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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

November 15, 2002

Exhibit focuses on open space

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"The exhibit is a result of me not knowing how land use decisions are made," Rollins said. "I found many organizations and individuals working in concert for good land use but they weren't very visible. This exhibit attempts to tell the story and what land is at risk."

Rollins began his work on the "Endangered Spaces" project in 1998, when he started to follow the development debate surrounding Camino Tassajara in Contra Costa County. Since then Rollins has followed the process of land use and open space preservation throughout the Bay Area. He has documented the efforts of the Sierra Club, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Trust for Public Land and other organizations working to shape land use decisions in the Bay Area.

"I found that agents of development were very well funded organizations and connected to key decision makers," Rollins writes in the introduction to his exhibit. "On the other hand the forces working to protect open space, agricultural lands and wildlife habitat were often local and volunteer or meagerly funded non-profits."

While the exhibit focuses on endangered spaces and development projects in Contra Costa, the threats to open space are widespread around the region. Advocacy groups are doing what they can to preserve remaining undeveloped space, often on a grassroots level.

Locally, the Butters Land Trust has been able to preserve three spots in its Oakland hills neighborhood, since it got started last year, and four more are in the pipeline, Carol Bernau said, treasurer of the group.

"All of the Oakland hills are being devastated by developers," Bernau said. "People buy a lot and then bulldoze every tree and there goes the vegetation."

The group is trying to protect a wild half-mile. strip of land and creek near Butters Drive. "It is an exquisite couple of acres that is currently being enjoyed by hundreds of people," Bernau said. "There is no other place in Oakland with the same kind of bio-diversity."

But while Oakland has taken some steps to help preserve land, more could be done, say advocates.
Bernau said there are three basic ways that land can be preserved. Neighbors can donate land or they can put a conservation easement on it. They can also pledge not to develop the land, which lowers the tax rate on the property. Or a preservation group can buy it outright or negotiate a combination of partial purchase and partial donation by the landowner, in which case the seller is eligible for a tax write off on the discount.

"The city of Oakland is working with us and have us on their waiting list for acquisition of land but, our fear is that in the years it takes for us to be activated, the land will be gone forever," Bernau said. "There is no way to bring land back."

The exhibit runs through Nov. 27 at the Saint Albert Hall Library at Saint Mary's. For more information on the exhibit, contact Sharon Walters at 925-631-4267.

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