Agreement saves most of Gateway Valley

The 16-year-long effort to protect Gateway Valley has succeeded.

On July 13 the Sierra Club, Golden Gate Audubon, and Save Our Open Space-Gateway Valley signed a final settlement with Orinda Gateway LLC. The developer still is building 245 units of housing, but on only 215 acres and with no golf course. The developer is giving up its remaining 1,354 acres - over two square miles - in Gateway Valley and adjacent Indian Valley to be preserved as open space. Most of the lands will be owned by the East Bay Regional Park District and the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Orinda Gateway will also provide up to $500,000 as an endowment for management of these lands; and $1 million to purchase and/or restore other habitat areas, if there is no future litigation against the so-called Montanera project.

Gateway Valley is classed as an "aquatic resource of national importance". Over seven miles of perennial streams, a rarity in the East Bay, pour down from the valley's hillsides feeding Brookside and Moraga Creeks. Over eight acres of rare wetlands and seeps pervade the valley. It's not paradise, but about as close as one gets in the Bay Area.

Perhaps even more important, these lands complete a 20-mile-long continuous wildlife corridor of public open space stretching from Castro Valley to San Pablo. These lands are home to the threatened California red-legged frog and Alameda whipsnake. Over 100 bird species, thousands of oak and bay trees, and spectacular wildflowers fill the valley.

We wanted to highlight the efforts to save these important lands earlier this year when the Yodeler ran two issues on "Saving Bay Area Open Space", but due to the intense negotiations then going on, our lips and printing presses had to be sealed.

The long struggle

Sixteen years ago a group of angry Orinda residents - organized as Save Open Space-Gateway Valley (SOS) - approached the Sierra Club and Golden Gate Audubon, asking for help in defending Gateway Valley. With our support SOS launched a referendum that stopped an initial development proposal. Lawsuits followed as did several changes in ownership and several revised development proposals that went nowhere.

Then the Montanera project was proposed - smaller but still devastating. Its golf course would have required leveling the valley and destroying the many streams, wetlands, and seeps, and the wildlife. Several years of intense opposition followed. We launched letter-writing campaigns. Hundreds of you attended an Army Corps of Engineers public hearing and expressed your opposition to the project (the Army Corps must give approval to projects that destroy wetlands.

Golden Gate Audubon hired a lawyer, Tom Lippe; economic consultants, who demonstrated that the project was financially viable without a golf course; and technical consultants, who demonstrated the project's devastating impacts to threatened species and water quality.

Even with these efforts, it was in doubt whether we could save the entire valley. At this point we tried a new approach, negotiation. Golden Gate Audubon approached the developer, and we were pleased to find him willing to talk to us. And after two years of intense, often mind-numbing all-day sessions and frequent tense moments, when it all seemed about to fall apart, we crafted a legally binding document and worked out how each party's interests could be preserved.

It was long and difficult, but everyone had the good will to see it through to its successful conclusion. We have set a positive precedent for future East Bay hill projects.

Arthur Feinstein, conservation/education director, Golden Gate Audubon