Urban Growth Boundary under attack in North Livermore

A developer wants to build 2,450 tract houses on 1,400 acres outside Alameda County's Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) in North Livermore - land now limited to uses for agriculture and open space.

One of the Sierra Club Bay Chapter's biggest successes ever was the passage in 2000 of the county's Measure D. Now that developers have failed to undermine it through legal challenges, they are trying another method.

Pardee Homes, a subsidiary of Weyerhaeuser, is paying solicitors to get signatures for an initiative that would allow it to breach the UGB. If they gather enough signatures, the measure would be on the ballot this June. To sugar-coat the planned development, the developers have named it "Livermore Trails" and promised to "donate" park and school sites.

Livermore's school and park districts, already in financial crisis, would be further burdened. The estimated 24,000 vehicle trips per day generated by the Pardee tract would severely congest local traffic and regional thoroughfares (I-580 both east and west). The development itself would destroy habitats of special status for aquatic species including the California red-legged frog, Western pond turtle, California tiger salamander, and vernal-pool fairy shrimp.

What You Can Do

To help stop this development, write letters to the editor of local papers. To join in our efforts, contact Bob Baltzer, of Friends of Livermore, at (925) 447-8901 or Janis Kate, conservation chair of the Sierra Club Tri-Valley Group, at (925) 443-4372.

Janis Turner