Gene Wunderlich - Realtor®, Government Affairs Director

I was just working on an article about the attempted control and eradication of the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter in California. The GWSS posed a deadly threat to California Vineyards back in the late 90's so a coalition of government, businesses, universities, institutions, etc., have banded together with one goal in mind - eradicate the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter. It's not a goner yet but the end may be in sight - no more GWSS! Yeah!

Wait just a darn minute. All these groups are banded together to try to ERADICATE an insect species? In California? Am I hearing that right?

Didn't I just write about an attempt to shut down the livelihood of the picaresque town of Cloudcroft, New Mexico? The town's timber industry was shut down  15 years ago in a nod to the 'endangered' Sacramento Mountain Checkerspot Butterfly. Today the battle is for the only industry left to this mountain village - tourism. 

And the butterfly is winning. 

Haven't I also told you about the Delta Smelt? Maybe more than once. That's the 3" long fish that's cut water distribution to Southern California by 85%. It's why our bills are going up. This inedible species lives less than a year. It's life consists of floating downstream when it's a hatchling, living and mating in brackish water for a couple months, Heading back upstream to dump a load of progeny and die. It's like a 3rd cousin twice removed of a wanna-be salmon. Where other species thrive, this lout fails. Yet water deliveries to 30 million people is being severely impacted by it. 

And the fish is winning.

So why isn't the Glassy Wing Sharpshooter winning? Why haven't the defenders of the planet come to the defense of this worthless bug? Why are the fates and sciences all aligned against this hapless denizen of the vineyards? 

Are we insectophobes? Is it OK to gang up to KILL creepy bugs but not cute little butterflys or fishies? 

Or is it the target? GWSS should know things like grapes, hops, peat, corn and barley are off limits. We can deal with the loss of a town or a water supply, but don't $%}*  with our liquor! 

Or do they just need better PR? Could the whole fiasco have been avoided with a little finesse in the press? There's a very fine distinction betwixt endangered species and imminent demise of a species. A timely press release could swing the balance in your favor. Could the entire swine population of Egypt have been spared by a well placed media connection?

These what-if's could haunt us. I suppose. If we cared. 

The weekend's here. I believe I'll have another drink. 

It seemed appropriate this morning that I was driving through the Temecula Valley Wine Country to hear a presentation on the vineyards. It was a glorious morning, the vines have sprouted about a foot of verdant green foliage, there was a gentle ground mist wending its way through the hills and above the mist, two hot air balloons hovered silently. One of those morning calling out for a good camera - which I didn't have.

Now imagine the vineyards, the mist, the balloons didn't exist in Temecula. It almost happened.

Was it really only ten years ago that Wine Spectator Magazine headlined an article 'The End for California Wines'? In the late 90's, a new pest, the Glassy-Winged Sharpshooter (GWSS), caused severe damage to grapevines in California, including wiping out as much as 40% of some Temecula Valley grape stock. The GW Sharpshooter spread a fatal bacterium called Pierce's Disease which had the potential to be as devastating to California's grape crop as the phylloxera had back in the 1980's.

Phylloxera, an aphid like creature fond of snacking on grape vine roots, has been under control for the past several years but remains a background threat if unmanaged. After a decade, they believe the GW Sharpshooter is also largely contained but requires vigilant monitoring and ongoing eradication attempts.

They meaning the team that has been working on this issue for the past ten years and have given our winegrowers a new lease on life. A unique partnership of federal, state and local agriculture departments, industry and research institutions is not only controlling the root louse, but is building a foundation of new information on viticulture diseases in general.

Long time residents remember driving out Rancho California and seeing over 300 acres of vineyard destroyed and plowed under to try to stay ahead of the bug. Local grove manager Ben Drake says "Research helped Temecula recover from our devastating losses. The lessons learned and the partnerships formed here with other industries are helping keep GWSS and PD from spreading to other parts of the state until there is a permanent solution."

What made our outbreak so virulent was that in the past the disease had always transmitted itself via local insects. These local bugs would acquire the bacterium from infected plants growing adjacent to the vineyards. The infection was always transmitted early in the season and could be controlled.

The GWSS brought a new dimension to the game by being able to acquire the infection from either an infected plant or an infected vine and then passing it on to every vine it subsequently lunched on. Prior to GWSS, vine-to-vine transmission was virtually unheard of. And with the infection period spread across the whole growing season, the collapse of water-bearing capillaries was deadly.

Mounting a massive attack funded by federal and state government with significant contributions by wineries statewide, the insect spread has been contained and there are areas of Napa & Sonoma where the insect has been eradicated. In monitored vineyards, and neighboring citrus groves, where the GWSS winter, there has not been a single infestation or major damage report for several years.

These folks are an optimistic and focused group. They regaled us with tales of Green Zone Barriers, biological control, and the fascinating life of a GWSS, complete with photos and a specimen display. But it is a great example of things going right, for a change. And of a lot of people cooperating, including legislators, business owners, universities and more. For more information on this chapter of California history, visit Pierce's Disease Control Program or PD/GWSS Forum. It is an ongoing battle as is the need for funding to continue.

I would feel a lot more comfortable if these people were looking into the swine flu bug for us.

This is one of those issues where the more information you get the confuseder you become. I hope you joined us on 4/21 for a presentation by Granite Construction on the Liberty Quarry project. After a brief overview of the project, they addressed some issues they have with the City of Temecula's annexation request for the land where the quarry would be.

Having toured Granite Construction's Indio quarry site and the parcel in the hills south of Temecula, we thought it only fair to get the city's views - since we have a long history of good relations with our cities. The result was two-fold. Today AOR Directors toured the Santa Margarita Watershed with Temecula's Mayor Maryann Edwards, and Dr. Matt Rahn, Director of the SDSU Field Studies Program that manages the watershed project.

The preserve occupies about 4,500 acres of pristine wilderness and has one of the last wild rivers in California., the Santa Margarita. They claim that the water in the Santa Margarita today started percolating through the granite mountains 1,000 years ago.

The mountain is solid granite for 1,000 feet.

Which brings us to the divergence - all that granite. It's the reason Granite Construction selected the site - all that granite. And where they want to quarry is about a mile and a half from this ecological preserve in the center of a wildlife corridor. SDSU and other groups conduct hundreds of experiments and on-going studies in the reserve including delicate seismic measures and species monitoring. Many of these groups are concerned that the nearby presence of a quarry mining operation would be disastrous to the preserve.

It might seem that on one side it is a business decision based on supply & demand, dollars and cents, on the other is the emotional decision - and sometimes simply a NIMBY attitude. But there are at least five or more sides to this story and the outcome will be with us for 80 years, regardless of which side wins. There are so many angles on the issue there's room for all of them to be right - at least some of the time. It will be up to LAFCO on June 4 to decide if the City or the County will determine the fate of that parcel of land.

Please join us at our 4/28 marketing meeting when Temecula Mayor Maryann Edwards and Sean Nelson, City Manager, will be our guests. They'll provide the City's overview of the project and why they are proposing annexation.

In my next post on the subject, I'll include some discussion from Senator Hollingsworth.

Again, SRCAR does not support or oppose the quarry project. We are concerned about a possible property rights issue and that is our sole interest. We heartily encourage you to get ALL the facts if you plan to make a decision. Both Granite Construction and SDSU are available to provide information and/or a tour. It's a worthwhile exercise in civic responsibility.

At one time or another I think everybody has seen Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting of 'The Last Supper'. But have you ever seen it live? I don't mean the painting itself - but the actual Last Supper portrayed live?

Well now's your chance. Now thru Saturday, you can catch this brilliant depiction of Jesus and the Apostles at the Old Town Temecula Community Theater at 7:30 each evening.

The show presents a full scale reproduction of da Vinci's masterpiece featuring life-size actors portraying everyone at the table that fateful evening. What you don't see is a lot of action or dialogue between the characters. The set-piece is introduced by Leonardo himself and the actors are frozen 'en tableau'.

The scene begins right after Jesus has disclosed that one of his Disciples will betray him before the rooster crows. One by one we disengage from the painting and make our way stage front to share our personal experiences with Jesus during our travels with him. Each soliloquy concludes with the common question "Is it I".

The Living Last Supper was dramatically adapted from a 1950's West Point graduate thesis with backdrop and lighting effects to dramatize the event. Our cast consists of 'actors' ranging from high school students to long retired folks so there is a great diversity of experience and stagecraft. This not only makes for a lot of fun but provides a realistic cross-section of Jesus' merry band of travelers. Our Jesus, whom you might actually confuse with the real deal if you ran into him on the street, moved to Indiana this year but flew back just for this series.

But when the curtain comes up, the fun is over. Being frozen in place for up to an hour is no easy task. Phantom itches, muscle cramps from maintaining strained positions and numb-butt from sitting in one spot on wooden stools are just a few of our challenges. Gotta cough? Fugedaboudit. Fly on your nose? Enjoy. Leg go to sleep before your speech? Incorporate the limp into your character.

Support your local community theater. If you haven't been before, our 3 year old theater is a state-of-the-art facility that is acoustically superb and built so there isn't bad seat in the house. Bring the family - stop by one of our many fine dining establishments in Old Town, then come on over to the theater for a great evening of live entertainment.

Tell 'em, St. Peter sent you. That's me - 5th from the left.

I don't personally care if you're for or against the Liberty Quarry Project proposed for the foothills southwest of Temecula. All I ask is before you engage me in a discussion, please have some facts at your disposal. I get real tired of emotional arguments proferred as facts, out-and-out lies and mis-statements masquerading as the truth, and NIMBY and environmental whack-jobs trying to sway me to their cause by increasing the volume of their rhetoric. Simply yelling BS loudly does not make it a fact - it merely makes it loud BS.

OK. Now that we're clear on the ground rules, the Southwest Riverside County Association of Realtors has been evaluating the Granite Construction project at Liberty Quarry. This is a major project that may be a neighbor to our community for the next 75 or 80 years. To that end, we have had a presentation by members of the anti-quarry group Save our Southwest Hills and yesterday 4 members of our Board took a tour of Granite Construction's Indio Quarry and then trekked into the southwest hills to look over the proposed Liberty site.

The BOD has not made a decision on whether or not to support the quarry proposal itself. There are numerous facts in evidence tojustify support as well as some negative concerns. But I suspect that based on our criteria, the issue will be adjudged 'not real estate related'. Though the foundational use of aggregate underlies real estate in Southwest County, our homes, businesses and infrastructure, the subjective issue of quarry location is not in itself a Realtor issue. You can make up your own mind as to need & location but I encourage you to get ALL the facts before making that decision.

What is an issue for us, however, is a private property rights issue concernoing the proposed annexation by the City of Temecula of the land on which the quarry would be sited. That issue is fairly simple.

1. There is a Seller (or Sellers) who are willing to sell their land

2. There is a Buyer (Granite Construction) ready, willing and able to buy the land

3. The land is zoned 'rr20 w/mining allowed' as it's highest and best use. The zoning is appropriate for the intended use by Granite Construction.That zoning pre-dates the existence of the City of Temecula and recognizes the critical role that mining plays in our economic structure.

We are looking into the property rights aspect of this issue by trying to make sense of the documents that all parties have/or will submit to LAFCO prior to their June 4 hearing on annexation. In addition to concerns of a taking - and - downzoning by the City, there are also concerns with the letter of the annexation law. For a city to annex land (remember Temecula/Redhawk & Murrieta/East Murrieta), they must be able to prove that the acquisition will be productive - in other words, you can't just acquire something that will put a negative drain on city resources - there must be some common good.

The City states that their annexation plans are valid and justified and would not result in an appreciable change to the underlying zoning, it would merely provide the element of local control on the land. And in part, the city may have used some sketchy numbers to pad up the numbers in the report by including plans for the construction of 81 custom homes on part of the land. Now if you've seen the area you know that the area:

1. is simply not conducive to residential/estate development due to the steep rocky nature of the land, lack of access and utilities. If it was that damned easy and attractive, the current landowners would have built there years ago.

2. the City claims they will have no responsibility for infrastructure or development in the area. If residents want to build here, they are responsible to bring in their own utilities, roads, power, etc. It's not too surprising that many of the current landowners are all in favor of this project. Let's see - on the one hand we can keep this worthles pile of gravel we bought that we could never afford to build on - on the other hand we can sell to this big company for a tidy sum. Hmmmm, tough call, eh? The City offers one further scenario - they maybe can sell it to a wildlife preserve for probably a less tidy sum.

3. will NEVER pay for itself because residential property is a drain on city resources, not a benefit. In a nutshell that's why the City of Temecula is in better fiscal condition that Murrieta - because they have a larger commercial base whereas Murrieta is primarily relying on a residential base. But in this case they seem to be playing against type.

You should also know that 85% of the area is already zoned for habitat and open space. Granite Construction is planning to buy about 400 acres and, in compliance with county, state & federal mandates, their quarry will be confined to just 150 of those acres - none within line of site of any area of Temecula, the I-15 or much of anywhere other than aircraft.

Again, you can choose to believe or disbelieve facts pertaining to air quality, silica dust, asphalt production, traffic reductions, the cost of aggregate to our local market or any of the myriad of pertinent issues. I encourage you to visit some of the websites on the issue to get your own facts and make your own informed decision as to the quarry itself.

However, if someone tells you it will be the largest open put mine in the country, that it will produce toxic clouds of silica dust and asphalt particulates floating over our community, that it will encroach on either the wildlife preserve, wildlife corridor or the Santa Margarita river watershed, that it will increase truck traffic or that we simply don't need or would not benefit from local access to aggregate products, they're dissembling.

For more information please visit: Granite Construction , The City of Temecula, or LibertyQuarry Facts.

Please plan to attend the Granite Construction presentation at our Tuesday morning marketing meeting on April 21st and bring your questions for the Q & A. And our special guests on 4/28 will be Temecula Mayor Maryann Edwards and City Manager Sean Nelson.

On the issue of private property rights, there can be no question where Realtors stand.