As Republicans toy with selling public lands, is Santa Cruz’s Cotoni-Coast Dairies protected?
… [I]n recent months, the sense of anticipation surrounding the 5,800-acre Cotoni-Coast Dairies, near Davenport, has had to compete with rumblings in Washington, D.C., about rolling back some of the United States’ national monument protections and selling off public lands for development and resource extraction trades. … [W]hen the Trust for Public Land donated the property to the Bureau of Land Management in 2014, the federal agency explicitly agreed to a series of tight deed restrictions that not only govern BLM’s use of the land, but all future owners as well. … According to the deed, the Trust for Public Land still maintains mineral and water rights. By contract, regardless of who owns the property — whether the federal government or a future private buyer — the Trust for Public Land will still own “all minerals, oil, gas, petroleum, and other hydrocarbon substances” as well as the property’s geothermal steam and water.