Resistance to Central Valley sprawl accelerates

As stratospheric housing prices push Bay Area homeseekers into the northern San Joaquin Valley, sprawl - and struggles against it - burst out everywhere.

The greatest struggles are in San Joaquin County along the I-205/I-5 corridor, in the cities of Tracy, Lathrop, Manteca, and Stockton. Growth battles are also increasing in the smaller towns of Stanislaus County, in places like Salida, Riverbank, Oakdale, and Hughson.

The state Department of Finance projects San Joaquin to be the fastest-growing county in California from now till 2040, exploding from 675,00 residents to 1.5 million. The prime farmlands throughout the San Joaquin Valley are being paved over at an increasing rate with low-density subdivisions and shopping malls. The American Farmland Trust has recently revised its dire warnings in a report titled Central Valley at the Tipping Point?, predicting that at the rate we are going, almost a million acres of agricultural land will be lost over the next 35 years. The Central Valley currently has six million acres of cropland under irrigation.

In many cases, the juggernauts of land speculators, homebuilders, and their pro-growth cronies on local city councils (elected with developer campaign contributions) have rolled over any opposition. But in some notable instances, people have fought back, with the help of the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, and have taken back some control over land use to slow the relentless sprawl and to institute smart-growth policies.

A dangerous trend in San Joaquin and Stanislaus Counties is the use of illegal and premature "development agreements" and sphere-of- influence amendments to lock in local developers' plans before they are even included in revised city general plans. This tactic has been used in Stockton and Tracy, and recently in the little town of Riverbank.

Stockton

In Stockton, the corrupt City Council majority brought over 5,300 acres of prime farmland on the northern outskirts into the city's sphere of influence by granting development agreements to Alex Spanos (the largest single contributor to the California Republican Party) and Fritz Grupe (the Grupe Company). These illegal agreements were awarded to the Stockton developers before their properties were even included in the city general plan, which is now under revision but which has not been subject to a single public hearing! The agreements were further amended to immunize the projects from any future attempt by councils or residents to stop the projects through initiatives or city policies. In this way, decades of future suburban sprawl are being locked in, with no way to change growth patterns, well before Stockton residents are even asked to comment on "their" new general plan.

The Sierra Club's Mother Lode Chapter and a local conservation group, Campaign for Common Ground are pushing back. The Club sued over the illegal agreements and settled the suit in return for the Stockton Council agreeing to adopt an agricultural mitigation-fee program that will raise at least $18 million from the major developers alone, plus millions more from other projects that are approved. The money will be used to purchase conservation easements to permanently protect farmland around Stockton.

Also in Stockton, Campaign for Common Ground has written a Citizens Alternative General Plan. The city's draft plan would pave over 24,000 acres of prime farmland with 100,000 new homes (more than doubling the city's population), with three quarters of this growth proposed in so-called urban "villages" that would ring the city. In contrast, the CCG plan calls for two thirds of the new growth to be created as infill within the existing city footprint, emphasizing revitalization of the downtown and denser neighborhoods. The Club expects further legal challenges to the city's development plan and Environmental Impact Report later this year.

Other cities

In Tracy, voters have fought back by passing Measure A, a slow-growth initiative, in 2000, and by then rejecting outrageous attempts by local developers to exempt themselves from Measure A during the 2004 election. But the still pro-growth Council majority is moving ahead to gut a key portion of Measure A and to grant illegal development agreements to Surland Company and to Angelo Tsakopoulis, the most powerful developer in Sacramento, who is trying to build 5,500 homes at the base of the Altamont Hills. The developers are shamelessly promising to build a $20 million swim center to bribe the city into favorable action. The Club is assisting the local slow-growth organization, Tracy Region Alliance for a Quality Community

TRAQC has filed suit against the city and developers to protect the integrity of Measure A.

In Riverbank, the Grupe Company and the pro-growth City Council are moving to extend the city sphere of influence to add in thousands of acres of farmlands to the west and east of the existing city, of less than 20,000 residents, before the revised general plan (being paid for by Grupe) is even adopted. The Club is working with a local group, Riverbank Watch, to stop this assault by the Stockton developer on the small town. Possible strategies include a slow-growth initiative, campaigning for a new City Council, and a lawsuit.

At the Stanislaus County level, former Modesto city councilmember Denny Jackman is working to qualify an initiative called Stamp Out Sprawl (SOS), which would require a public vote before the county could rezone any agricultural lands in the unincorporated areas for development.

For further information, contact Eric Parfrey at (209) 462-7079 or email eparfrey -at- webintellects.net

Eric Parfrey, Mother Lode Chapter Executive Committee