In 1989, vintner Will Nord bought the bucolic Calness Vineyard just outside the eastern edge of Yountville. Just a stone’s throw from rows of Yountville townhomes, Nord’s land is a vast expanse of green. Located in the Agricultural Preserve, where grapes are placed above development, Nord is allowed only one home on his 83-acre property.

That is, until two years ago, when Nord turned his one parcel into six.

Under state law, property owners like Nord are able to divide their land into parcels that otherwise would not be allowed today if they can show those sub-standard parcels existed once in the past. In other words, two-, 10- and 20-acre parcels are popping up in areas of the county where the minimum parcel size is 40 or 160 acres.

In Nord’s case, a map from 1926 shows that Calness Vineyard once existed as six parcels and therefore must be recognized as six today. Nord has acknowledged that his sweeping vineyard will probably one day be home to six houses instead of one, all with different owners.

In an area of the world where agriculture and rural development are often at odds, this law, found in the Subdivision Map Act, has its critics. County officials over the years have tried to find ways around this provision in the law, but to date they’ve had little success.

That’s where another land use tool comes in.

When Nord received acknowledgment from the county that his one parcel could legally be recognized as six, he and his partners applied for what’s called a lot line adjustment, which allows a property owner to rearrange parcel boundaries.

More often than not, lot line adjustments are used for relatively simple reasons like farming or estate planning. But some, like Nord, use lot line adjustments to reorganize their parcels with an eye toward development.

The boundary adjustments don’t actually change the rules about how many homes are permitted on the property, but they can increase the marketability of those parcels.

Carol Vendrillo, Nord’s Yountville neighbor, is suing Napa County over both the decision to recognize Nord’s six 1926 parcels as well as the decision to grant multiple lot line adjustments.

But even as her lawsuit works its way through the courts, county officials are making some controversial changes to the way lot line adjustments are granted.

Several months ago, the Napa County Board of Supervisors charged county staff with the creation of a stakeholders group to re-think how lot line adjustments work.

The group, made up of property owners, Realtors, land surveyors and others, came up with a proposed ordinance that worked its way through the Napa County Planning Commission and found its way to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The board voted unanimously to approve the ordinance, which makes some substantial clarifications about what is allowed and what is not.

Similar to the ordinance previously in place, the new rules adopted by the board allow property owners to adjust the size and configuration of their parcels but do not allow any new parcels to be created through the lot line adjustment process. The new ordinance also attempts to make sure that lot line adjustments don’t turn “unbuildable” lots into properties that are suddenly open to development.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Tuesday’s decision is the ordinance’s new declaration that not all lot line adjustments are subject to environmental review.

After Nord received recognition from the county of his six separate parcels, he applied for two sets of lot line adjustments.

State law requires strict environmental review for more than four lot line adjustments at a time, but by applying separately in increments of four, Nord avoided the otherwise mandatory environmental review.

County law to date has been silent on the issue of these sequential lot line adjustments, but the ordinance adopted Tuesday officially announced that sequential lot line adjustments are permitted and do not require environmental analysis.

Several members of the Sierra Club spoke out against those provisions Tuesday, arguing that sequential lot line adjustments run afoul of state saw and undermine the Agriculture Preserve.

Many also took issue with the assertion that lot line adjustments don’t increase the development potential of properties.

“The exemption from the Subdivision Map Act for lot line adjustments was restricted to four or fewer parcels because developers were using it to move development rights to more desirable locations and to effectively create subdivisions without local land use control,” said Carol Kunze, a member of the Sierra Club.

“Lot line adjustments can have a dramatic effect on the location of development rights and residential density,” she said.

Others claimed that critics of the ordinance deliberately misuse the term “subdivision” when they discuss lot line adjustments.

It’s not about creating new divisions, they say, but about moving around the ones that already exist.

“This has nothing to do with subdivisions,” said vineyard owner and supervisorial candidate Michael Haley.

“This is about moving lines around on a map,” he said, adding that lot line adjustments are typically used by farmers and not big developers.

Debra Dommen, executive director of the Winegrowers of Napa County, added that the lag time required to process multiple lot line adjustments in series of four is enough to discourage large developers from using sequential lot line adjustments to get out of environmental review.

“They don’t have the time to wait around,” Dommen said.

Developers of the eco-village in Angwin and the Lake Luciana golf course and estate home project in Pope Valley, for example, are applying for more than four lot line adjustments, she pointed out. They’re subject to environmental review.

Supervisors generally agreed that further restrictions on lot line adjustments would have unintended consequences and that while the ordinance isn’t perfect, it’s the best the county could come up with.

Supervisor Diane Dillon, however, added that Tuesday’s decision might not be permanent.

“I’m concerned about the legality of this,” she said, adding, “This is definitely a gray area of the law.”

Especially given Vendrillo’s lawsuit against the county, Dillon said, “We may be going out on a limb that might get cut off by the (court) or the Legislature at some point.”咻