Now opponents are crying foul before a decisive vote over this expansion proposal on Wednesday before the Sacramento Local Agency Formation Commission, also known as LAFCO. They have good reason: This has all the fingerprints of Howard Chan, now the former city manager of Sacramento, acting yet again as if he was as powerful as the mayor when he most certainly was not.
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.
For your Calendar:
Wednesday, April 2, 2025 5:30 pm, LAFCo meeting, 700 H St, Board Room, Sacramento The vote on the proposed Airport South Industrial project
Actions:
Ask your friends, family, neighbors and networks to SIGN the PETITION to LAFCO! Just put your name here. We need 1000+ signatures.
Ask people you know to attend the LAFCo meeting on April 2, 2025. Comments are limited to 2 minutes each.
To submit a comment:
Send your email comment to the Commission at BoardClerk[at]saccounty[dot]gov (Refer to April 2nd Agenda item #6, Airport South Industrial)
Write a letter: send to Sacramento LAFCo, 1112 I Street, Suite 100, Sacramento, CA 95814
Updates on the Campaign to Stop Warehouses Next to Residential Neighborhood:
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:
Thanks to all of you who have attended meetings, organized meetings, passed out flyers at meetings and more.
We were delighted to meet about 60 new supporters at the meetings at Leroy Greene Academy and at Paso Verde School.
We met with another 85 who live along Garden Highway in the Alamar Marina, Bar and Restaurant.
And a big thank you to the Ecology Task Force of Natomas Performing Arts Charter School and the student interns of Sierra Club and 350 Sacramento who have met with us several times and have provided invaluable help in creating flyers and wonderful videos. See a video about bird life on rice fields north of Elverta Rd!
ECOS letter
You can see the letter ECOS submitted in preparation of this meeting here.
Opponents are speaking out about plans to pave over thousands of acres of farmland in Sacramento County. The development proposals are in the north Natomas area, just outside the Sacramento city limits.
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.
On Nov 6, 2024, ECOS submitted to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors a comment letter on the County of Sacramento Climate Action Plan, Final Subsequent Environmental Impact Report (SEIR).
The Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS) appreciates that County staff have developed a better Climate Action Plan than its 2022 version. However, we still have major concerns that must be addressed before we can support it.
On October 28, 2024, the law firm Soluri Meserve submitted on behalf of the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS), Friends of Swainson’s Hawk, and Natomas resident Brandon Castillo, comments on the Upper Westside Project Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR).
