(The following are CGF’s main points as to why developing the 8,000 acre Castro Valley Ranch is a mistake. For more background, see CGF’s newsletter article here, and our comments on the Draft EIR here. -Brian) 1. NMFS, USFWS and Cal DFG, together with all the environmental groups and some individuals, all stated they believed...
Category: News
The need to save Pilarcitos Community Park
(Committee for Green Foothills wrote the letter below regarding Half Moon Bay’s Pilarcitos Community Park. -Brian) —– June 11, 2007 Mayor Naomi Patridge and Members of the City CouncilCity of HalfMoonBay 501 Main Street Half Moon Bay, CA94019 Dear Mayor Patridge and Members of the Council, The Committee for Green Foothills is deeply concerned about...
Nature Deficit Disorder radio show
Following up on a previous blog post and the Spring 2007 Green Footnotes book review of “Last Child in the Woods,” there’s a good discussion of the lack of access to nature for children on the KQED radio show, Forum, available here. We need to protect local open space so the kids have somewhere to...
Do land use regulations help or hurt private property values?
A landowner might think about how much more her property would be worth if she could just add another floor or build closer to a creek, without considering what would happen to her property value if all her neighbors and everyone for miles around were free to do anything they wanted with their property. Via...
CGF letter to LAFCo and Morgan Hill about CEQA non-compliance and the loss of prime farmland
(Below is a letter that one of CGF’s outside attorneys, Paul Carroll, wrote to the Santa Clara County LAFCO agency when it approved Morgan Hill’s expansion based on a Negative Declaration stating that no significant impacts to farmland could occur, when LAFCO’s own staff said such impacts had in fact occurred. -Brian) April 20, 2007...
CGF Comments on the Water District Performance Audit
(We submitted comments on a performance audit for the Santa Clara Valley Water District. I’m the environmental representative on an advisory committee, discussed briefly here. -Brian)—— The following are my comments on behalf of the Committee for Green Foothills regarding the Watershed Operations Audit Memorandum of the March 2007 Comprehensive Performance Audit Final Report prepared...
The Secret Society of Survey Stake Pullers
Last week I had the opportunity to attend one of the Peninsula Open Space Trust’s Wallace Stegner Lectures. This lecture was by Richard Louv, author of the book “The Last Child in the Woods,” about the decreasing contact that children have with nature. Louv talked about being a member of the Secret Society of Survey...
Why Reject Alpine Road Sidewalk Expansion
This article was submitted to the Menlo Park Almanac last May (2006) but covers some of the history about why the Committee for Green Foothills thinks moving ahead with the Alpine Road sidewalk expansion is not wise. The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors is set to vote on Tuesday, March 27th at 10 am...
CGF’s oral comments on the San Jose Water Company logging plan
I attended the California Department of Forestry hearing on Wednesday, January 31 that was held to receive public comment over the San Jose Water Company proposal to log 1,000 acres of redwoods and Douglas-Fir trees in Santa ClaraCounty. Hundreds of people attended, and I would guess 90% were opposed. The best argument against the type...
Keeping drugs out of the water
The Mercury News reports about a successful program in San Mateo County encouraging people to turn in their old medicines for proper disposal, instead of pouring them down the toilet. The powerful drugs, even in minute quantities, are harming the fish and amphibians in constant contact with medicated water. Other jurisdictions are looking to copy...