01/27/2017 | 05:50 pm Patagonia's Flood and Flow Committee received permission to apply for a grant to fund a watershed study during Wednesday evening's well-attended town council meeting.
Also during the meeting, councilmembers made what they said will be the final changes to truck regulations following debates surrounding the possibility of mining extraction beginning near the town.
The council granted the Flood and Flow Committee permission to apply for a $5,000 Patagonia Regional Community Foundation grant to fund an annotated watershed management plan outline.
Committee member Carolyn Shafer said the grant money will pay for Bill O'Brien of Tucson-based NextGen Engineering to assess the water needs of people including residents, business owners and ranchers, and identify existing watershed studies and projects by groups like Friends of Sonoita Creek, the U.S. Forest Service and Borderlands Restoration.
"There's a lot of different information all over the place and this annotated plan will allow us to bring it into one (document) and be the first step in beginning to understand our entire watershed, what our challenges are, who's doing what and what studies have already been accomplished," Shafer said.
Shafer said the outline will position the committee to apply for funds to complete a full watershed management plan, a process estimated to cost $100,000 and take three-to-five years to complete. The plan will help the town manage its water quality and levels and mitigate the risk of floods.
According to Shafer, 70 percent of Patagonia's residents live within the flood plain, but many can't afford insurance. She said the problem will only get worse since the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood insurance is projected to increase by 25 percent in the next year.
Trucking debate
The bulk of Wednesday's meeting involved discussing changes to the Town Code of Ordinances' "Vehicle Weight, Use and Noise Restrictions on Town Streets" article.
These regulations are tied to Patagonia's mining debate because many of the heavy trucks passing through town are heading to mining projects. Traffic would increase if Arizona Mining moved from its current exploration phase to mineral extraction in the nearby Patagonia Mountains.
Mayor Ike Isakson's suggestion to define a "heavy duty truck" as one with tandem axles 48-90 inches apart instead of a truck weighing over 26,000 pounds was agreed upon unanimously. This change will allow Marshal Joseph Patterson and his deputies to better enforce heavy duty truck regulations, Isakson and Patterson said. While they have no access to truck scales, local law enforcement can still measure the width of truck axles.
Regulating the amount of trips these trucks can take turned out to be controversial. The draft said that heavy duty trucks are limited to taking 50 separate trips per week on town roads, and 10 trips between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Isakson wanted to change the definition of a "separate trip" from each time a truck enters the town to a round trip. However, the council found that it would be difficult to track round trips and instead decided to increase the weekly trip limit to 100, and the overnight trip limit to 20.
Councilmember Michael Stabile, a former member and founder of the mining watchdog Patagonia Area Resource Alliance (PARA), was skeptical of increasing the number of trips. He said Greg Lucero and Don Taylor of Arizona Mining told him that if extraction operations begin, the project will require two trucks per hour driving through the town 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That amounts to 48 trucks per day and 336 trucks per week.
"The whole point of this is that we would just like them to chose an alternate route that doesn't come through town. It's not to restrict them from operating, it's just (to manage) that kind of traffic," Stabile said.
Brent Bowdon, owner of DM Engineering and Excavating, a company that contracts with Arizona Mining, said the heavy-duty truck regulations need to exempt existing operations.
"I've continually operated on (town roads), (taking) more trips than that, for 20 years," Bowdon said, adding that he believes the resolution is singling out his company.
Vice-Mayor Andrea Wood assured Bowdon that the resolution is not aimed at his company alone. Bowdon replied: "It's what's happening. But OK, I can afford a lawyer."
"It's not all about you, Brent. There's other people that live in the town," Stabile responded.
Bowdon answered that he has been driving trucks longer than some residents have lived in the town.
Sympathetic to his concerns, councilmembers agreed to add a free one-time permit exemption process to the resolution that business owners can apply for. They encouraged Bowdon to attend future meetings if his company is negatively impacted by the regulations.
Other business
After the trucking regulation discussion, the Drought Preparedness Plan was discussed with minor changes. Patagonia is updating its plan in response to conditions in 2014, when Santa Cruz County was officially declared to be in severe drought. The draft suggests defining normal well water levels as 40 feet from the surface or higher. The current threshold is 45 feet or higher.
After the drought discussion, Isakson instructed Town Attorney Michael Massee to update the trucking regulations and drought preparedness plan in preparation for a vote at the next meeting.
Later in the evening, the council approved Kathy West's appointment to the Tree and Park Committee.
The meeting ended with an argument over mining.
Councilmember Ron Reibslager thanked Lucero for bringing him and other citizens to view the Arizona Mining exploratory drilling site. Lucero said he was open to conducting more tours for interested residents.
"I think it makes a difference in the view of (mining) because it's not, I don't think it's the total destruction that some of it has been made out to be," said Isakson, who is a carpenter with DM Engineering and Excavating.
"I think you're out of line with those comments about how great the mine operation is," said Shafer, a PARA board member. The mayor agreed that he and Reibslager should not have brought up the topic.
At a Dec. 28 meeting, Shafer accused the mayor of having a conflict of interest, a charge he and Massee have rejected.
The next Patagonia Town Council meeting is at 7 p.m. on Feb. 8, when the truck and drought regulations are expected to be approved. The council meets at the Town Hall, 310 McKeown Ave.
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