As the Biden Administration accelerated the permitting process for the Hermosa project, Patagonia Vice Mayor Michael Stabile said he was “shocked” by South32’s new projections of mine-related traffic impacts and concerned by its plans for dewatering. “They’re going to flood us with water and they’re going to flood us with trucks,” he said.

The post As Hermosa Project Ramps Up, Local Concerns Escalate appeared first on Patagonia Regional Times.

BURLINGTON — Employees of Ben & Jerry’s flagship store in Burlington took another step toward forming the ice cream chain’s first union on Tuesday.

A group of employees calling itself Scoopers United is seeking to join Workers United, an international union that has been involved in efforts to unionize Starbucks employees. A short press conference was held outside the Church Street scoop shop to announce the results of a key union vote.

State Rep. Kate Logan, P/D-Burlington, was invited by the employees to oversee a “card check,” an important step toward officially forming a union. Logan said 35 of 39 staff voted in favor of unionizing.

“We are ecstatic at this turnout,” said Rebeka Mendelsohn, one of the employee organizers. “We are incredibly proud of all the staff that came forward to do this and we really look forward to the bargaining contract.”

In April, store employees sent a letter to management declaring their intent to unionize. Later that month, employees celebrated the company’s commitment to fair negotiations.

Logan applauded Ben & Jerry’s for allowing time for Tuesday’s card check and recognizing the results.

“It’s a huge accomplishment and I wish that every employer in the United States would do this for our workers,” Logan said.

Mendelsohn said Scoopers United will next focus on which rights it hopes to bargain for. Though she has been involved in the union push since its inception, Mendelsohn said that she would be leaving for graduate school. She said she would be working to “get the new generation of co-organizers up and running.”

Trey Cook, a field organizer from the Vermont State Labor Council, said the council is excited by Tuesday’s results.

“I think Vermonters know now that workers deserve more and we’re about to see a big wave of unionization, not just on Church Street but across the state,” Cook said.

At the April 28 press conference, an employee representative from neighboring Church Street business Black Cap Coffee announced that employees there were inspired by the scoop shop efforts and hope to form a union of their own.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ben & Jerry’s Burlington scoop shop unionization effort moves forward.

Oglethorpe County’s new comprehensive plan is nearing adoption.

The county and the cities of Lexington, Arnoldsville, Crawford and Maxeys held a public hearing last Monday to inform the community of the plan itself, as well as the schedule of for adoption.

County Planner McKenzie Spooner said there were only a handful of residents who attended the meeting and watched the Board of Commissioners sign off on the final draft of Comprehensive Plan for 2041.

On warm spring days, the forests of Cacapon Resort State Park sprout bushy, lime-green leaves as people walk along wooded trails, fish in the lake, birdwatch or share a meal at a picnic table.

For nearly a century, the park’s old forests, sweeping views and peaceful waters have attracted visitors, many seeking a nature-filled respite from the Baltimore-Washington D.C. rat race. But the park holds a particularly special place in the hearts of local residents who often gather there with friends and family.

“When I bring my grandkids over here, it’s the happiest time I can imagine,” said Craig Thibaudeau, who lives nearby. He recalls fond memories of playing with his grandchildren on the swing sets or beaches and fishing with his brother from Texas.

So when state officials announced plans to build a private RV campground in the park and one of the proposals included several hundred campsites, he was concerned.

“You lose the humanity of this park if you go corporate,” Thibaudeau said. “And that’s the bottom line. It’s the humanity that makes it so special.”

In public protests, he and dozens of others argued the environmental and social consequences of the development would be devastating.

The outcry eventually led the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to abandon the current campground effort entirely, and the agency is now seeking public input on what facilities it should add to the park.

The fierce debate over the RV campground at Cacapon was the first test of a law passed last year allowing private development of facilities in almost all state parks. While the project is on hold, the law remains on the books and state officials could explore development at Cacapon or another park in the future, setting up another struggle over the role of private companies on public land.

Why a request for campground proposals sparked intense backlash

The dustup over development in Cacapon Resort State Park started in December, when the WVDNR put out a request for proposals from private companies interested in developing both campgrounds and recreational facilities at the park.

“The WVDNR welcomes community engagement for this development project and will work with local stakeholders to maintain Cacapon’s natural environment as currently enjoyed,” Commerce Secretary James Bailey said in a March statement releasing the three proposals received from different companies, all for a combination of RV campgrounds and other amenities.

One plan, by a Harpers Ferry-based company, would create 50 RV campsites and also provide a shuttle service. A second proposal by a Berkeley Springs-based company sought to partner with the park on the development of an RV campground on nearby private land.

The third plan by Blue Water Development in Maryland, contained a number of options, including the creation of as many as 350 RV campsites, a floating dock called an aquabana, mini-golf, and in one proposal, a “snowflex” that would involve using artificial snow to support year-round skiing and snowboarding.

Community members quickly rallied against this plan, launching local protests, community meetings, and an online petition to withdraw the request for proposals that received more than 1,000 signatures.

They argued that hundreds of campsites and the recreational facilities would create a disruptive amusement park-like atmosphere and advocacy groups raised concerns that some of the new amenities would affect the affordability of the park.

“Cacapon is a very unique, very mountainous area,” said Mike Jones, the public lands campaign coordinator for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “Putting in these kinds of mega-projects is just incompatible with that.”

In a letter to state officials, the Morgan County Commissioners said that a large RV campground would strain already struggling sewer and road infrastructure and “diminish many of the reasons that folks visit our park to begin with: the natural beauty, the historical significance, and the peaceful tranquility.”

State parks officials canceled a public hearing set for mid-April after a lawsuit brought by a citizen argued that they did not notify the public as required by law. Several days later, they announced that they would not be moving forward with any of the three proposals and would seek further public input.

Critics note a new state law allows for private development in parks

While plans for an RV campground at Cacapon have been put on hold for the time being, advocates pointed to the proposals as confirmation of their concerns around HB 4408, a bill passed in 2022 that allows for private companies to develop projects and facilities in all state parks, except for Watoga State Park, the state’s largest.

The proposal was heavily criticized by environmental and conservation groups when it was introduced last year, with local groups, and some former state parks employees arguing that the measure would lead to development projects that could irreparably damage the parks and would also effectively privatize significant parts of them.

“Our state parks, up until this administration, never seemed focused on being profit-making centers, at least not for private businesses,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

In an email, House of Delegates spokeswoman Ann Ali noted that the 2022 legislation was requested by the WVDNR. Del. Mark Dean, a Republican from Mingo County and the lead sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement that he supported the bill because he “thought it could provide a new opportunity for outdoor recreation to expand throughout the state, especially those activities with high start-up costs.”

Local residents and delegates however, have criticized the measure in recent weeks.

“I tried to talk it down. I changed about five or six votes,” Del. George Miller, R-Morgan, told a local online news outlet of his decision to oppose HB 4408 last year after initially backing it. “But it would have passed anyway. We have to deal with it now.”

Residents say environmental concerns are paramount

During recent protests against the proposed development, some residents held signs with sharp slogans, like “CCC does not mean Corporate Cash Cow” – a reference to the Civilian Conservation Corps. The New Deal-era employment program created millions of conservation jobs for young men and hundreds of state parks – including Cacapon.

The park’s roots in a movement intended to preserve public lands made recently proposed development all the more concerning to those living nearby. In addition to aesthetic worries about hundreds of new RV campsites, residents also had environmental concerns.

Development would’ve likely included cutting down trees on several acres of land, paving over soil with concrete and draining a wetland to create a beach. All of these measures can increase the likelihood of flooding, already a major concern for West Virginia due to its many mountains, valleys and river systems.

Five years ago, park visitors and nearby residents alike were evacuated when the Cacapon River rose more than seven feet above the flood stage.

“They evacuated my street. And it wasn’t voluntary. They stayed there until you left,” said Morgan County resident Dale Kirchner, who filed the lawsuit over the public hearing and lives very close to the park. “So now if you have acres more of runoff – not only for the campground, but the amenity areas – how much worse is that going to be? Do we really want to take a chance with global warming and the storms getting worse?”

Kirchner and others also expressed concerns about safety. If the park could suddenly host an additional thousand visitors, they worried there’d be more campfires and people partying. They worried that could lead to more injuries and forest fires. Just last week, multiple forest fires burned across more than 1,500 acres in nearby Pendleton County, eventually setting ablaze beloved environmental landmark Seneca Rocks.

Such a fire in Cacapon could endanger priceless resources. The park is home to two endangered species, the wood turtle and the harperella, a plant with white flowers that typically grows along shallow streams. It’s also home to old-growth forests, often described as irreplaceable because of their unique ability to provide a haven for biodiversity, reduce flood risk and mitigate the effects of climate change — in a way younger forests can’t mimic.

As state moves forward, local residents say their voices must be heard

After scuttling the current proposals for an RV campground, the state must now go back to the drawing board. The Division of Natural Resources has released an online survey about future development that will be open until late May.

Beyond that, it is unclear what will happen next — neither the WVDNR nor State Parks responded to questions about the now-scrapped proposals or future plans at the park.

But for Morgan County residents, the defeat of the RV campground bids presents a clear victory for local efforts to ensure community input in the park development process. And for critics of privatization efforts, the recent controversy likely provides ammunition for future debates over development in other parks.

Now with the new law on the books, almost all state parks, including Cacapon, could be chosen for private development, raising the question again of whether public lands should be altered for the sake of economic growth.

Public lands or private profit? West Virginia RV campground debate raises questions over role of state parks appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

This story is the first in Fresnoland’s ongoing series taking a deep dive into how local governments have spent pandemic relief dollars from the federal American Rescue Plan program.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic handed the Clovis Rodeo Association its first annual loss in a decade when it had to cancel its flagship event. After bringing the Clovis Rodeo back in-person with limited crowd capacity the following year, the association ended up with an even bigger annual loss.

Despite two years of deficits, the Clovis Horse Show and Festival Association, the nonprofit organization behind the rodeo, wasn’t at the brink of collapse — mostly because it had more than $1 million in cash heading into the pandemic.

But that didn’t stop the rodeo from applying to be a subrecipient of federal pandemic relief dollars through Fresno County. In June 2022, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors approved reimbursing the rodeo for 2022 expenses at the sum of $200,000, using federal relief funds.

“It’s going back to the next rodeo — the livestock, the security, the supplies,” said Ron Dunbar, the rodeo’s president. “Without that fund, we wouldn’t be able to do what we like doing, what we’re used to.”

While the county is allowed to use federal relief funds to address the negative economic impact of the pandemic on local businesses, it brings into question Fresno County’s process in awarding organizations funds through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a federal program which gave $350 billion to local governments across the country to rebuild their economies.

Fresno County officials did not assess whether organizations that applied for funding actually needed federal relief dollars in order to stay afloat, county staff told Fresnoland. County officials also did not develop a metric to evaluate organizations’ equity aims in order to evaluate their impact on underserved communities or to compare applicants with each other.

Over the last two years, the county got $194 million in ARPA dollars from the federal government. Eligible uses of the federal funds include revenue replacement for government agencies, premium pay for essential workers, upgrading water, sewer, and broadband infrastructure, and financial assistance to businesses dealing with the negative economic impacts of COVID-19. Local governments that receive funding can either use the funds themselves or disburse the funds to subrecipients — both of which Fresno County has done since last year.

The unprecedented infusion of cash for local governments had great potential to bridge equity gaps, considering it didn’t have the typical constraints of annual government budgets. Last year, President Joe Biden even put out a 301-page report on how the ARPA program was his first opportunity to advance equity through major legislation.

Fresno County received 47 applications from organizations seeking funding from its ARPA subrecipient program. In May 2022, four county staff members evaluated whether applications met eligibility requirements from the federal government, said county spokesperson Sonja Dosti. She added that the five county supervisors’ chief staffers also weighed in on the process, evaluating whether applications aligned with county guiding principles on how to spend federal relief dollars. 

They forwarded a recommended list of organizations that should get funding to the county’s Ad-Hoc Committee on ARPA, which was composed of two people: supervisors Nathan Magsig and Steve Brandau. 

The two county officials approved and sent a priority list of organizations to the Board of Supervisors, which they subsequently approved in June 2022. The Clovis Rodeo was one of the 22 organizations accepted into the program. It was also one of three event-centered subrecipients — including the Big Fresno Fair and the Turkey Testicle Festival. 

Among the 25 programs that didn’t get funding, one sought to increase education on voting, digital literacy and broadband infrastructure for underserved communities. Another program sought to boost enrollment in public programs — like CalWORKs, Medi-Cal and CalFresh — for residents in geographically isolated parts of Fresno County.

Pandemic brought down rodeo's cash totals, but not to the brink of collapse, tax documents show

After two consecutive years in deficit — losing about $265,000 over 2020 and 2021 — the Clovis Horse Show and Festival Association still had more than $930,000 in cash. That’s largely because over the five years prior to the pandemic, the rodeo earned an average of $1.56 million in annual revenue and took home an average of about $277,165 in annual profits, which it used every year to either plump its cash accounts or acquire more land or property, according to the rodeo’s tax documents obtained by Fresnoland.

Alfreda Sebasto, a spokesperson for the rodeo, emailed a statement to Fresnoland, explaining that the rodeo’s annual cash totals are not cash reserves, since they aren’t entirely retained throughout the year and are used for operational expenses required to put on the rodeo every year. Sebasto did not respond to a request for the rodeo's 2022 gross revenue and total expenses.

Fresno County’s selection process for ARPA subrecipient funding did not include comparing organizations to each other in terms of their current resources and whether that tied into their overall need for federal relief money, said George Uc, an ARPA analyst at Fresno County. Instead, the county’s process was mainly focused on assessing applications for whether they met guiding principles and priorities set by Fresno County officials, which include addressing negative outcomes exacerbated by the pandemic and its immediate impacts.

"It's not that one application is better than the other,” Uc told Fresnoland. “It was more of identifying those that wouldn't duplicate funding sources and achieve the board's principles."

Every organization that applied for funding had to explain how it would “promote strong, equitable growth, and racial equity among impacted communities in Fresno County.” In response to that equity question, the Clovis Rodeo stated it does not discriminate against anyone, strives to be a family-friendly event and has affordable tickets between $20 and $35, according to its application for subrecipient funding, which Fresnoland obtained through a California Public Records Act Request.

In its application, the rodeo did not highlight a specific community or underserved group that its programming would specifically benefit, but did note how doing “outreach to underserved audiences, local schools and all interested is a part of the Association's core mission.”

Uc said that equity was assessed across all 47 applications for ARPA funding, however, the county did not develop a metric to compare the rigor of each organization’s equity aims with each other. He added that equity was assessed by understanding how each organization would have a lasting, transformational impact if given federal relief dollars. 

County staff understood the rodeo’s equity aims as generating $15 million in revenue for the region, which helps businesses that depend on the event to make profit. He also said the rodeo is a boon for hotels, since it brings people from all over — including Merced, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — to Clovis. 

"I think looking at (the Clovis Rodeo) from travel, hospitality sectors — what it does — that's the equitable part of it,” Uc said.

Are county officials addressing inequities with ARPA dollars?

Fresno County’s approach to equity with ARPA dollars has been strongly criticized in the past. The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, a statewide health advocacy organization, researched and analyzed how 12 of California’s largest counties spent ARPA funds in 2021. It gave Fresno County the lowest score, an “F,” since the county hadn’t even acknowledged racial inequities or underserved communities in its 2021 ARPA recovery plan report.

“The Board of Supervisors came up with these broad principles of how they want to use ARPA funding on their website and there's no mention of equity at all in the broad principles,” said Weiyu Zhang, an associate policy director at the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network. 

Since then, Fresno County seems to have improved its approach somewhat, Zhang told Fresnoland, because its 2022 ARPA recovery report is much more detailed in terms of highlighting racial groups in Fresno County and social vulnerability statistics. However, she added that nothing actually keeps counties in check for using ARPA dollars to address equity issues.

"There's really just the power of communities collectively calling out their elected officials to apply public pressure," Zhang said. 

That’s not to say none of Fresno County’s ARPA dollars have been used to address equity gaps. The county earmarked about $5 million for improvements to water infrastructure in Mendota and Malaga. 

Furthermore, in 2022, county officials earmarked $150,000 to improve a park in El Porvenir and earmarked another $1.6 million to improve the community center in Lanare — both of which impact two rural unincorporated communities in the county.

“It's thanks to persistence and the community being involved in this decision-making process that I believe this was able to happen,” said Mariana Alvarenga, a policy advocate with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “So really just applauding the community and thanking the county for really listening — but also encouraging them to be more critical in thinking about what more can be done in the county.”

Alvarenga said that includes addressing broadband issues and further unmet infrastructure needs impacting unincorporated communities. But by now, $170.9 million in ARPA dollars have already been allocated by the county's board of supervisors, leaving about $23 million up for grabs.

"It's frustrating to think about ARPA funding things like the Clovis Rodeo,” Alvarenga said. “We believe that there are more pressing needs that impact people's day to day lives that should be addressed with these funds.”

The post Why did Fresno County give the Clovis Rodeo pandemic relief funds? appeared first on Fresnoland.