Hard to swallow

What seems unignorable amidst all the winegrowers’ yelping and
moaning about how they’ll go dead broke if they have to be more
careful about using Russian River water for frost protection, is
how much money they’re spending to make their point.
Winegrowers throwing money around to persuade us they’re
destitute? Yes. These guys are hurting big time. Just ask their
lawyers, economic consultants and P.R. firms.
So it’s probably understandable that some people are starting to
wonder why growers who can afford to build hilltop chateaus and
throw lavish parties in their tasting rooms and wine caves dug into
the hillsides can’t afford a wind machine or a stream flow
gauge.
The new frost protection rules require growers who pump water
from the Russian River or its tributaries, in order to protect
their crops from freezing, to participate in a water demand
management program. The idea is to monitor the high instantaneous
demand among multiple vineyards pumping water on freezing spring
nights. The goal is to prevent the streams from becoming so
dewatered that small fry salmon get stranded and die.
The protesting winegrowers on the one hand claim extreme
financial hardship from frost protection regulations and on the
other rightly point out how wine is a hugely successful and growing
sector of the county’s economy. The implicit message is, “We’re
big, we’re vital, so screw the fish.”
And as they spend more and more money to tell us they’re
impoverished, their credibility is starting to disappear faster
than the steelhead.
William Selyem winery owner John Dyson paid several million for
his Westside Road winery several years ago and last year funded an
amazing study predicting economic disaster if growers have to
follow the state’s frost protection plan.
The Dyson report, written by Sonoma State economics professor
Robert Eyler, said the new frost regulations would decimate not
only the growers but the entire state and maybe the nation,
throwing thousands of people out of work and rendering vineyards
fallow.
We were left to imagine homeless vineyardists drinking Ripple in
the Healdsburg plaza and begging for spare change all because some
ditzy bureaucrats put a few endangered fish above business as
usual.
The winegrowers economic scenario hasn’t gained much traction
except maybe among the growers making up the story. It looks like
an expensive narrative to concoct. I don’t know how much it costs
to buy an economics professor, but I’m guessing it’s not cheap. The
attorneys are working hard too. Dyson’s guy wrote an impressive
56-page comment letter to the state Water Resources Control Board
in September reiterating the fiscal calamity frost regs will
create. Another vineyard attorney filed suit last month to have the
whole thing tossed out because it could transform vineyards into
subdivisions and gravel pits.
As things stand, many winegrowers are “clinging to economic
survival,” said John Aguirre of the California Association of
Winegrape Growers, at the hearing in September when the new rules
were adopted.
Yes. We see them clinging, don’t we? What they seem to be
holding on to are $100 bottles of pinot noir.
“The phrase ‘clinging to survival’ to me seems poorly chosen in
this situation,” said Scott Greacon of the Friends of the Eel
River: “If there is a group that is clinging to economic survival,
it’s the fishing fleets of the North Coast. If there’s a species
that’s clinging to survival, it’s the central coast coho. ”
Either out of arrogance or confidence, or both, these wine guys
are telling the state, “We can do it ourselves, grow grapes and
take care of the salmon, so please leave us alone.”
Maybe they can, but leaving them alone has not, at least so far,
seemed to have produced the desired outcome.
Frank Robertson is a staff writer for Sonoma West
Publishers.