On April 2, 2025, the law firm Soluri Meserve submitted a letter to the the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) regarding the acreage proposed for Airport South Industrial (ASIP) and including it in the City’s Sphere of Influence (SOI).
Click here for more info on this vote.
Click here to read the letter in full.
April 2, 2025
LAFCo is scheduled to vote on Airport South Industrial on April 2, 2025. Please be there to help protect open space.
The Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) will vote on including the acreage proposed for Airport South Industrial (ASIP) into the City’s Sphere of Influence (SOI). This is the first step to approving the landowner’s request to build warehouses on agricultural land west of the City limit.
If five people on this commission vote yes, they will undo decades of public planning of land use in our community without the Sacramento City Council ever having a public hearing. We need to put a stop to this outrage. We must be there in large numbers to ask Commissioners to vote NO on expanding the City of Sacramento at the request of one landowner.
ECOS opposes this project for its inconsistency with every plan approved in the region for the last 25 years including: the City General Plan, the County General Plan, the SACOG Metropolitan Transportation Plan, the Urban Services Boundary line, and the Natomas Basin Habitat Conservation Plan. In addition, according to the draft Environmental Impact Report, the three main issues that CANNOT be mitigated to an acceptable level are the increased air pollution, the loss of farmland and loss of aesthetic value of open space. Sacramento already has some of the dirtiest air in the nation and the City should not put industrial warehouses with their trucks and pollution next to an elementary school and residences.
Perhaps most important is that ASIP is the first of three major proposed projects in Natomas, and if approved, would provide precedent and justification for the following two, which would add up to 70,000 new residents and several million square feet of commercial development.
On March 30, 2025, at 5 pm, ECOS will hold a Zoom meeting to review the project and talk about how to make a spoken or written comment to LAFCo.
At our presentation at Paso Verde School 50 people and two TV stations were present. Heather had a great interview, with the proposed site for ASIP in the background. See the CBS interview here.
If you want to learn more about the Airport South Industrial Project – An article by Heather was recently reprinted in N Magazine. Nmag.net It is on page 8.
Dennis Spear, publisher of N Magazine, wrote an article about the meeting at Paso Verde school. Find it here, on Facebook.
Thanks to all of you who have attended meetings, organized meetings, passed out flyers at meetings and more.
You can see the letter ECOS submitted in preparation of this meeting here.
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.
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.
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:
By Dennis Spear | N Magazine | January 2025
It is incumbent upon residents to challenge projects like this that seem to plow through previous well thought out plans and agreements for the future. If there is no accountability and respect for previous plans, then why did we have the plans at all?
Read the article below to learn more about the efforts ECOS has been making to preserve open space in Natomas.
Mailing address: PO Box 1526, Sacramento, CA 95812
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909 12th St., Suite 203, Sacramento, CA 95814
