by Oscar Balaguer, CAP Team Chair
The result of the County Planning Commission’s June 26 public hearing on the Upper West Side (UWS) project was disappointing, but not surprising. In recent years the County has approved four major greenfield projects (Mather South, Northbridge, Jackson Township, West Jackson), the last three outside the adopted UPA planning boundary.
All similarly played fast and loose with CEQA, and added 28,771 more un-needed dwellings to the County’s already excess growth capacity. The County has never denied a sprawl project (see map, prev. link, p.2).
After minimal discussion, County Commissioners were at pains to explain that they were all personally committed to ag and open space preservation; that they recognized the project’s and EIR’s many flaws, but believed and hoped that further review by other authorities (divine?) would remedy them; and that they were not shirking their responsibilities because their authority is limited to land use (sic). Go figure.
The County’s Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) included, as required, responses to 350 Sac’s detailed draft EIR comments. The responses are substantively and legally insufficient. We will present rebuttals before the County’s adoption hearings, tentatively scheduled for August.
Except for local landowners hoping for windfall profits, most pro-UWS hearing commentors were mis-lead to believe that the project would bring jobs and relieve the housing crises in their lifetimes. However, it won’t help the housing crises because the County’s vast oversupply of already approved home construction over projected market demand means that none of the competing projects can build out for generations. However, they can begin to build out as market demand develops, resulting in multiple, incomplete, widely separated projects generating more auto traffic – already our biggest GHG source.
The basic problem is that the County has for many decades been subject to regulatory capture by land speculators. This resulted in the 2011 general plan update which (on specious grounds, and conflicting with many other GP policies) for the first time allowed Supervisors to enlarge the interim UPA growth boundary for specific projects, regardless of location or market demand. That invited the current glut of sprawl projects.
But speculators are insatiable. The proposed UWS project is not only outside the UPA boundary – it would also be outside the County’s 1993-adopted, never-before-breached, “ultimate” USB growth boundary.
Moreover, another currently proposed Natomas project, Airport South Industrial (ASI), would similarly lie outside the USB boundary (we’re also fighting that one). If approved, these two projects would precedentially open the flood gates to more far-flung, auto-dependent, high-GHG sprawl on ag and open space land anywhere in the County. The ASI project has been legally challenged by the Sierra Cub, and local Natomas residents have stated that if UWS is approved it will also be challenged.
County Supervisors’ have never explained their repeated approvals of un-needed, environmentally destructive sprawl, and seem likely to continue until they face political blowback. Constituents in three of the five supervisor districts comprise most of 350’s membership and are unlikely to favor sprawl, unless hoodwinked. In the last election, two of those Sups ran with no, or only token, opposition. A suit could help bring public attention to the issue.
It appears that UWS, ASI, and the pending Grandpark project, also in Natomas, will not be the end of the County’s speculative sprawl proposals. A 200-acre project is proposed near Folsom, and another 200 acres abutting Rancho Murietta have recently been purchased. Both are outside the UPA. One entity, AKT Development Corporation, is behind ASI and these two newer projects.
