A December, 1997 story in the Index Tribune suggested that Sonoma can expect its size to increase by 73 percent in the next 20 years. A recent editorial urged us to consider the limits that our infrastructure places on growth here. This is very important and timely advice. Like other communities in desirable places, the pressure for growth is a serious issue we must face, and I would suggest that it will be in our interest to face it squarely.

One issue that may be touched on as we start this process is a concern of most planners and ecologists. Whatever we do must be "sustainable", or able to support the needs of the present without compromising the needs of those who will live in the future. Our present civilization is not very close to this ideal. We use resources and create waste in a manner such that those living in the future will suffer from lack of resources and pollution. In many in parts of the world and even in our own community, it should be noted that people right now suffer unnecessarily because of these things.

A central topic to a discussion about sustainability is "carrying capacity". Carrying capacity is, simply, the limit that nature imposes on organisms living in a limited area. There are only so many of one species of plant, animal, bacteria, etc., that can occupy a limited area before that area becomes overloaded with waste that harms the organism or becomes depleted of resources essential to the organism.

In our area, despite the fact that information is thin and inexact, we do know that there are limits and that in some places we are reaching them. There is only so much: prime farmland, vineyard land, buildable land, surface water, groundwater, freshwater wetland, montane hardwoods, oak woodland, oak savannah, grassland, chaparral, tidal wetland--to name a few elements that have a role in the network that maintains the health of our community and our environment. There are limits to each of these and we have been moving toward or beyond these limits at an increasing rate.

Few communities have found the courage to face this challenge--to do the research, make an informed decision about "carrying capacity" in whatever terms they define, and take the uncomfortable step to set limits on themselves, at least until conditions change enough to make sensible adjustments. It touches on the important ongoing debate about the rights of individual and the rights of the community. Those that have made these choices and set limits still have problems, but they do not seem to include eroding quality of life issues to the same degree. In the next year or two we have an opportunity to begin his discussion, and in some cases are already involved in it. Groundwater, wastewater, school size and construction, urban boundaries, upcoming county general plan discussions all frame this larger conversation. We might do well to hold a forum as we did in 1990 to examine these issues within the larger context of our community"s future and include in it the idea of sustainability.

Because it is complex and involves many parts of the community, any sensible plan we make to move toward being sustainable will require discussions with wide representation from the community. We need to know what it takes to make life work well for each other. As humans, we seem to carefully avoid these difficult discussions, in part, because they often involve looking squarely at our deepest fears and desires. It involves dealing with the uncomfortable baggage of being human, the things that annoy us about ourselves and others, so that we can start to work and keep working together. Others of us are tired of this process. It is still necessary.

Sustainability is at best complex and inexact. It involves constant participation from those involved, as with organs in a living body. It requires information. We need to know about the past and where we are right now. We need to know what has worked and is working here and in other places. And even while all this information is vital, we will never know enough. At some point, we must use the best information we have and make a leap of faith to make decisions about the future. I believe for our community we still have some things to learn, and we are nearing the time when we must make some important decisions.

I meanwhile hope that, for the jaded and cynical examples around us, we are still willing to take the extra steps to make these decisions consciously and as a community. We will leave a legacy that will support a future community if we can.