(NVR) - The ongoing debate on the pace and scale of winery development in the Napa Valley continued before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, with one supervisor asking if a moratorium on winery permits is needed.

Three winery projects approved by the county Planning Commission in the last year have been appealed, and Planning Director David Morrison told the supervisors he expects three more appeals to be filed.

Given those circumstances, Supervisor Keith Caldwell asked if the county should suspend processing winery permits until any changes to its rules and regulations can be adopted. Morrison responded that the county can’t change the way it processes applications already on file, and isn’t planning to do a review of the cumulative environmental impacts of winery development in the county.

The county’s cornerstone regulation for winery permits is the 1990 Winery Definition Ordinance, and Morrison and his staff have been analyzing trends in permits and potential changes to the law in recent months. A community forum will be held in mid-November to gauge what the public and the industry want to see happen with how development is regulated, Morrison said.

A committee would be set up after that to examine the potential changes and make recommendations to the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors, he said.

Supervisor Mark Luce said he wants debate over those changes to focus on whether wineries have enough capacity to process Napa Valley grapes, not if the county has enough to satisfy the flow of tourists, or if growth in the industry has happened too quickly.

Luce, a former county planning commissioner in the late 1980s, said the original context of the WDO was that wineries should be considered industrial processing centers for agricultural products, making them worthy of being in the Agricultural Preserve.

“Maybe we’re at capacity,” Luce said. “Something that answers the question, ‘should we be building more wineries?’ I know we’ve addressed that over the years. Now’s the time to check in.”

Calls to loosen or restrict the WDO’s regulations have arisen sporadically in the almost 25 years since its passage, and Supervisor Brad Wagenknecht noted that the last time, in 2010, was during the bottom of the economic recession. That led people to call for wineries to be able to host weddings, and other wine industry-friendly changes.

Wagenknecht said the board resisted swinging too far in that direction four years ago, just as it should with the economy in Napa Valley now booming and the public calling to restrict winery development.

“We’ve traditionally in Napa tried to measure twice and cut once,” Wagenknecht said. “That’s what we’re trying to do now. We need to look at the right stuff and make an informed decision.”