Shaping Public Policy

SDC is a place where holistic solutions can come together for the land and our Valley community.

If we want to succeed at solving the most pressing environmental issues, including climate change and the biodiversity crisis, we must find solutions that address multiple challenges simultaneously: environmental, social, and economic.

Protecting the SDC’s Wild Spaces

SDC’s redevelopment needs to protect the site’s wild spaces, especially its wildlife corridor. We have documented how SDC is home to an incredible array of species—read about them here. We want to see the wildlife corridor expanded at its narrowest point along the north and northeast side of the campus, by pulling the boundary of the developed area inward. Setbacks along Sonoma and Hill Creeks should be larger—100 feet—to make room for a reestablished floodplain, riparian habitat, steelhead recovery, and groundwater recharge. The wetlands in the eastern meadows should be protected and restored. The site’s many water features—reservoirs, springs, streams, wetlands—should be managed holistically to produce multiple benefits to the entire Valley’s people and ecosystems. Developed areas should have foot trails connecting to natural spaces, for all the benefits that occur from human connection with them, while assuring that they retain their ecological function. Paths and recreational areas are good, but they should stay away from the wildlife corridor and Sonoma Creek. Built areas and paths should use Dark Sky standards.

Housing for Current and Future Generations

Even after fully protecting and even enhancing SDC’s tremendous natural treasures, there is room in what’s left of the campus, for some of the housing that is needed for current and future generations. Any housing plan for SDC must go beyond market-driven factors that are driving people—up to and including the middle class—out of the Sonoma Valley. Housing at SDC should be a model for reversing this trend, not exacerbating it. SEC calls for most of the site’s housing to be affordable to below-AMI residents, including a mix of rental and owner-occupied units, whether via subsidy or affordable “by design.” Community land trusts are an excellent tool for creating permanently affordable housing. Frequent flexible transit is key for reducing driving and pollution.

Economic Engine for a Resilient Future

Third, we would like to see an economic engine, at a scale that supports the wildlife corridor, the land, and the community, that serves current and future community residents with work that is meaningful and that provides a pathway for those who grow up here to stay. When people live where they work, there are fewer vehicle trips and a greater sense of place. For example, a nonprofit hub could house local organizations–including SEC–and interpret the site’s natural resources to students of all ages.

Better Options

Sonoma Ecology Center is participating in several conversations to create better options for the SDC campus that deliver ecological health and benefits for a wide spectrum of communities.

For example, we are collecting environmental data about the 950-acre former SDC property to help inform recommendations about the property’s redevelopment and stewardship that optimize the health and resilience of ecosystems and human communities. Our partners include Sonoma Land Trust, Audubon Canyon Ranch, and Jack London Park Partners.

In 1995, a volunteer named Christy Vreeland approached us with an idea: create a habitat corridor in Sonoma Valley connecting Sonoma Mountain with the Mayacamas, keeping its ecosystem healthy and diverse. Sonoma Ecology Center took Vreeland’s idea to local agencies and districts, and a recognized Sonoma Valley Habitat Corridor began to take shape: local property owners worked with preservation organizations to place easements on their land, fences were removed, passageways cleared, and habitat restored.

Today, more than 5,000 acres of what is now called the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor have been protected. Approximately five miles long and 3/4 miles wide, the corridor encompasses a wide array of habitats including conifer forests, chaparral, wetlands, grasslands, riparian forests, blue oak savanna, and two reservoirs, and supports a rich collection of fauna including threatened species such as steelhead trout and northern spotted owl, as well as wide-ranging animals such as bobcats and black bears.

The importance of this connectivity corridor is recognized by scientists and planners statewide, for example in the Bay Area’s Conservation Lands Network.

SEC has been at the table continuously since the beginnings of the effort to bring Sonoma Valley’s groundwater into a sustainable state. For several years, we participated in a ground-breaking non-regulatory forum called the Groundwater Management Program, during which Sonoma Valley stakeholders learned how to find understanding and consensus even on this notoriously contentious topic. After the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act passed in 2014 at the height of a record-breaking drought, the local Sonoma Valley Groundwater Sustainability Agency was formed, with the power to regulate groundwater pumping and charge fees for extracted groundwater. SEC has represented the environment on the Agency’s Advisory Committee from its inception. Unfortunately, since the GSA formed, groundwater levels have continued to drop unacceptably, and it seems inevitable that Sonoma Valley will have to move beyond voluntary, incentive-based measures for reducing groundwater withdrawals to mandatory measures. The GSA is designing those measures to have the greatest effectiveness at the lowest cost with the greatest fairness.

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The General Plan is the blueprint that controls what land can be used for, on a parcel-specific basis, across hundreds of thousands of acres in Sonoma County outside its nine cities. The General Plan is only updated every 20 years, so it is worth investing time in. For the 2020 update, SEC focused, successfully, on increasing the width of land alongside Sonoma County’s streams (meaning its creeks and rivers) that is protected from most types of development. Sonoma County started the next update in 2025. The process will take several years.

Together with a wide range of other organizations, SEC is organizing community input to the General Plan update under these four Shared Priorities:

• Protect and enhance natural areas and agricultural lands.

• Concentrate all growth and development (housing, businesses, schools, etc) within cities and existing urban service areas, protecting other lands from development.

• Meet the sustainable long-range water needs of people, agriculture, industry, and nature.

• Integrate climate impacts throughout the General Plan, by using the best available climate science.

The General Plan is the blueprint that controls what land can be used for, on a parcel-specific basis, across the two square miles of the City of Sonoma. The General Plan is only updated every 20 years, so it is worth investing time in. SEC has actively provided recommendations to the City for its 1990, 2010, and now 2030 General Plan updates. 

• This public comment letter from early in the process lays out the issues SEC cares about, and the constructive, solution-oriented approach SEC uses with public policy. 

Sonoma County has a rich natural heritage. But what exactly do we have? What are the threats? What can we do to reduce the loss of biodiversity? This plan helps experts, land managers, funders, policy makers and interested citizens understand the status and natural dynamics of local ecosystems and current threats to biodiversity. It advances a set of non-regulatory actions to maintain biodiversity in Sonoma County for generations to come.

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