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Humboldt County has updated its general plan, and it only took a generation to get it done.

In a special meeting Monday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors approved the Environmental Impact Report and adopted the long-delayed document with a vote of 3-1. Second District Supervisor Estelle Fennell was absent and Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson voted no.

Before casting his “no” vote, Wilson argued that there was a draft of the general plan update (GPU) from nearly a decade ago that would have provided more housing and had less of an environmental impact.

In the intervening years, new supervisors were elected, and they worked to reshape not only the policies in the GPU but also the ideological makeup of the county Planning Commission and the guiding principles underpinning the whole process.

One of the major changes ushered in by the new plan is that homes will now be principally permitted on the vast majority of resource lands in the county.

“It’s not satisfactory, from my perspective,” Wilson said of the GPU after today’s meeting.

County planning staff had crafted a number of mitigation measures in response to comments on the draft environmental impact report issued late last month, and a few more measures were added today in response to public comments. The board also directed staff to add a number of parcels to the county’s inventory of land zoned for agricultural production.

Notably, the GPU, as passed today, excludes a great deal of land in the county’s unincorporated regions — namely, everything in the coastal zone. Changes to land use policy in the coastal zone require certification by the California Coastal Commission, a process that can take six months to two years or more.

The county’s guidelines for land in the coastal zone will instead be modified and updated through the Local Coastal Plan (LCP) update, a process that is just now getting underway.