What Does the Public Trust Mean to Locals?

What Does the Public Trust Mean to Napa Locals?

According to the late Buddhist scholar and environmental activist Joanna Macy, a key part of addressing the challenges of our changing climate is developing new economic and social systems that support life on Earth.

In Napa County, we are currently updating our General Plan. With the devastating impacts of wildfire, drought, flooding, and rising temperatures, our awareness of the importance of watersheds, groundwater, forests, and our relationships with each other has increased. It has never been more crucial to protect what belongs to all of us, and what we ask our local elected and appointed officials to safeguard—the Public Trust: water, air, Earth, and community well-being.
As part of our series on the Public Trust, we include two citizens’ statements about how Napa County is doing in protecting the Public Trust.

It’s complicated.

There’s a duplicity in some of Napa County’s elected and appointed public servants that belies the integrity of the definition of public trust. While in my ideal world, we’d all be working for the benefit of the public good (health, safety, services, etc. ), special interest groups and monied individuals seem to have more sway and influence than the many of those working as volunteers and advocates for the safety and beauty of our community.

In Napa, wineries and developers have unlimited and frequent access to the county staff, politicians, and commissioners. There’s a “celebrity” air among our supervisors, commissioners, and council members who are featured on social media at parties, often holding glasses of wine and eating outrageously expensive meals. Our politicians wear clothes embossed with the logos of wine industry lobbying organizations. They are walking advertisements for the wine industry.

These same local politicians were people, I once believed, who work for the public good. My forays into advocacy have taught me the folly of my idealistic views.

Yvonne Baginski, Founder of Napa County Wildlife Habitat Conservation Coalition and Share the Care.

I was aware of the concept of Public Trust before I knew the term as I grew up just a block from the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx.

The water, which we could see from our public school, was transported from the Catskill Mountains via the Croton Aqueduct to my neighborhood before it was shared by all New Yorkers. This public system was part of what enabled NYC to become the Center of the Universe. Public officials had the foresight to plan and build a system so that all could have clean water to drink.

Here in Napa, Public Officials have been slower to react to this need. They fought the state, saying we had enough groundwater for all, only to determine several years later that we didn’t. Still new projects are approved with the cheery assumption that there’ll be enough water for all while the obvious need to meter all usage suffers from benign neglect.

Dan Mufson
Founder, Napa Vision 2050