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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

August 2, 2007

Coyote Valley proposal set back

CRITICISM PROMPTS CITY TO REDO ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT, DELAY PROJECT

Joshua Molina

In a major setback to development plans for Coyote Valley, the city
of San Jose plans to revise a key environmental document, responding
to a mountain of scathing criticism of the controversial proposal.

The city's planning staff, in a memo released late Wednesday, said
the amount and tone of the criticism were "unprecedented," forcing
the department to redo parts of the draft environmental impact report
that was issued in April.

While the city had hoped to certify the environmental impact report
this year, Wednesday's move means it will be at least June before the
environmental document is certified - alarming housing developers
eager to start building. State law requires a valid report before the
city can consider a plan to allow 25,000 homes and 50,000 jobs on
Coyote Valley farmlands.

The decision by the city's planning staff is the latest twist in the
ongoing Coyote Valley saga. The proposal has pitted a coalition of
housing developers against environmentalists in a battle over the
best use of the 7,000-acre area.

Among the many areas of the report that the city plans to revisit are
how the development would affect traffic, water supply, agricultural
land and global warming.

The amount of additional work to update the draft report "will be
substantial," wrote Joe Horwedel, director of planning, building and
code enforcement.

In an interview with the Mercury News, Horwedel said the proposal is
so politically charged that he is not surprised by the amount of
negative responses.

" This EIR covered environmental issues in more depth than any other
EIR I have seen written in this county and really anywhere in
Northern California," he said. "Groups may disagree with the
conclusions because of their agendas."

Mayor Chuck Reed, a proponent of slowing down plans to put housing in
the city's last huge swath of undeveloped land, was out of town
Wednesday and could not be reached to comment on the planning
department's memo.

The decision to revisit parts of the report did not come as a
surprise to Kerry Williams, a representative of the housing
developers who have amassed land in Coyote Valley. But the delay
until June has her worried.

" I would want to speak to the city about the timing to understand why
it would take almost a year," Williams said. "We would want to sit
down and talk with the city and understand why it would need to take
that length of time."

The developers have already pumped about $18 million into the
planning process and will be on the hook to fund the additional work
necessary on the environmental document.

The developers had hoped to finish the environmental review process
by December.

Environmentalists were overjoyed with the city's decision.

" This is the right move for the city of San Jose," said Michele
Beasley of Greenbelt Alliance. "It was apparent that there were a
lot of glaring omissions and unfinished analysis. I think there was a
rush to produce the EIR, and unfortunately that might be coming back
to haunt them."

Beasley's group filed one of the thickest responses to the city's
draft report, which also was assailed by federal and state wildlife
officials, the state Attorney General's Office and Santa Clara
County, which submitted 450 pages worth of objections.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of
Fish and Game said the analysis of how the Coyote Valley development
would affect threatened and endangered species was inadequate.

Water agencies also questioned some of the city's assumptions about
the source of water for the proposed development - in effect, a
community the size of Mountain View.

And the Attorney General's Office said the document did not fully
analyze the development's impact on global warming. That criticism in
particular puzzled city officials.

Horwedel said there's no "adopted regulatory standard or threshold"
that spells out when a project's greenhouse-gas emissions are
considered significant.

The report projected that emissions from vehicles and electricity use
in Coyote Valley would produce more than 500,000 metric tons of
greenhouse gases annually - an amount Attorney General Jerry Brown's
office wrote "would appear to be a considerable contribution."

The city will quickly move into talks with its consultants to
determine what additional analysis must be done to address the holes
in the review. In some cases, Horwedel said, that research as already
been completed, but the city needs to do a better job of explaining
the analysis. Recirculating the environmental impact report may also
be a strategic move, Horwedel acknowledged.

" Our goal is to have something that people will not feel the need to
litigate," he said. "But we are realists and realize that people are
passionate about this issue and may see the need to litigate."

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