Pacific Union College’s plan to build nearly 600 dwellings in the Angwin area sparked more controversy when college representatives gave a presentation Wednesday to the county’s General Plan Update Steering Committee.

Despite the committee’s lack of power to approve or disapprove the project, dozens of detractors and supporters of PUC’s plan used the meeting as a forum to praise the college or express skepticism for the plan.

With a standing-room-only crowd of more than 120 people, public debate began in earnest over a plan college officials say will not be finalized until 2008.

Angwin resident EG Blackburn blasted the college’s plan so far, saying narrowing and beautifying Howell Mountain Road would hamper emergency vehicles when they tried to get around motorists who might not have space to pull over on the two-lane road.

“I’ve heard a lot of things that I simply cannot believe in this presentation,” he said.

On the other side, Karen Widmer urged plan opponents to put themselves in the shoes of PUC President Dick Osborn.

“PUC does need to realign its assets because a lot of its assets are in land,” she said.

PUC is aiming to build 170 units of on-campus housing and 421 dwellings in and near the Angwin village, with hopes of a project of top-rated environmental quality. College officials said with recycled water fit for irrigation, solar panels on rooftops and other environmental accouterments, the new housing wouldn’t place more demand on the mountain aquifer than is being placed there now.

PUC officials say they need to develop college-owned lands to improve the financial fortunes of the Adventist college.

The steering committee voted to abstain from weighing in on a new map of which areas of Angwin could be developed without a Measure J vote. Measure J requires that the voters have a say when property owners seek to change the zoning and uses of land in the county’s Agricultural Preserve. Instead, it voted to send three maps out for public comment before it will return to the issue later this year.

One of the maps would place a small portion of the college’s plan in Measure J territory, if approved by the committee, the county planning commission and ultimately the Napa County Board of Supervisors. College officials said if that happens they’ll have to take their plan back to the drawing board.

Kevin Block, a Napa attorney representing the college at the meeting, told the committee to hold off on choosing a map of Measure J territory in Angwin and let the public debate the merits of the project.

“I don’t think these maps ... add clarity,” he said. “I think they’ll add confusion and they’ll add controversy.”

It’s understood in county government that the steering committee does much of the heavy lifting when it comes to the process of creating the county’s new planning document. To that end, elected county officials are likely to pay close attention to what the committee agrees on — or doesn’t agree on — especially considering its makeup.

On one side of the 21-member commission there are agricultural protection advocates like Tom Gamble, member of the Napa County Farm Bureau’s board of directors, but there are also property rights advocates like George Bachich, leader of the Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance. Many members fall somewhere in between the views of the two men, in effect making up a wide range of Napa Valley land use viewpoints.

There were people who spoke directly to the steering committee regarding what it could rule over. Herbert Ford of Angwin urged the steering committee not to take action that could result in a map of Measure J excluded territory — called the urban bubble — that could hamper the college’s plans.

“Every change we make in that urban bubble is taking away from PUC the use of that land,” he said.

Duane Cronk, a member of Save Rural Angwin, said the position of his group was to eliminate parcels of agricultural land from the urban bubble thereby forcing a Measure J vote in order to develop there. In the past measure J votes have been a high hurdle for developers to overcome.

Still, surveying some of the crowd, Cronk said, he was disappointed.

“I am dismayed to see this discussion on a general plan turn into a hearing on a particular development,” he said.

Steering committee chairman Peter McCrea nodded.

“So are we,” he said.