Notice of Violation
The Notice of Violation (NOV) referred to in the CEQA document breaks down into two parts:
a road cut without getting the proper permits for encroachment and,
“land clearing and grubbing”
Let’s look at the road cut first, as it is the result of a simple mistake by a rancher on our land. Our purchase agreement with the previous owner gave him an easement along the south edge of our property. Without getting the proper permits for creating an access encroachment on Eastside Lane, and without letting us know he was doing the work, he instructed his farm hands to create an access point to the Highline Ditch across our property. Unfortunately, he misread the boundary markers and put it in the wrong place. We didn’t notice it for a few days because it wasn’t anywhere near our project area. When we did notice it, we contacted the rancher who then apologized and agreed to make it right. Shortly after that, we received the NOV. We immediately contacted the county for the abatement procedure, which we followed to the letter. The rancher blocked the encroachment, and the road cut was reseeded.
The part of the CEQA statement that refers to “land clearing and vegetation grubbing” is the more concerning part. When the code enforcement officer was on our property, he noted the piles of sage in our project area. As you can see from the image below, this land was tilled, not graded, and those are two very different processes. The tilling of the land to “grub” the vegetation is standard practice on fields around here. This was done after we purchased the farmland and prior to applying for our CUP. This land has existing fences and gates and has been used for cattle for years. Tilling is allowed on agricultural land. It is a normal activity. We’re still confused by the implication that tilling farm land somehow needs a permit from Mono County. Agricultural land owners till and grub at will as a protected right with Ag-10 zoning. We can only assume the code enforcement officer did not know the history and allowed uses of our property when writing the NOV. We thought about fighting it, but the road cut was clearly in violation, and the remediation was reasonable, so we just obeyed in hopes of getting back to work as quickly as possible.
The three green dots in the image below are our water tanks. You’re allowed to put water tanks on your property. To the right and slightly below the tanks you’ll see our well. We had the proper permitting for drilling our well. To the left of the water tanks you’ll see two slightly diagonal lines. This is our septic system, which we were in the process of installing. We have proper permitting for installing the septic system but that work, too, was shut down by the notice of violation. The grid pattern you see is made by the piles of grubbed sage. The spots on the left side of the image are not as distinct because we’d begun the process of burning the piles in the proper season. Again, we weren’t able to complete this work on the field to the right because of the NOV.
