The County of Riverside will be sticking its neck out a
mile when it adopts a multiple species habitat conservation plan, such as
the MSHCP for western Riverside County that is one element in the Riverside
County Integrated Plan.
A county plan is significantly different from existing laws
and regulations imposed by federal and state agencies. Taxpayers, landowners,
citizens and voters of Riverside County need to be clear on the differences:
- Enforcement responsibility - When
the county voluntarily adopts a habitat plan, it assumes complete enforcement
responsibility, duties that ordinarily burden the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and other federal agencies and the California Department
of Fish and Game and other state agencies. This responsibility comes
with enforcement costs and liability for enforcement actions.
- Financial responsibility - When
the county voluntarily adopts a habitat plan, it assumes responsibility for
the fiscal soundness of the plan, for the funding. Despite talk of equitable
sharing of the cost of habitat protection between federal, state and local sources,
the county -- or more properly, its citizens and taxpayers -- will be on the hook
for the funding.
- Liability - When the county
voluntarily adopts a habitat plan, it assumes complete liability. All exactions,
restrictions and enforcements will be under the authority of local government,
which therefore assumes all liability against lawsuits and other challenges. This
issue was already resolved when Property Owners Working for Environmental
Responsibility took the Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency to court. The
court ruled that RCHCA -- not USFWS -- must answer legal challenges in court.
- Exceeds the law - When the county
voluntarily adopts a habitat plan like the western county MSHCP, it exceeds
existing law. Federal and state endangered species acts have specific applications
to listed and proposed species and for designation of critical habitats. A county
plan seeks to conserve nonlisted species that otherwise have no legal
protection. This excess opens the county to additional liability when
it impacts, restricts or takes private property to preserve species
that have no legal status.
