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Hearst says in its literature that only a small portion of the ranch will be removed from agriculture. The rest will remain a working cattle operation, and Hearst is promising that it will remain so forever on. There will be no other resorts in the future.
But David Fiscalini and Jon Pedotti, another local rancher, say that argument misses the point. One development like Hearst Ranch Resorts will surely entice other developers to scout out land in the area, hoping they can piggyback on Hearst's success. Already, the ranchers say, some parcels in the area have been selling for as much as $1,500 an acre. "You'll never pay for that in 30 years if you keep the land in agriculture," Pedotti says. Instead, land around the Hearst Ranch will become too expensive for owners to cover the mortgage and taxes by raising cows. Slowly, the land will be sold out, subdivided, and developed.
"Whenever you do something like this it becomes easier to do it again," says David Fiscalini. "What Hearst wants to do is going to open the floodgates for land speculation. All of a sudden, you can put anything anywhere."
The Hearst Ranch Resorts, in fact, will force more development to house and care for all the workers who will be needed, opponents says.
Hearst maintains that its development will provide $13 million of annual payroll and pump $3 million a year into county tax coffers. But projections made last year by the county's Department of Planning and Building say the costs of upgrading schools, fire and police protection, and other services will far outstrip that tax revenue. In the worst-case scenario, the financial projections suggest it will take at least a decade for area governments to collect more in taxes than they will be forced to spend upgrading services. "It will be economically devastating to the county," claims Shirley Bianchi, who chairs the county's Planning Commission and is aghast at the sheer size of what Hearst proposes to undertake.
But general angst over the loss of their tranquil, rural lifestyle is not the only fear eating away at Hearst's opponents. There are also serious questions about what the resort would do to the area's unique environment, issues that have attracted attention from far beyond the local ranchers and landholders.
Paramount among the environmental concerns is water, which is hard to come by on this stretch of coast. San Simeon Acres, the closest town to the Hearst Ranch, has been under a building moratorium and varying degrees of water conservation measures for more than a decade as it desperately casts about for new water supplies, says Forrest Warren, general manager and secretary of the four-person San Simeon Community Services District. "All these basins along the coast are short of water," Warren says. "I don't see an end in sight."
Bill Bianchi, who lives with his wife, Shirley, on long-held family land near the Hearst Ranch, is a retired soil physicist who spent his life studying the way water moves underground. Bianchi, who opposes the resort, blames the water shortages on Franciscan melange, a jumble of rocks and contorted layers of soil that underlies much of the coastal area. Formed by the gnashing of two tectonic plates, the melange doesn't hold much ground water, Bianchi explains.
In many parts of the area, wells are just a waste of money, he says. Most water must come from springs or streams, which run dry in long, hot summers. Even the Hearst Castle has to truck in water during some dry summers to keep up the landscaping and flower gardens.
When heavy rains do come in the fall or winter, Bianchi notes, the water tends to rush downhill quickly to the ocean before it can be of much use. "There is little storage in these creeks," Bianchi says. "But you'd have to blow away all the environmental laws before you could build a reservoir here."
Hearst plans to draw the water it needs from Arroyo de la Cruz, a stream that is wholly contained on the Hearst Ranch several miles north of the proposed resort sites. Hearst attorney Jay Rockey says the Arroyo has a 41-square-mile watershed and is virtually untapped now. Studies conducted for Hearst, he says, show that there is plentiful water to provide for the resort.
But the county's environmental impact report says that Arroyo de la Cruz cannot safely yield enough water to even keep up the golf course, much less provide for guests in 650 hotel rooms. The Arroyo's use will also be limited because it is home to threatened steelhead trout, and any development plan will have to leave enough water in the stream to keep the fish alive.
Rockey says the fish will be protected. It's a condition of the state water permit Hearst obtained 13 years ago to draw from Arroyo de la Cruz. "We have some very stringent conditions on our water permit that were imposed specifically to protect the steelhead trout," he says.
But opponents say they don't trust Hearst's projections on the water available from the Arroyo. They believe that Hearst will either have to build a desalination plant or run a big pipeline from some distant water source to its resort. Either option is fraught with environmental risks, opponents say.
More controversial than water supply is the impact the resort will have on San Simeon Point, an oasis of trees, wildlife, and beauty that is not just treasured by local residents, but also is rich in artifacts and relics from the Chumash Indians who lived and conducted ceremonies there for hundreds of years.
Originally, Hearst had proposed building right out onto the point, dislodging the Indian artifacts and cutting down some of the aged forest so its hotel could be placed where guests would have the best view of the ocean. Faced down by fierce opposition, Hearst has revised its plan, and now envisions building the hotel -- and some number of casitas -- up to the base of the point, leaving the actual land spit untouched.
