Hi Everyone –

Thanks for your help– attending public meetings and speaking up, writing comments, meeting with the Natomas team, attending presentations, and making financial donations — all to stop rampant, unnecessary and damaging development in the Natomas Basin. We appreciate you and all our colleagues and partners at Sierra Club, 350 Sacramento, Habitat 2020, the Sacramento Audubon Society, Breathe Sacramento and neighborhood organizations.

This missive is an overview of our 2024 accomplishments and will help us organize for 2025.

Overview

From the ECOS Natomas Team

The Natomas Team is focusing on two projects, Upper Westside (UWSP) and Airport South (ASIP). For UWSP, the next hearing will be before the County Planning Commission after the final EIR is prepared. For ASIP, the final EIR must be prepared before a next hearing with LAFCo. In the interim, the team continues to meet with and educate community members about negative impacts of these projects on the habitat and neighborhoods. We are also reaching out to appointed and elected officials who will decide whether to approve these projects or not. For more information or to join the effort, please go to the Natomas page on the ECOS website.

Issues that will affect neighbors and others: increases to traffic congestion and decrease in traffic safety, increased noise, air and light pollution in neighborhoods, increased danger of flooding, loss of wildlife habitat and gross violation of our community’s major land use, transportation, air quality and habitat conservation plans.

ECOS will assist volunteers in organizing and responding to these projects. If you are unable to volunteer, please donate. We need to finance a lawyer, other experts and a mailing campaign – all are expensive activities.

Projects

Airport South Industrial Project (ASIP) – 450 acres are proposed for over 6 million square feet of warehouses, next to a residential community and a school. We provided two sets of comments to the ASIP DEIR, one from volunteer experts and a second from paid experts. The City has not yet issued a final EIR for the project, it could be in the spring of 2025. The project involves annexation to the City and must first be approved by the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission prior to City hearings on the project.

Help Needed: We need neighbors of this project in nearby schools and communities to lead local organizing through email groups, social media, holding house parties, distributing flyers. Your help will be needed to pay for a lawyer to challenge the project approval. We must prepare and organize now before the final EIR drops. Contact Edith Thacher egthacher[at]gmail[dot]com if you have ideas or can help.

Upper Westside Project (UWSP) – 2,066 acres of prime farmland, next to the Sacramento River and designated as part of an adopted habitat conservation plan, are proposed for 9,000 residences and over three million square feet of commercial development. When the DEIR was released, ECOS provided two sets of comments from volunteers and from paid experts.

ECOS volunteers and a number of neighbors to UWSP have participated in public meetings and submitted comments on UWSP to both the Natomas Community Planning Advisory Council (CPAC) and the County Planning Commission. Natomas CPAC recommended UWSP to the Board of Supervisors in December (voting 4-2). N Magazine published an article on the meeting, link below.

The County Planning Commission will meet this spring (possibly February) to make a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors. We need you there to oppose the project.

As with the other development projects we are opposing, UWSP is outside the County Urban Services Boundary and contravenes the County and City General Plans and the regional transportation and air quality plans. It is also destructive of the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan.

Help Needed: A group of neighbors are organizing by community to respond. They have already written comments, spoken at public meetings and assisted in a big way by hiring experts. We are coordinating with them and developing strategies for the Planning Commission meeting. Can you join this effort to rouse public opinion? It will be critical to have many comments submitted and people to speak at the next Planning Commission meeting. The meeting date is unknown. Contact Edith Thacher egthacher[at]gmail[dot]com if you can help.

Grand Park – These 5,000 acres are used by farmers to grow rice and by birds migrating along the Pacific Flyway or overwintering in Sacramento. The proposed development project envisions high-end residences and commercial space. The DEIR could be released in the summer of 2025.

Help Needed: The Heritage Park Progressive Group is already well-organized and working to oppose this development. They are supporting their neighbors’ work opposing ASIP and UWSP as well. We will need funding to pay for experts to review the Grand Park DEIR also. If you live in this area, but not in Heritage Park, please contact Edith.

Links:

• ECOS Natomas Campaign webpage
• An article in Comstock’s Magazine which provides an excellent overview of the issues of development in the Natomas Basin
• An article from N Magazine about the most recent CPAC meeting for UWSP
• Please donate. Every dollar helps.