Action Alerts

SPRAWL ALERT …  

Greenbriar Project hearing - August 30, 2006 - 5:30pm
Sacramento County Board of Supervisors Chambers
700 H Street, downtown Sacramento

ECOS, the Environmental Council of Sacramento, Habitat 2020, and the Sierra Club, invite other community organizations and interested individuals to join in attending the August 30, 2006 LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission) hearing on the Greenbriar Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). 

Please review the fact sheet below to understand the key environmental problems of this project.  These are problems that have countywide impacts. 

The DEIR is available.  Call: 916-808-7931.
(Comment period ends September 5.)

Basic Facts About the Proposed Greenbriar Project 

• This 577 acre, 3,700 housing unit project is not in the City’s General Plan and has been given preferential treatment to be processed for annexation at LAFCO before the City’s General Plan is complete. It is currently zoned agricultural and is outside the City limit and the county’s urban services boundary (USB).   If the project were included in the General Plan, impacts of the project on other development proposals within the city, and on the city’s  infill policies and infill infrastructure would be addressed.  These questions have been bypassed in environmental review. If approved, Greenbriar will have significant impacts on development potential in other parts of the city, will harm regional transportation facilities, and will drain resources away from infill development and commercial corridor redevelopment.

• The project applicant is Riverwest Investments and has been a project of AKT development. 

• Greenbriar is located at the intersection of I-5 and 99/70, north of the City of Sacramento.  Proponents describe the project as infill but it is bounded by freeway on two sides, undeveloped commercial property on the west and agricultural area to the north.  It is the leading edge of development proposals to break the urban limit line and expand further into the Natomas Basin.

• The Natomas Community Association and ECOS have asked for a moratorium on any new annexations to the Community until the levees have been upgraded and certified.  The US Army Corp of Engineers issued a letter July 20, 2006 stating that it had withdrawn its previous opinion (1998) that the levees for the Natomas Basin meet the hundred year protection standard.  

•  Greenbriar will have unacceptable impacts on traffic congestion on I-5 and 99/70.  These traffic  impacts will affect all those who use the airport, including the freight industry, and will affect all those who commute to downtown from the north.  Though the freeways must be widened to accommodate additional traffic generated by the project, no one knows how this can be done since the land is not available for widening. CalTrans has requested  land on the project site for additional lanes for  I-5 and Hwy 99 (not included in the project).

•  Greenbriar is promoted by its advocates as necessary to create the population needed to justify federal funding for the Downtown/Natomas Light Rail line. The approval of this project in no way assures federal funding for light rail to the airport. Instead, a more likely scenario is that the project will be built and light rail will not be built.   The light rail project has been stalled because it is far too expensive for the transit value added, with or without Greenbriar. It requires two very expensive bridges and other engineering challenges. Moreover, federal agencies very likely do not want to invest in structures placed in the floodway, near the confluence of two rivers. Yet Greenbriar EIR traffic analysis assumes that light rail will absorb 11 percent of the trips generated by the project. 

• Seventy-five percent of the Greenbriar project is located within the Sacramento International Airport’s safety overflight zone, used by low-flying military aircraft in training exercises. This causes conflicts between residential communities and airport operations.

•  The project site is essential habitat for Giant Garter Snake and Swainson’s Hawk, protected under the state and federal law.  It is outside the Permit Areas of the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan, whose mitigation plan expressly relied on the assumption that most of the Basin outside of the NBHCP Permit Areas would remain undeveloped and agricultural for the 50-year Permit Term

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Flooding Reality Check

When it comes to flooding, the Sacramento region needs a reality check. 

Let’s face facts.  While there has been some recent progress in acknowledging the severity of the risk faced by the Sacramento region, there has been almost no recognition among elected officials that minimizing the risk will require major policy and land use changes — in existing neighborhoods and undeveloped areas.  Many of Sacramento’s most flood-prone neighborhoods, such as The Pocket and other areas south of Downtown as well as most of the southern portion of the Natomas Basin, are already developed.  Given the numerous challenges we face in minimizing the risk faced by existing neighborhoods, how can we even consider putting more people in harms way in undeveloped parts of the Natomas Basin?

In spite of longstanding concerns about the state of the levees protecting the Natomas Basin, the City and County of Sacramento relied on the legal fiction of compliance with an inadequate federal “100-year flood” risk standard to approve extensive development in the Basin with no height regulations or insurance requirements.  As a result, thousands of Sacramentans now risk losing their homes, businesses, belongings, and even their lives.  If the levees fail, parts of the Basin will be 25 feet under water.  People who do not evacuate and are trapped may very likely drown.

In recent months, numerous elected officials and developers have touted the goal of achieving protection from the so-called “100-year flood event” by continuing to develop the Basin and linking levee upgrades to assessments on new construction.  The implication is that this is an “acceptable” level of risk and that the only way to pay for levee improvements is by putting thousands more people in harms way.  This is not acceptable; it is unconscionable.  Protection from the “100-year event” is a convenient and potentially lethal fiction.  Justifying development for tens of thousands more potential drowning victims by having them pay for the illusion of flood protection is fiscally unsound and ethically bankrupt.  There is no actual significance to “100-year” protection.  New Orleans had better than 100-year protection — before Katrina.

We simply can not afford to keep ignoring the real costs of putting humans in flood basins.  Real protection from flooding requires placing the public good above developers’ interests.  Real protection demands leadership in making difficult decisions.

Real protection means prohibiting development near rivers and levees so that rivers can flow more freely without risk of overtopping or breaking through levees and inundating neighborhoods.

Real protection means locating and designing human structures to minimize the likelihood of catastrophe should flooding occur — things like height requirements and not building in particularly deep areas.

Real protection means updated water management systems throughout Northern California so that the rivers and creeks running through and around Sacramento do not reach levee-threatening levels except in the most extreme circumstances.

And real protection means mandatory insurance in flood-prone areas so that when flooding does occur, people don’t lose everything.

Real protection will be expensive — but it will be an investment in our future.  The devastation of a major flood will be a much more costly — and avoidable — human tragedy.  This, in essence, is our choice.  If we continue ignoring reality, it will only be a matter of time before the rivers flowing around and through our region deliver a catastrophic reality check.

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• The habitat mitigation program for development already completed in Natomas will fail and the preserves already set up will be significantly degraded. Our wildlife resource in the Sacramento area will be seriously depleted. The Federal and State wildlife agencies have already expressed very strong concerns which City and County have ignored.
• Infrastructure costs and risks to taxpayers from flooding, drainage, sewage, traffic, and air pollution will impact existing communities negatively. Flood risk in Natomas and drainage problems in the remaining area alone make this a poor area to develop. Over 1/3 of the proposed "Joint Vision" area is within the internal 100-year flood plain. City and County taxpayers will subsidize infrastructure costs.
• Conflicts with airport use will dramatically increase west of Hwy 99, making it more difficult for the Sacramento International Airport to meet regional travel needs. When you get in your car to go to the airport, count on a whole lot more traffic congestion between you and your flight.
• There are many infill areas of the City and County that would serve new growth more efficiently, and help economic vitality of these neighborhoods, but sprawl developers insist that the ag land that they bought at bargain prices be built first.
• North Natomas agricultural lands are a natural resource that is protected under state law.

For more information, read the fact sheet on the "arena land scam proposal" [the last effort at rezoning North Natomas] at www.swainsonshawk.org/pressing.html.

[FYI: here's what you'll hear the proponents of development say about the environmental benefits of more development in North Natomas:

• this is infill development because the area is contiguous with the existing city boundary.
• development here will cause less air pollution than development elsewhere; not developing in Natomas
• will drive development to Marysville and Yuba City.]