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Demanding environmental protections at Stanford Four and a half years ago, Santa Clara County signed off on Stanford University's Community Plan and General Use Permit (GUP), which granted the university five million square feet of development rights. In exchange for this permission to expand development, Stanford agreed to several conditions in the GUP that would provide environmental protections for the community.  Unfortunately, the County has not shown leadership on enforcing these parts of the GUP, and several times has buckled under pressure from Stanford at the expense of the greater interests of the community. The County has just recently filled the long-vacant staff position responsible for overseeing this project, and now it's time to make sure the public gets what was promised: real mitigations and environmental protections. The Committee for Green Foothills is asking the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to keep these long-delayed promises of environmental protections. GUP required mitigation for development Committee for Green Foothills is asking Santa Clara County to move forward on the following key projects: Stanford committed to dedicate two permanent trails on their land to benefit the community. The comment period for the S1 trail Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) ended eight months ago, but the Final EIR for this trail has still not been released. Initial planning hasn't even started for the second promised trail, the C1 Trail. The Special Conservation Areas (SCA) are those the GUP defines as unsuitable for development "due to natural resource constraints." The GUP requires Stanford to develop a SCA management plan with specific goals. The plan Stanford submitted was long on generalities but short on specifics and goals; County planning staff has asked Stanford to amend the draft with specifics, but the University has insisted that its plans are more than adequate. We are asking the Supervisors to move this process forward, and to develop zoning for these biologically-important areas in the Stanford Foothills. In addition, the GUP requires the creation of a Sustainable Development Study, which would direct future development and establish the maximum allowable build-out on Stanford lands. This huge undertaking will take a significant investment of time. More than three years ago, Supervisor Liz Kniss committed to moving the document forward, and promised to establish a working group to help define the parameters of this study. We are following up with her specifically to get this moving.
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