Treasure map

Claudia Stuart has a deep connection with agricultural lands. She spent part of her childhood on her father’s farm in Virginia, where she put up fences and “bush-hogged land” (city folk, that means clearing brush). Looking back, that time tilling the soil may have planted seeds for her career in land-use planning—and the award-winning work she’s done for Butte County.

“It was an interest in the land,” she said, “how people interact with the land and what it means for all of us, both as a way to make a living and as a place to live.”

Stuart, a principal planner in the county’s Development Services Department and a lecturer in Chico State’s Geography and Planning Department, has spearheaded a program that brought acclaim to both. Utilizing state grant funding, her team created the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation strategy—or SALC—which features a mapping-driven database of incentives available for county landowners.

The Sacramento Valley Section of the American Planning Association recently honored Stuart with its award of excellence for innovation in green community planning. SALC is up for state-level recognition as well.

Stuart stresses that she had lot of help. She recruited a handful of Chico State students/alumni at various points of the nearly year-long process. Gabe Strelecki, now an assistant planner with the county, came on board two months before graduating last spring and logged numerous hours—mostly on mapping and research—before the database went live last fall.

He remembers the date precisely: Oct. 25, 2017. They made it just ahead of their state-mandated deadline. The other team members from Chico State were fellow majors Nick Bateman and Jesse Hudson (who worked with Strelecki) as well as Nick Hernandez and Ren Rosin (who preceded him).

“Working on the SALC project has been one of the better experiences of my life,” Strelecki said. “Just being able to work at something that helps your community—and for me, involves maps and geography—was a great opportunity.”

So, what is SALC? Basically, it’s a way for Butte County to encourage farmers, ranchers and other ag-landowners to adopt sustainable practices, including wildland conservation. The county does so by bringing to light various incentives—such as grants and tax credits—offered by a range of public, private and nonprofit entities.

There’s no stick along with the carrots; SALC has no corresponding regulations, Stuart said, no penalties for nonparticipation.

“We just want to show people where there’s opportunities to help enhance their bottom line, help make our environment better and then help us as Butte County meet some of our [climate action] goals along with the state meeting them,” she continued. “So, try to get a win-win-win-win, all together.”

The program does so by making information available in a user-friendly format: a data-layered map. Strelecki, primarily, compiled specific characteristics for every parcel within county limits using GIS (geographic information systems). The result is SALC Mapper—accessible online through the county’s website (see infobox)—which directs landowners to applicable options.

A rice farmer in Richvale, for example, could qualify for crop-specific carbon offset incentives; the pop-up box generated by searching the farmer’s property has links to such programs. An owner of acreage south of Chico could qualify for grassland conservation programs; again, links in the pop-up box.

Stuart and her team spent months searching for incentives, then sifting through the oft-confusing verbiage and requirements.

“It wasn’t easy to get the information,” Stuart said, “and we thought, That’s strange. Usually if opportunities to make money are out there, everybody knows about them [but] it was hard to find … and the language and tools are really hard to slog through.”

Much effort went into translating government and industry jargon to “regular-people language.”

Even residents without ag land stand to benefit from SALC, Stuart and Strelecki say. Stressing that their team comprised planners, not scientists, they figure that farmers can make a major impact on the county’s environmental mandates.

By their calculations, two activities on rangelands—composting (putting a thin layer of organic material on the ground) and conservation (keeping properties undeveloped)—would sequester enough carbon to meet 100 percent of Butte County’s Climate Action Plan goals in relation to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

“When you look out there today and see these bone-dry ag lands, or somebody will say ‘those are very low-producing lands,’ if you look at them one way they might be,” Stuart said. “But if you look at them through this perspective, of how they can help achieve some of these [environmental] goals, then they’re actually highly productive lands.

“So maybe that’s a new way of looking at them. We don’t want to tell anybody what’s the right way—that’s why this is totally opportunity-based.”

An opportunity not every area possesses. Strelecki grew up outside Los Angeles, in the midst of urban sprawl.

“Butte County has a lot of ag land, and there are practices out there to sustain our environment and sustain our agriculture—and there are incentives as well,” he said. “There’s a huge opportunity here to improve the future of this county.”