At a regional water, growth and development workshop Friday in Mokelumne Hill, the work consisted of 12 tables working on a planning exercise on a map of the Valley Springs area. Clockwise from bottom left are Debbie Dunn, Tom Swett, Nate Lishman, Larry Perez, Gary Nickless and Connie Gonsalves.

Photo by: Jerry Budrick

Water, growth and development are among the hottest topics in Amador and Calaveras counties today. Using all three of these buzzwords drew an impressive crowd to a regional water and growth visioning workshop at the Mokelumne Hill Town Hall Friday.

Sponsored by the Local Government Commission and nine local partner organizations, the six-hour workshop provided a crash course in modern planning, using powerful software and state-of-the-art communication devices. Hosting the workshop was the LGC's Clark Anderson.

Operating under the radar for nearly 30 years, the LGC has a membership of more than 1,000 local elected officials, city and county staff, planners, architects and community leaders. High among the accomplishments of the LGC are the Ahwahnee principles, guidelines for community development first presented at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park in 1991. The Ahwahnee principles begin with the notion that planners and developers should design communities the way they were before the automobile eliminated most pedestrians and public transit.

Originally, there were the Ahwahnee principles for resource-efficient communities. Over the years, other sets have been created, including principles for economic development and resource-efficient land use, which provided the foundation for Friday's workshop. Coming soon are Ahwahnee principles for climate change.

"Regional is the watchword," said Jeff Loux of the University of California Land Use and Natural Resources Program, focusing attention on the fundamental purpose of the workshop: collaboration and coordination of strategic planning among all the stakeholders. "Fragmented jurisdictions cause a lack of collaborative planning."

Future funding from state and federal sources, Loux warned, will be dependent upon regional cooperation that leads to creation of inter-regional water management plans. IRWMPs are the brainchild of the California Department of Water Resources and state Water Resources Control Board.

Amador, Calaveras and San Joaquin counties, along with the Amador Water Agency and East Bay Municipal Utilities District, are working toward completion of a complex, long-range IRWMP for this area.

Planning software took center stage, with Placeways Inc., creators of the most widely-used planning software in the nation, providing small, cell phone-size number pads to all participants. The pads contained numbers from zero to 10. Up to 11 possible responses to a question were projected on the large movie screen and votes cast for each response were instantaneously transmitted to the mainframe. Tabulation of the responses was then converted into percentage form and shown to the voters. Each of the 12 tables of eight participants was given a large map of the Valley Springs region and a bag of chips. The maps contained 81 squares, each square covering approximately 68 acres. Poker chips were used to represent residential, commercial or greenspace designations.

Placement of the chips provided data from the 12 "scenarios," indicating the preferences of the participants. The software then was able to calculate impacts of the different scenarios on factors such as economy, traffic, water use, infrastructure, water run-off and several others.

The polling keypads and software were employed to vote on possible general plan recommendations to county boards of supervisors or city councils. Each table suggested three recommendations. The resultant 36 were trimmed to 20 and the voting yielded some clear winners.

The No. 1 vote-getter was: "coordinated planning between all government entities to qualify for state funds." Many wanted to include a water element in all future general plans, set urban growth boundaries, prohibit the building of dams or promote water recycling.

A popular, water-oriented suggestion came from Wallace resident Lew Mayhew of the group Keep It Rural, Calaveras. Mayhew wanted planners to "quantify restraints to development with regard to water availability, sustainability, quality and cost."

Toward the end of the day, the spirit of cooperation among counties and entities was evident. "I had a good talk with people from other jurisdictions, such as the Valley Springs Water District and the Calaveras Recreation Agency," said Jackson City Councilman Andy Rodriguez.

Hope for the future can be summed up in Loux's revelation that, "In Colorado, the counties and townships sign each other's general plans. California hasn't gone down that road yet, but it could be done locally."