If we’re lucky, it’s a tempest in a teakettle. If not? Well, then we get into things like environmental impact reports, mitigation, and all kinds of hairy and expensive tangles. Some folks think all this will cost us about 8 grand, other estimates have ranged as high as $300,000 for mitigation alone. If it comes to that, we’ll probably have to sell it all, and someone who can afford all this mumbo jumbo will come plop McMansions all over it, which would seem to defeat the original intent of the restrictions. For now, we do the survey and hope for the best.

Which brings me back to the ranch of the “oak of the misery” - our little subdivision. In the process of pulling out relevant documents, I was sent this scan of the original 1927 plat map of the area. Someone paid a lot of money for it - $5. It’s drawn & lettered in a lovely hand (engineering lettering of that era really makes ours look impoverished). Look at the high res image; the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice. There’s an image out there of the original 1857 Rancho, but I can’t really correlate what little I can discern with the land that I know. I imagine our 13 acres are a mere speck on this map.

It also shows a railroad along Pepper road - the Petaluma and Santa Rosa railroad. I never knew there was any such thing, but there it is. Apparently it linked San Francisco, Petaluma, Denman, Liberty, Roblar, Two Rock, Hessel, Cummingham, Sebastopol, Graton, Forestville and Santa Rosa - all around the turn of the century.

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We’re putting up owl boxes! I love this. We’ll be placing one box in each corner of the property. Plans from “The hungry owl project“. They don’t look like much, but the plans were VERY SPECIFIC about things like the dimensions of the hole, placement of the vents and slots, etc. Apparently you want to design these boxes such that predators can’t get in, but the right kinds of owls can. We hope to attract barn owls or screech owls. I have to say, it’s a joy to knock out components on a panel saw; my uncle and I made four of these in about 5 hours.

In other news, we got nailed with the California Tiger Salamander. This means we have to hire biologists and hope like hell that we don’t have any of the buggers. This could stop everything cold - if we can’t subdivide the land, we’ll have to sell it. Besides sucking for me, I have no idea what my aunt would do. She’s living in the house now, on what will become her chunk.

Finally, I fenced the land. 500 feet of field fencing, which took two weekends of hard work. But now the livestock are off the land (sheep and cows) for the first time in at least fifty years, and possibly a hundred. I’ll post photos as the land recovers. We found stinging nettles all over the land. These are supposed to be a sign of rich soil, so I have high hopes. I have also always believed that the ground was pretty much solid clay, but at least up top we have at least eighteen inches of topsoil. As we plant more trees, I’ll know more about the land. I also want to plant willows near the eroded spots, in the hope that nature’s sump pump will do right by us.

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