The 5000 unit, 15,000 resident Yuba Highlands project proposed directly adjacent to the Spenceville Wildlife Area just over the Nevada County border near Penn Valley took another step forward Tuesday night. The Yuba County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 to certify the Environmental Impact Report. The Planning Commission had certifed the EIR and project opponents appealed it.
Thanks to Supervisors Hal Stocker and Mary Jane Griego who voted against the EIR.
Friends of Spenceveille, the Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club, and the Foothills Division of the Audubon Society are coordinating opposition to this project and have hired attorney Jim Pachl and environmental planner Laurie Oberholtzer to assist. The RQC and SYRCL are also signatories on the appeal. The Sierra Fund is a major participant also.
Key issues include air quality, greenhouse emissions, traffic, sprawl, construction of a major road to the south through the Spenceville Wildlife Area, water supply and connectivity to the lower Yuba River, urban encroachment on Beale Air Force, and on and on....
In a last minute development, the State Attorney General's office weighed in with a letter on the project, calling the EIR inadequate on the issues of greenhouse emissions and air quality, water supply, and biotic impacts, and saying "The Yuba Highlands project is a particularly egregious example of sprawl."
The next step will be a vote on the actual project by the Yuba County Board of Supervisors expected in June.
The Board of Supervisors is also expected to vote on the concept of allowing the voters to decide on this project on Tuesday May 22.
If you would like to help us help on this project, please send your donation to the RQC, PO Box 1346, Nevada City, CA 95959 and note that you would like funds earmarked to the Yuba Highlands opposition.
The Rural Quality Coalition is very concerned about loss of agricultural lands on a local level. During the General Plan update, much agricultural land in the Penn Valley area received smaller parcel size designations. We argued against this, but did not prevail. We did manage to get a Planned Development overlay on some of these lands so that new parcels would be clustered off of important agricultural lands. However, the clustering proposals that are now coming in are what we call "faux clustering" and are not preserving agricultural land in a meaningful way.
One of the larger examples of this problem so far is a subdivision being proposed near Indian Springs Rd and Spenceville Rds.... 43 lots on 200 acres, clustered mainly on the portion that is mapped Farmland of Local Importance. Only ribbons of open space between homes are being preserved and a hillside of no agricultural value. It is called Pineridge Estates.
We have commented on this project to the Agricultural Advisory Board and to the Planning Department. We recommend that all parcels be located out of the important agricultural land which should remain in one parcel and sold to an agricultural buyer with a conservation easement to ensure agricultural use in perpetuity.
We will keep you posted. It is in the early stages of the process. The Agricultural Advisory Board has expressed serious concern over the project as proposed, a good first step.
To continue this good work, we need your help.
If you would like to help, please call 530-265-0642.
We are making a difference as your land use advocates.
Sincerely,Board of Directors