Guest post on Coyote Valley and wildlife corridor issues

(CGF Volunteer Shari Pomerantz wrote the guest blog post below, and we're looking forward to more from her. -Brian)

Coyote Valley is one of the few remaining wildlife corridors in Santa Clara County, linking habitats in the Santa Cruz Mountains with the northern Diablo Range. Gavilan College’s proposal – the addition of a new 10,000 student campus in Coyote Valley - will have significant impacts on the cougars, badgers, raptors, and other species that migrate through Coyote Valley to access seasonal food and water supplies.

A recent SF Gate article discusses the ecological value of Coyote Valley, and highlights disagreements regarding the extent to which the new campus will reduce Coyote Valley’s functioning as a wildlife corridor.

Students at De Anza College have identified nearly 200 species of birds and mammals using the corridor, including 12 species with special statuses. The students seek to protect them through the establishment of a Coyote Valley Raptor Reserve, and do not believe Gavilan’s expansion plans to be compatible with their goals. The Committee for Green Foothills is also working to protect Coyote Valley, and agrees with the students’ assessment of its value.

Gavilan College spokeswoman Jan Bernstein acknowledges the presence of wildlife in Coyote Valley, but believes the impacts of development in Coyote Valley and Gilroy will be comparable. There are several distinctions between the areas surrounding these two campuses, which have not been adequately addressed.

The Gilroy campus borders thousands of acres of pristine wild habitat. The proposed Coyote Valley site does not. Coyote Valley is one of the few remaining wildlife corridors in the region, and the corridor is already impaired by traffic and the fact that farmland isn't quite as compatible with wildlife movement as natural habitat. While animals do stray into the Gilroy campus from adjacent habitat, we cannot realistically assume a similar ‘coexistence’ to occur with an increased human presence in Coyote Valley.

The Coyote Valley site for Gavilan College currently consists of unoccupied farmland. The College’s plan includes specific elements that will greatly increase its impact on wildlife and migration. The new campus will include a firing range, police academy, and athletic fields. Clearly, the noise and fence construction associated with these activities can harm animal migration. Furthermore, the arrival of 10,000 students to a presently unpopulated area will greatly increase traffic, and encourage additional business and residential development.

In summary: Gavilan College’s expansion plans are not compatible with the need to protect Coyote Valley’s rare value as a wildlife migration corridor.

Read more!

News Release: Morgan Hill must hold developers to the Coyote Valley standard for cost recovery, environmentalists say

(CGF issued the following news release last week. -Brian)

Committee for Green Foothills
NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 1, 2008

PRESS CONTACTS: Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate, phone (650) 968-7243, brian@greenfoothills.org

Morgan Hill must hold developers to the Coyote Valley standard for cost recovery, environmentalists say

IN COYOTE VALLEY, DEVELOPERS PAID ALL PLANNING AND ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW COSTS FOR DEVELOPING THE AREA; Committee for Green Foothills states that Morgan Hill taxpayers deserve the same.

Committee for Green Foothills argues that Morgan Hill taxpayers have a right to expect the City-initiated planning for the "Southeast Quadrant" meet the same cost recovery standard imposed on developers by the City of San Jose for the Coyote Valley planning process. "San Jose also had a city-led process for analyzing potential development of Coyote Valley," said CGF Advocate Brian Schmidt, "but no one denied that the motivating force was the developers who owned much of the land. San Jose required developers to pay for every dime of environmental review and planning involving that area, and Morgan Hill taxpayers should not be presented with a bill for proposals that increase the property value in that area."

Last night, the Morgan Hill City Council voted to initiate an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) process to convert the Southeast Quadrant area mainly to non-agricultural use, with a small portion to be retained for agricultural or open space uses. The Council also voted to initiate a study of the feasibility of agricultural mitigation and long-term agricultural viability in the broader Morgan Hill area. "None of the EIR costs should be borne by taxpayers," said Schmidt. "These EIRs will only exist because of the landowner interests in development. As for the costs of studying the feasibility of agricultural mitigation, that's mitigation for the loss of farmland due to proposals like the Southeast Quadrant, and any transfer of developer responsibilities to taxpayers is unacceptable. Only costs for studying agricultural viability and mitigation separate from the rezoning proposals in the Southeast Quadrant should be handled by taxpayers.

Schmidt continued, "the Coyote Valley planning process was riddled with flaws, but at least they claimed to get back all the money they spent from the developers. If these Southeast Quadrant studies don't even meet that standard, we fear the other results may be even worse.

# # #

About the Committee for Green Foothills

Committee for Green Foothills is a regional grassroots organization working to establish and maintain land-use policies that protect the environment throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Committee for Green Foothills, established in 1962, is a Bay Area leader in the continuing effort to protect open space and the natural environment of our Peninsula. For more information about the Committee for Green Foothills or about our work on this issue, visit www.GreenFoothills.org.

Read more!

CGF comments on Gavilan's Coyote Campus Draft EIR

(CGF submitted the following comments on the proposal to put a large college campus in the middle of North Coyote Valley, a sprawl-inducing proposal that makes no sense given the collapse of other Coyote Valley development plans. -Brian)

April 7, 2008

Dr. Steven Kinsella,
Gavilan College

Re: Comments on Gavilan College: Coyote Campus Project DEIR, SCH No. 2007122009

Dear Dr. Kinsella;

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Coyote Campus Project (“Project”) DEIR. We conclude that Gavilan College (“College”) cannot legally approve the Project based on the inadequate DEIR. We understand that other groups and individuals have concerns about the wildlife analysis in the DEIR, which we share. We submit the following additional comments:

• The DEIR fails to adequately discuss effects climate change has on water availability. A Superior Court finding that the State Department of Water Resources has not established the effect of climate change on water supplies (DEIR at 133) does not eliminate the College’s obligation to discuss the potential effects to the best of its ability. The DEIR fails to discuss whether the Project might have to be closed during droughts due to the effects of climate change. This inadequate discussion that fails to identify a significant impact leaves the DEIR critically flawed.

• The discussion fails to identify whether 100-year flood plains would change as the result of climate change.

• The discussion fails to include displacement of current farming elsewhere. Other agricultural production must take place of the lost production on this land and should be included in the emission totals. The DEIR therefore substantially underestimates the Project’s climate change impacts.

• The DEIR conclusion that no individually or cumulatively significant hydrological impacts will result from the project is incorrect. Reliance on compliance with NPDES HMP standards is inadequate to justify the less-than-significant conclusion, because those standards only satisfy the “maximum extent practicable” standards of the Clean Water Act and Porter-Cologne Act, and were not designed as thresholds of significance. See the attached White Paper, “Controlling Cumulative Impacts from Impervious Surfaces,” for more information. In particular, the failure to control for hydrological impacts from storms larger than 10-year storms is not addressed by either the HMP or by this DEIR, invalidating the DEIR’s conclusions regarding hydrology.

• The DEIR’s misplaces reliance on the compatibility between the IBM campus and nearby agriculture as the reason for concluding the Project will not be incompatible with nearby agriculture. The DEIR fails to compare the number of vehicle trips and the presence of people outdoors to the IBM campus for determining whether the Project would have a larger impact. The DEIR fails to analyze cumulative impacts from the Projects and other projects to determine whether they are incompatible with agriculture. Gavilan therefore cannot rely on the DEIR’s conclusions.

• The conclusion that LESA scores show an inadequate Site Assessment scores result from a flawed analysis that understates the true agricultural value. The high land costs are irrelevant to whether the land is potentially irrigable. The water table in Coyote Valley is known to be quite high, and irrigated agriculture exists throughout Coyote Valley. The LESA scores therefore underestimate the potentially significant impact of the loss of agricultural resources.

• The conclusion that the Project has no growth-inducing impacts is simply wrong. The discussion fails to consider that the lack of infrastructure is the primary obstacle to further development in Coyote Valley. Providing the extension of utilities along Bailey Avenue to the site will facilitate additional job development in Coyote Valley, making it more likely to reach the 5,000 jobs trigger found in the City of San Jose General Plan for large-scale development of the Valley. The conclusion that community colleges only serve growth instead of stimulating growth is both circular and ridiculous. No justification is given for this conclusion, when in fact a major development like the Project will have significant impacts. The complete lack of discussion as to whether the Project will encourage further development of the Coyote Valley Research Park, other industrial projects, or of a Coyote Valley Specific Plan-level residential development, fails to meet standards of EIR adequacy.

Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

Read more!

Status of Coyote Valley

(We had an inquiry as to what's the current status of Coyote Valley, so I'm reproducing our response below. Some more info is in our press release here. -Brian)


The developers have suspended their application to develop 3,000 acres, so that project is dead (except for some details) until someone wants to pay to continue the planning process. We need to pressure San Jose to place stronger preconditions ("triggers") on development.

A prior-approved project, the Coyote Valley Research Park, could still happen if economic conditions allow it. They might not. We need to pressure San Jose not to extend deadlines for this project (its approvals will disappear if it doesn't start building by the deadlines, first of which is in 2013).

Gavilan College wants to build a massive 80-acre campus out on farmland in Coyote Valley instead of where people live and can commute to by public transit, so we need to fight that too.

A lot still needs to be done!

Read more!

KRON 4 News Interviews Brian regarding Coyote Valley

It's only 30 seconds in a 3-minute segment, but they did let us environmentalists talk about how stopping Coyote Valley development was very much a good thing.

To see it, click here (scroll down to the video stories shown on the bottom left, and look for “Coyote Valley Project Halts”).

-Brian

Read more!

A great day for Coyote Valley!

(I think our press release speaks for itself. -Brian)

Committee for Green Foothills
NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 18, 2008


PRESS CONTACTS:
Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate
phone (650) 968-7243, (415) 994-7403 cell
* brian@greenfoothills.org


Committee for Green Foothills Welcomes Withdrawal of Coyote Valley Development Proposal, Calls for New Steps to Protect Against Sprawl

The Committee for Green Foothills (CGF) welcomed the decision today by the Coyote Housing Group to withdraw its proposal to develop three thousand acres of working farmland and vital wildlife habitat in Coyote Valley, and CGF called on San Jose to act now to stop new sprawl proposals. "The misguided proposal to get rid of prime working farmland and a vital wildlife corridor sank from its own weight, and from the work of all the organizations like Committee for Green Foothills that argued for San Jose's growth to be directed within the City instead of expanding it," said Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate for CGF. "The Committee for Green Foothills has worked for years to fight this proposal and the many proposals that preceded it, dating back to the 1970s. We're very glad that our work, along with the vital work of other groups like the Sierra Club, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Audubon Society, has helped to reach this point."

Schmidt called on San Jose to take new steps to protect this vital area.
"The Mayor has said there should be stronger 'triggers' in the General Plan to prevent developing Coyote Valley until it's really necessary. Other City Council members have called for prioritizing development in downtown and North San Jose before development comes to Coyote Valley. It's time to examine those priorities in the ongoing General Plan review."

Unanswered questions remain regarding other potential developments in Coyote Valley. "The Coyote Valley Research Park proposal received permits it never should have been granted," said Schmidt, "but economic conditions have stopped its development. In several years, those permits will start expiring, and it's time to examine whether that project should happen.
Gavilan College also has started planning a massive campus in Coyote Valley that makes little sense without urban development, and that process needs reassessment. The Habitat Conservation Plan had exempted much of Coyote Valley from its jurisdiction, and that also needs reassessment."

"We hope that the withdrawal decision creates a new opportunity for long-term agricultural survival and a vibrant ecology in Santa Clara County, and we salute the decision of the Coyote Valley developers to end the process," Schmidt continued.

Environmental organizations including the Committee for Green Foothills have closely followed proposed developments in Coyote Valley. Their extensive comments on a Draft Environmental Impact Report showed significant deficiencies in the report that failed to recognize the impacts of the proposed project. Committee for Green Foothills participated extensively in that process, and took the lead in showing how the fiscal analysis that purported to show a tax surplus for city government was based on unrealistic expectations of a continued housing boom. CGF also took the lead in showing that consultants used by the city to draft environmental and fiscal documents had first been hand-picked by the developers, and then hired by the city in a no-bid process.

# # #
About the Committee for Green Foothills
Committee for Green Foothills is a regional grassroots organization working to establish and maintain land-use policies that protect the environment throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Committee for Green Foothills, established in 1962, is a Bay Area leader in the continuing effort to protect open space and the natural environment of our Peninsula.
For more information about the Committee for Green Foothills or about our work on this issue, visit www.GreenFoothills.org.

Read more!

Amah-Mutsun comments on the issue of Coyote Valley development proposals

(Attached is a copy of a letter from Valentin Lopez, Chairman of the Amah-Mutsun Tribal Band, regarding development in Coyote Valley. It's important to recognize the cultural implications as well as the environmental implications from misguided development in Coyote Valley. -Brian)

January 4, 2007

Mr. Daryl Boyd
Planning Services Division
200 East Santa Clara Street
San Jose, CA 95113-1905

Subject: Coyote Valley EIR

Dear Mr. Boyd,

I am writing this letter on behalf of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMTB). The AMTB is comprised of the descendents of Missions San Juan Bautista and Santa Cruz. Coyote Valley represents the transitional territory between the Amah Mutsun and the Muwekma tribes. Together, these tribes represent the indigenous people of Santa Clara County. The purpose of this letter is to express four concerns regarding the Coyote Valley development plan.

Our first concern pertains to the recognition that numerous Ohlone communities historically lived along the waterways of Coyote Valley. If County staff reviewed the historical maps of Coyote Valley, you would find that much of Coyote Valley was inundated with water much of the year. In a recent report by the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) on the historical ecology of Coyote Creek Watershed, they pointed out that Coyote Valley represents the single largest remaining wetland habitat in the South Bay Area. They also indicated the historic existence of numerous plant species in this area that were critical to the local Ohlone communities. The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band has developed a number of recommendations pertaining to such cultural habitats, one of which is that all construction should be no closer than 300 feet from a natural waterway. It is common, especially in such a heavily populated area, to encounter human burials very close to watersways. For the Coyote Valley development plan, we ask that the 300-foot requirement be implemented using historical maps that show the waterways prior to first contact. In the event this request cannot be honored, we request that a Native American monitor be employed for all underground construction work that occurs within the historical floodplain, and extending out to the 300-foot boundary limit. Furthermore, we ask that only monitors certified by the Society for California Archaeology’s Native American Program be employed.

Our second concern is that the Coyote Valley development plan presents south Coyote Valley as representing “open space.” We feel this is incorrect and grossly inappropirate. Much of the south Coyote Valley is occupied by small ranchettes. These ranchettes should not be considered open space. Privately owned properties such as these have far less protection and present far fewer opportunities for habitat restoration and enhancement, and protection of cultural resources than does publicly owned open space. Our Tribe requests that the City of San Jose provide a clearly written and legally defensible definition of open space and implement that definition in the Coyote Valley development plan. This definition should include provisions to ensure the survival of all existing wildlife in the areas defined as open space, as well as provisions for protection of cultural resources.

Our third concern is that there do not appear to be adequate protections built into the Plan to preserve the Native American village site we visited with County staff. It has been our experience that when the boundries of a cultural site are delineated only by the presence or absence of “hard” artifacts (i.e. stone, bone, and shell), the elements of the cultural landscape that were required to sustain the focal site are ignored, and most often developed. The Amah Mutsun would like the City of San Jose to recognize that when Native American artifacts are encountered, the surrounding landscape associated with those cultural resources should be included in the site designation. We have found that the methods employed by SFEI to reconstruct these historic habitats are sufficient for this purpose. We request that the City of San Jose consider applying protective measures to the full cultural landscape of this Native American village site.

We would also like to work with the City of San Jose on the Matalan Village site. We feel that this area represents a tremendous educational opportunity for the City and County. We would like to work with the City on the development of a cultural resource center here, including a simulated Native American village, a Mutsun/Muwekma history center, an arts, crafts, and gift center, a fire pit with theatre for story telling, tool making activities, etc. and onsite housing for several tribal members to provide 24/7 security. All structures should be built outside the village site area, as we do not want any construction to occur on known Native American sites. Our tribe would be pleased to work with City staff on the planning and capitol campaign for this cultural center, and can provide technical expertise on the development of exhibits and curricula for this facility. This site should also be available to our tribes’ for dances, feasts, and other ceremonial events.

Our final point concerns other village sites that exist in the Coyote Valley. We request that no construction project be approved for the fenced site that we could not access during our visit. It is critical that this site be adequately surveyed and consultation with Native Americans take place before project approvals are made. Finally, there are other cultural sites that have been lost to construction. We ask that no additional construction be within 300 feet of a know site. For these areas we recommend that a park be built on the site and that the park give recognition to the indigenous people.

In closing, we would very much like to work with City staff on protocols between the Tribe(s) and the City of San Jose to deal with the inadvertent discovery of remains prior to approving any construction project. As always, we are available to meet with you to discuss any or all of these comments. Please feel to contact us at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Valentin J. Lopez, Chairman
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band

Read more!

CGF letter to the Coyote Valley Task Force

(The letter below was delivered to the Coyote Valley Task Force yesterday. -Brian)

January 14, 2008

CVSP Task Force

Re: Updates to Coyote Valley process

Dear CVSP Task Force Members;

I regret that I will not be able to attend today’s meeting, and would like to make the following points:

1. The Committee for Green Foothills supports the Sierra Club’s call to bring the Coyote Valley process to a close, at the very least temporarily closing the process until the General Plan review is complete, for all the reasons stated by the Sierra Club.

2. I attended the Nov. 29^th TAC meeting but was not listed as a Committee member in the minutes. If I’ve been demoted, I wasn’t aware of it.

3. The City Staff said at the TAC that the Draft Fiscal Analysis revision is being postponed. It is not clear whether the revision will respond to the extensive comments that we at CGF submitted to the first draft. We request clarification as to whether there will be a response to those comments, especially the assertion that the analysis relied on unrealistic assumptions regarding the housing market and household income.

4. In addition to our original comments, the revised fiscal analysis should address the changes in the housing market that has occurred in the last two years, particularly the slowed increase in prices and reduced turnover in sales, both of which should have profound fiscal implications to the revised analysis.

5. If the planned fiscal analysis revision is not already planning to address our previous comments and the new economic conditions, we humbly request that the Task Force vote on whether it should. We note that some Task Force members had previously requested a response to these comments.

6. The City will undoubtedly be glad to know that Committee for Green Foothills has won special funding so that we can do an in-depth review of the revised Fiscal Analysis when it is made available, a review that will go beyond my own limited expertise. I assume we can rely on the cooperation of the City and its consultants for requests to see the data and methodology used in the analysis.
Please contact us if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Brian A. Schmidt

Legislative Advocate, Santa Clara County

Read more!

"...when you look at (home) prices relative to income, it's completely insane."

The quote above is from an economist saying existing home prices have to fall because they're priced out of reach of people's income.

This just further supports our argument that Coyote Valley's Draft Fiscal Analysis was fatally flawed in assuming housing prices (and resulting tax revenues) will go up 2% faster each year than income, every year for 57 years. The economist linked to above says the ratio between housing costs and income is already unsustainable. To think this unsustainable ratio could be made much, much worse, and then sustained at that level for decades is simply ridiculous.

This is why we think it's wrong for San Jose to hire analysts that were already selected and hired by developers to do an analysis of the developers' project.

Read more!

CGF News Release: The “San Jose Process” Resulted in Coyote Valley Debacle, Environmentalists Say

(The following is from a press release CGF sent out yesterday. -Brian)

Committee for Green Foothills

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 17, 2007

PRESS CONTACTS:

Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate

phone (650) 968-7243 * brian@greenfoothills.org

The “San Jose Process” Resulted in Coyote Valley

Debacle, Environmentalists Say

SAN JOSE DIFFERS FROM MOST CITIES IN ALLOWING DEVELOPER-SELECTED AND CONTROLLED EXPERTS DETERMINE INITIAL ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW

The Committee for Green Foothills (CGF) alleged today that the “San Jose Process” of using developer-selected and developer-paid consultants for the city’s own environmental review is a systematic problem that resulted in the extensively criticized and withdrawn Coyote Valley Draft Environmental Impact Report. “Most other cities in the Bay Area have abandoned the practice of letting developers themselves select and hire the consultants to prepare the administrative draft versions of Environmental Impact Reports, but not San Jose,” said Brian Schmidt, Legislative Advocate for CGF. “The Coyote Valley Draft EIR only varied slightly from the usual San Jose Process where the City ‘adopted’ consultants previously hired by Coyote Valley developers in a no-bid arrangement. This slight improvement still resulted in a terrible, flaw-ridden document, but the only difference is this time there was intense scrutiny. The San Jose Process needs a systematic fix,” Schmidt continued.

In most Bay Area cities, when a developer applies for a permit that requires the city to do environmental review, the developer pays a fee and the city then uses the fee money to hire expert consultants to prepare the environmental report. San Jose, by contrast, allows the developer to directly select and hire the environmental consultants who prepare an administrative draft of the environmental report. While San Jose may then modify the administrative draft, the developer-controlled draft is biased to play down the impacts. The direct expertise is in the hands of people loyal to the developers, not to the City or to a neutral evaluation process.

“The Coyote Valley EIR actually improved modestly on the usual San Jose Process, and still produced a completely inadequate analysis that had to be withdrawn,” Schmidt said. “In this case, the City took over from the developers earlier than it usually does, but even that didn’t fix the biased report. The only real difference between this EIR and what San Jose usually produces from developer experts is that this time, people paid attention, and nobody liked what they saw.”

The City received over 1300 pages of comments from agencies, non-profit organizations, and individuals. The widespread scrutiny and criticism led to the decision to withdraw, revise, and recirculate the Draft EIR.

“San Jose has not yet fixed the San Jose Process,” Schmidt continued. “That Process is a holdover from a previous administration, but the new Mayor and City Council have the opportunity to make a change. The City should stop right now in its current plans to use the same biased consultant work. They should stop any decision on the Coyote Valley EIR until after the City’s General Plan has been revised. As part of the General Plan revision, or even earlier, the City should adopt the modern process used by almost everyone else, and have the City choose and direct the consultants that prepare the technical reports and Administrative Draft EIRs.”

Draft EIRs are the first version of the Environmental Impact Report circulated for public comments, and if not found to be significantly flawed, become the basis of the Final EIR. Administrative Draft EIRs are the initial versions of Draft EIRs that summarize and draw conclusions from the information found in the technical consultant reports on subjects such as impacts to air quality, traffic, and wildlife. Most cities require developers to pay a fee so the cities control all consultants involved in this process. The San Jose Process gives all control up to the Administrative Draft EIR to the developer. The extent to which the City even disputes developer bias is unknown as it all occurs behind the scenes, and the City has no right to access information created by consultants unless the developer allows it. For Coyote Valley, the City did ultimately hire the technical consultants and the consultants who prepared the Administrative Draft EIR, but only after those consultants had first been selected and paid for by the Coyote Valley developers (see Exhibit A to this Press Release).

In the mid-1990s, the Santa Clara County government under the leadership of then-Supervisor Joe Simitian switched from a developer-controlled process to the current process, and there has been no effort since to switch back.

# # #

About the Committee for Green Foothills

Committee for Green Foothills is a regional grassroots organization working to establish and maintain land-use policies that protect the environment throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. Committee for Green Foothills, established in 1962, is a Bay Area leader in the continuing effort to protect open space and the natural environment of our Peninsula. For more information about the Committee for Green Foothills or about our work on this issue, visit www.GreenFoothills.org.

Read more!

CGF letter and request - San Jose should wait on the Coyote Valley EIR revision

(Following up on the good news about the Coyote Valley EIR revision, CGF submitted the following request to the San Jose City Council. -Brian)

Given that City Planning staff has said the Draft EIR must be revised due to the significant criticism it received, I want to suggest that the decision on whether to start the revision wait until after the General Plan itself is revised. Three good reasons for this:

1. The City might choose to change the Coyote Valley proposal based on changing economic conditions or based on the new General Plan. The “current” direction from the City Council is from a 2002 memo with guiding principles based on the 1995 General Plan, and those principles are getting dated.
2. Environmental review will be much more accurate if done immediately prior to the City’s decision about the project rather than done years earlier. DEIR preparation started in 2005. Delaying revisions until 2009 following the General Plan approval will make them much more accurate, particularly for traffic and for making use of the information developed for the Countywide Habitat Conservation Plan, which should be complete by then. It might also give the landowner-proponents of Coyote Valley time to reconsider their current decision to refuse the City access to their properties for purposes of preparing the DEIR.
3. Serious consideration of alternatives is impossible with the current project, schedule, and cursory analysis typically found in the EIR process. In particular, I think the Mayor may be interested in a “North Coyote Only” alternative that limits the development footprint, protects critical wildlife areas and the majority of existing farmland, and still allows a net influx of jobs to the City. While as far as I know, none of the major environmental groups support this alternative (including my own), it may still be a significant improvement over the current proposal. It won’t happen though unless we halt the current process.

I have spoken to representatives of Greenbelt Alliance and of the Sierra Club and Audubon Society chapters, and they support a delay in the revision. I would be very interested in following up on this with you.

Read more!

Very good news on Coyote Valley - the City acknowledges their environmental review was inadequate

From the Merc:

In a major setback to development plans for Coyote Valley, the city of San Jose plans to revise a key environmental document, responding to a mountain of scathing criticism of the controversial proposal.

The city's planning staff, in a memo released late Wednesday, said the amount and tone of the criticism were "unprecedented," forcing the department to redo parts of the draft environmental impact report that was issued in April.

While the city had hoped to certify the environmental impact report this year, Wednesday's move means it will be at least June before the environmental document is certified - alarming housing developers eager to start building. State law requires a valid report before the city can consider a plan to allow 25,000 homes and 50,000 jobs on Coyote Valley farmlands.

The decision by the city's planning staff is the latest twist in the ongoing Coyote Valley saga. The proposal has pitted a coalition of housing developers against environmentalists in a battle over the best use of the 7,000-acre area.

Among the many areas of the report that the city plans to revisit are how the development would affect traffic, water supply, agricultural land and global warming.

We and many other groups put an enormous amount of time into this. While it's just a delay right now, it is important. San Jose should simply stop the whole Coyote Valley process until the City's General Plan is revised, and then figure out what it needs to do.

-Brian

Read more!

Developers behind Coyote Valley planning process refusing to cooperate with the planning process

(The Committee for Green Foothills submitted the following letter to the Coyote Valley Specific Plan Task Force regarding developers' refusal to let the City's experts evaluate the environmental consequences of developing their land. We have received no response from the City, although one smaller landowner said the information was wrong and that he did allow access. A developer representative told us that in lieu of letting the City's experts on their property, the developers' own experts can provide that information, but that is clearly inadequate for a neutral, unbiased evaluation. -Brian)

6/18/2001

Coyote Valley Specific Plan Task Force

Dear CVSP Task Force Members:

The Committee for Green Foothills learned just recently that owners of most of the land in Coyote Valley have refused to allow City consultants to access their land in order to prepare the Draft EIR. This contradicts a recent statement by City Staff that access was denied on 30-40% of the land, which itself was an alarming figure. The attached map from the City website shows that landowners who constitute principal movers behind Coyote Valley development are refusing to cooperate with the development process.

Given that the real purpose of this project from the viewpoint of those developers is to maximize the development potential, they appear to have concluded that they will be able to develop more if information about environmental impacts is constrained until a future point. That in itself is a major worry.

Beyond this problem lies a fundamental issue of why the City should even go forward with this project when the primary instigators and primary beneficiaries are refusing to cooperate with it. We recommend that the City simply suspend any further work on this project until those owners, or at least the owners of a majority of the land, decide they wish to cooperate. Any other course of action would be to hand control of the process ostensibly meant to benefit San Jose residents in general to the landowners who are impeding proper planning.

Sincerely,

Brian Schmidt
Legislative Advocate
Committee for Green Foothills

Read more!

See the Op-Ed Sausage-Making!

One of the advantages of blogging is that it gives us a chance to write some more informal, behind-the-scenes information than appears elsewhere, like in our Green Footnotes newsletter or Action Alerts.

A while back I blogged about our Op-Ed on Coyote Valley that the Merc published. Spending time on an Op-Ed is a gamble, because it's a lot of work with no guarantee of publication. The version we sent them was the seventh draft, and although I was the named author, every staff member at CGF spent time looking at it.

To give an example of the work involved, I thought it would be interesting to show the first draft. The fact that it's very different from the final shows the work of everyone involved. The other interesting part is the effect of needing to be as clear as possible, which in practice and under the constraint of a word limit meant reducing the number of arguments from the draft below and explaining them more clearly. Anyway, I hope it's interesting!

-Brian
-----

Suggested Title: Paving Coyote Valley Isn’t Green

Like a train that jumped its tracks yet plows uselessly forward, the Coyote Valley development process recently pushed onward with its Draft Environmental Impact Report. This proposed development between San Jose and Morgan Hill would eliminate the valley farmlands that stop at San Jose’s southern limits the urban sprawl reaching down from San Francisco. Seven thousand acres are at risk from development – the northern half, 3,400 acres, would become a new city, and the more-developed, already-imperiled southern half of Coyote Valley will have trouble surviving as working farmland.

The environmental report misses or underplays many environmental impacts, but the root problem isn’t the report – it’s the underlying project. The Coyote Valley development is an office-space project with an inadequate housing component, requiring the unnecessary, massive construction of a 80,000 person city over existing farmland. Currently the Bay Area has overwhelming office vacancies, so there is no demand for new office construction. However, if all the office space planned for development there were actually built, there wouldn’t be enough housing provided. Developing new office space this far south of the city central just exacerbates commuter sprawl further south through Gilroy, San Benito County and the Central Valley.

This unfortunate legacy project of the Mayor Gonzales administration provides benefits only to the developers who own and wish to eliminate the farms. Lacking a real public benefit, Coyote Valley developers have now resorted to explanations of why destroying farmland is actually something that helps the environment.

Most prominently, they say “better here than in Central Valley” – the idea being that all the people who would live and work in a developed Coyote Valley would otherwise be forced to commute long distances by car from California’s Central Valley to the Bay Area. So many errors in such a short statement, the most prominent being that Coyote Valley development actually requires sprawl construction in Central Valley. Remember, there’s not enough housing being constructed for build-out, so where will the extra people live? Many will live in Central Valley and everywhere else hit by Silicon Valley sprawl. Suburbs will expand even further, and the car commuters will ensnarl local traffic.

The allegedly-green developers may respond that Coyote Valley will at least absorb some of the workforce that live far away and commute here anyway, but that makes sense only if Coyote Valley fails to attract additional business to San Jose. Additional business means additional workers who would not otherwise come here, so the developers contradict themselves. Either developing Coyote Valley means losing three thousand acres of farms plus additional sprawl and long distance commutes, or it provides no additional business and just destroys farms while sucking business away from the rest of the city. This is their green plan?

The other environmental claim is that it’s better to plan now than to do a rush job later. Certainly, one could point to the Coyote Valley Cisco project during the Gonzales administration as a rushed job with poor planning and environmental harm. However, if we put off development now and at a future point a developer felt a tremendous urge to rush things, then a future mayor who is competent and not in the developer’s pocket could demand more environmental protections and public benefits to accommodate the rush, not fewer. Bad past planning is no reason to destroy farmland unnecessarily.

More important, what’s the rush? The last time we felt a hurry to build more office space, we couldn’t have been more wrong and are now living with the consequences. Maybe Coyote Valley will actually need to start development in twenty years, or forty years, or longer (maybe never). But what hubris for us to claim in 2007 that we can better plan the Coyote Valley city to be constructed in the year 2027 than the next generation can in 2022. Past trends have been to expect more environmental protection over time. Locking in “protections” that may be state-of-the-art now and potentially antiquated in the 2020s doesn’t help the environment, but only sets up an obstacle that future environmentalists would have to overcome.

Right now, thousands of acres of farmland persist up to the limits of a major Bay Area metropolis. Wild badgers and elk even manage to cross Coyote Valley. These are not things to be given up cheaply. Calling the loss of all that “green” when it clearly is not, fails to hide the price that comes from filling developers’ pockets while inflicting sprawl, traffic, and pollution on the rest of us. Developing Coyote Valley is a mistake.

Read more!

Comments submitted to LAFCO about Morgan Hill expansion and Coyote Valley

(Normally I don't write out my speaker comments in advance, preferring a more natural speaking style and the ability to react to other commenters and new information. Yesterday though, I wrote out my comments to the Santa Clara County LAFCO regarding the unwarranted Morgan Hill USA expansion. The comments are below (although I also adlibbed some changes). -Brian)

Good afternoon, Brian Schmidt from the Committee for Green Foothills. I would like to put all our cards on the table for this agenda item: we seriously considered suing LAFCO over its decision to approve the Blackrock project based on documentation that LAFCO’s own staff report said is inadequate, a problem that I pointed out to the Commission just immediately before approval was granted.

However, we’re not going to sue in this case. We ask you to reconsider your decision, not because of an implicit threat – there is none – but only because it’s the right thing to do.

Actually, there are two things to do – one is about this project, but the more important one is about Coyote Valley, where the exact same mistake is currently in motion.

On Black Rock, you have several reasons for reversing your earlier decision, and either denying approval or requiring additional documentation. Our attorney’s letter lays out why the lack of consultation with LAFCO gives the Commission the authority to become lead agency. The Morgan Hill City staff opposed the decision to request expansion and were overruled by their City Council on a split vote, something that I expect wasn’t known by the Commission. You can verify that with your staff. There are also about ten acres of farmed land literally across the street from Blackrock, land that undoubtedly will be lost to sprawl because of LAFCO’s decision. Some of that land may not meet the soils definition of farmland, but because it’s planted in grapes, I’m sure it would satisfy a revenues definition.

Given my three-minute time limitation, I’d be happy to answer any questions about the various assertions in the staff report and by the Blackrock attorneys, but none of them are valid reasons for standing by a wrong decision. While I understand that staff is not recommending reconsideration, I suggest that if you do think reconsideration is advisable, you ask LAFCO Counsel to advise you as to whether you have the independent authority to reconsider, a different question than whether they recommend that you reconsider.

Finally, this same problem is in process for Coyote Valley, where it threatens 3,000 acres instead of Blackrock’s 18 acres. They plan to use the vague and subjective LESA process, apparently after the project has undergone approval and have not even defined a preservation ratio, something worse than Morgan Hill’s action. While the Committee for Green Foothills would like reconsideration and denial of the Blackrock USA expansion, it is still more important that LAFCO avoid the identical problem in Coyote Valley by demanding recirculation of a Draft EIR that meets adequate environmental standards, and if this is not done, then by litigating over the failure to do an adequate analysis, becoming lead agency for USA expansion purposes, or denying the USA expansion outright.

Read more!

Mercury News publishes CGF Op-Ed on Coyote Valley

I'm happy to report that the Mercury News has published the Op-Ed I wrote on behalf of CGF regarding why developing Coyote Valley is an environmental disaster. The link to the Mercury News online version is here, and is reproduced here on our website.

By the way, the print edition of the article mentions my affiliation with Committee for Green Foothills, and also has an excellent, enlarged excerpt:

Coyote Valley developers have now resorted to lame suggestions that destroying farmland actually helps the environment.

We've been heavily involved on Coyote Valley issues. We did a major Action Alert last year, we've written many articles in our newsletter, and you'll find Coyote Valley news all over our website. We remain heavily involved, especially in preparing comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Report that are due at the end of June.

-Brian

Read more!

San Jose makes the right decision on the Evergreen project

Following up on our Action Alert, I'm glad to report that San Jose has decided to defer action on Evergreen development until it has revised the City's General Plan. See the Mercury News:

The San Jose City Council rejected a proposal Tuesday night to build homes on land set aside for future industrial growth in the city's Evergreen district and voted to require industrial development before housing in the surrounding area.

The proposal involves the loss of open space and especially of burrowing owl habitat and would have set a bad precedent for Coyote Valley. We're glad the City Council voted the way they did.

-Brian

Read more!

CGF Action Alert: Protect Open Space and Stop Bad Planning in San Jose's Evergreen District!

(This may also be published on our Action Alert page, but in the interest of time, I'm putting it here on the blog as well. -Brian)
------------
At their meeting on Tuesday, May 15, the San Jose City Council will decide whether to approve an updated Specific Plan for the Evergreen District that relies on an outdated City General Plan, has numerous environmental impacts, and could harm efforts to slow the developers’ land rush in Coyote Valley.

Please join us in asking the City Council to defer a major update of the Evergreen Specific Plan until after the City General Plan has been revised.

What's Happening:

Developers in east San Jose are proposing conversion of 500 acres of land to housing that is now mostly designated for industrial and commercial purposes. Currently, housing makes more money for developers, but less money for the City’s coffers. The City is considering going along with this proposal, despite the fact that San Jose uses the lack of space for commercial and industrial uses in the city as an excuse to sprawl into Coyote Valley, destroying farmland forever.

Although on a smaller scale than Coyote Valley, the Evergreen proposal will have similar impacts on traffic and air quality. Of particular concern is the 50-acres of prime farmland and a smaller amount of burrowing owl habitat that will be lost. Developers have opposed doing environmental mitigation to compensate for the lost farmland and owl habitat. They did not want to meet the standard that the City proposes for Coyote Valley, a standard that is itself insufficient.

San Jose has not revised its General Plan since 1994, and is now starting a revision that will take two to three years to complete. As is the case with Coyote Valley, an immediate, drastic change to the Evergreen Specific Plan that relies on an outdated General Plan is putting the cart before the horse. It would be far better for the City to revise the General Plan and then analyze the proposals it has received for Evergreen to decide its policy there.

Committee for Green Foothills strongly supports deferral of this project.

Why this is important:

It is likely that some change in zoning and the Specific Plan for Evergreen will be needed, but such changes should be done under the right circumstances and not at the expense of the environment. Making these changes under an updated General Plan that corresponds to the San Jose of today makes better decision-making far more likely. Constant maneuvering and pressure by developers also give a reason to put a brake on this project.

Handling Evergreen development correctly increases the chance of doing the same with the even-bigger Coyote Valley decision, so the decision on Tuesday is important.

For more information on these proposals, read the Mercury News editorial, and the Draft EIR summary.

What You Can Do:

Please ask the City Council to defer a decision on the Evergreen Specific Plan until the General Plan has been revised, and to ensure that loss of farmland and burrowing owl habitat be mitigated, if and when a decision on Evergreen ever happens.

Contact:
San Jose City Council:

Email the Mayor,

Email the City Council,

or fax (408) 277-3868

As always, please send a copy to us so we can track the efficiency of our work:
Fax (650) 968-8431 or action@GreenFoothills.org.

Thank you for speaking up for environmental protection!

Read more!

Coyote Valley wildlife in the spotlight

The Committee for Green Foothills co-sponsored a highly valuable environmental forum over the weekend, Wildlife of Coyote Valley. I would roughly estimate 100 people attended and listened to three highly knowledgeable experts, Dr. Grey Hayes, from the Elkhorn Slough Foundation; Tanya Diamond, a wildlife biologist at San Jose State University; and Stuart Weiss, Conservation Biologist focusing on endangered butterflies and plants. They clearly indicated the environmental value of the area, and the threat Coyote Valley development poses to wildlife corridors.

I also talked to two residents I hadn't known who had great personal knowledge of the wildlife - one of them a birder, the other a man who had tracked deer migration in the area for years. I encouraged both of them to review the Draft Environmental Impact Report for Coyote Valley and to submit their own comments, pointing out any oversights in the document.

It was a great opportunity both to share information and to make connections that could protect Coyote Valley. Our position hasn't changed - Coyote Valley shouldn't be developed at all, but if it does go forward, its impact should be minimized.

-Brian

Read more!

San Jose on Time Magazine in the year 2040

I participated in a preliminary planning meeting for the planned update of San Jose's General Plan. These updates are due every 15 years, and starting now makes it possible to make the 2009 deadline.

I emphasized four points:

• The General Plan should control Specific Plans, so the Coyote Valley Specific Plan should not be approved before the the General Plan is revised. After the revision is complete, the City can revisit whether it should go forward with Coyote Valley.
• There are thousands of acres of City jurisdictional land outside of the Urban Service Area where the City has no plans for development. Current residential zoning is completely inappropriate and an invitation to sprawl. The City should either de-annex these lands, reverting them to County control, or should redesignate them as "Open Space."
• The review should examine how much of the City's industrial land has been rezoned to other uses. Given the City's constant reference to the lack of employment in the City as a reason for expanding into Coyote Valley open space, the City should examine whether that lack of employment is a self-inflicted wound.
• The City's Riparian and Wildlife protection policies have loopholes that have been repeatedly exploited. The City should do a "Best Practices" comparison between its policies and those found in other cities, and update its policies to reflect the best found elsewhere.

Also as part of the process, City Staff asked us to imagine that San Jose was the cover story in a Time Magazine issued in 2040 for being the "best-managed" American city, and then describe the magazine's cover. This is what I gave them:

Time Magazine
Earth Day, 2040

San Jose: Wildlife City

From the “Everglades of the West” to hiking trails among the mountain wildflowers of Coyote Ridge, San Jose has promoted urban access to wildlife. Can other cities copy its protection of urban river steelhead, and migration corridors for Tule Elk?

Let's hope it becomes true!

-Brian

Read more!

Coyote Valley at San Jose City Council and in Wikipedia

I was at San Jose City Council late last night, trying to save the riparian zone of Calabazas Creek from a Duckett Way development that was using loopholes to bust the City's 100-foot buffer policy (we were mildly successful).

Since I was there anyway, though, I took advantage of the Open Forum to announce that City staff had informed me that they didn't plan to respond to our criticism of the Draft Fiscal Analysis for Coyote Valley. I said it was critical that the City respond, because the analysis was flawed and the project jeopardizes the City's finances. We'll see what happens, but at least the City Council now knows about it.

And thinking about the subject made me decide to update the Wikipedia entry for Coyote Valley to include the fiscal analysis issues.

We're getting the word out!

-Brian

Read more!