Paul Hobbs Winery Stop Work order update

Please join citizens today, Tuesday, who will be speaking to the Board of Supervisors about continuing the Stop Work order on Paul Hobbs Winery's conversion next to Apple Blossom School and four other schools with 700 students on June 25. Each person can have up to 3 minutes in the public comments section, which should be around 2 p.m.

The Ag Commissioner finally placed a Stop Work order on Paul Hobbs Winery’s vineyard conversion on June 25. This comes a month after over 100 people attended a Sebastopol Grange Public Forum, which included the Ag Commissioner, two representatives of Hobbs winery, and other government and school officials to discuss complaints by parents and neighbors about Hobbs toxic practices. But the beautiful, abundant apple orchard has already been clear-cut to make way for industrial alcohol production.

The vineyard conversion had secretly been in process for months, but parents only found about it in May when hazmat-suited men demolished a barn and home. The lack of transparency by government and school officials concerned parents, as did the censorship of material sent to the local daily.

Various groups--including the Watertrough Childrens’ Alliance and Apple Roots Group--have met with many officials, warning them of Hobbs well-known toxic practices and long trail of broken promises and breaking promises.

Two grounds for the Stop Work order exist: failure to implement erosion control measures and cutting creek-side vegetation. One wonders how many other rules Hobbs will break, and then pay meager fines. How long will the Stop Work order last?

As I watched soil run-off down the dirt road on a rainy June 25, my anger was replaced by sadness, as it had been when I saw the apple trees dead on their sides, all crunched up, leaving exposed, bare ground.

Hobbs claims to be a “local farmer.” He was in Asia managing his extensive wine empire when the Stop Work order was issued. He is neither local nor a grower. Real farmers have our hands in dirt or on animals, which Hobbs does not. He is a bad apple who gives our grape growers, some of whom are truly sustainable, a bad name.

We need a moratorium on new vineyards, such as other counties have. We need legislation to protect sensitive sites, including schools, health centers, and homes for our elders. We need more protection from greedy, predatory bad neighbors. Paul Hobbs should be required to replant the vegetation he took out and pay a large fine for his contamination of the creek.