Place, Stories, and Consequences

Abstract

Faced with a visible and controversial instance of erosion on vineyards, the Lake County, California, Board of Supervisors founded an unusual organization—the Erosion Protection Education Commission (EPEC)—to offer nonbinding advice to grape growers concerning relevant agro-management practices. This study uses in-depth interviews, fieldwork, and secondary sources to contextualize EPEC within the county’s stories about place—within its heritage narratives. The dominant heritage narrative (depicting Lake County’s character as agriculturalist, cooperative and harmonious, and antiregulatory) is shown to be a major factor shaping and justifying the creation and operation of EPEC. Despite the existence of counternarratives, the dominant heritage narrative prefigured the emergence of EPEC and helped reinforce EPEC as the county’s way of handling the growth of grape growing in the region and the resulting erosion problem. This article argues for greater attention to the role of community narratives about place in understanding how decisions are made on environmental and land-use issues.