Local environmentalists are likely to win their first battle in the general plan process — the bid for more time to respond to Napa County’s massive planning proposal — but the fight to get the county to take on global warming as a planning issue is more in doubt.

As group after group called for more time Wednesday to sift through the 300-page draft general plan and its more than 900-page sibling, the draft environmental review, the Napa County Planning Commission agreed Wednesday to recommend that the Board of Supervisors grant an extension to the 60-day public review period.

“We feel your pain,” said Jim King, commission chair, at Wednesday’s meeting.

Hillary Gitelman, county planning director, said she gets the sense from the supervisors that it is not a question of whether to grant more time, but how much. Commissioners recommended an extra 60 to 90 days.

“I see us vetting this for some period of time,” said commissioner Terry Scott.

If Wednesday was any indication, environmentalists are set to use the time to drill away at the global warming issue, a looming threat that scientists predict could raise sea levels, expanding the banks of the Napa River and threatening low-lying parts of Napa.

While planners have been focusing on more traditional Napa Valley planning issues, such as the protection of agriculture and what to do with state housing demands, environmentalists Wednesday called on the county to get serious about global warming and other environmental issues.

“Are we really going to plan for the future and not include climate change as a factor?” said Ginny Sims, a Napa resident and former supervisor.

Environmentalists called for the county to focus on renewable energy sources and reverse what they saw as the draft documents downplaying the risk global warming. They said they want the plan to focus more on reducing the county’s output of greenhouse gases and plan for rising water.

“It will change the map of Napa,” said John Stephens, a Napa environmentalist. “We need to address this problem now. ... We will have to move the sewer plant. We will have to move the railroad tracks.”

Agricultural preservationists also took issue with the draft documents, saying the language seemed less specific and less strict than the current general plan.

Volker Eisele, a grapegrower, vintner and member of the Napa County Farm Bureau, bemoaned what he saw as th draft plan’s failure to preserve and extend gains won in past efforts to promote agriculture.

“The new plan is not in place and I hope it never will be,” he said, later asserting that “agriculture, agriculture, agriculture” was the county’s first priority.

“Everything has to come to agriculture’s needs, everything else is second,” he said. “You look at counties where that is not the case and agriculture disappears fast.”

Wednesday was just the first in a series of public hearings. The next public hearing takes place Wednesday at 1 p.m. at the Napa County Office of Education.