PRN will make a very brief presentation at the WICC Watershed Symposium Whirlwind tour of Napa conservation non-profits.

Protect Rural Napa is a local nonprofit dedicated to conserving Napa's rural character. While we support other community groups, our interest is concentrated in the Rector watershed and the Soda Canyon Road access to it.

Rector supplies water to the Vets home and Yountville. The water is clean with thriving native species populations and the potential to be a resilient buffer to climate change. It's an amazing place - but it's threatened.

In the past 30 years, over fifteen hundred acres of wildland have been converted to vineyard with more planned. At least twice since, filters at the Rector reservoir clogged with sediment, fouling the water, made worse, if not caused, by vineyard development and replanting.

After vineyards, wineries. Approved in 2017, the Mountain Peak winery will move large amounts of cave spoils and re-graded topsoil, all within feet of blue-line forks. Twenty one thousand visitors and employees will use the site each year. A proposed leach field is within 200' of one fork. With this venue as precedent, more will be proposed, further endangering the water source. We continue to challenge the approval.

Protect Rural Napa sees the threat to natural resources inherent in the quest for "growth" and will continue to monitor environmental development appropriately.

on the web at: https://protectruralnapa.org/home.php?p=2026