The Loma Prietan
October 2002
Sprawl: San Benito County Style
by Mandy Rose
San Benito County has ended up reproducing the same kinds of sprawl as our neighboring county to the north, and in much of the United States. We have plenty of the traffic congestion, air pollution, water quality problems, loss of agricultural land and open space, and sewage overflow problems to prove it.
The Sierra Club report "Sprawl Costs Us All" points out the ways we subsidize sprawl: by 1) building new and wider roads; 2) building new schools on the fringe of communities; 3) extending sewer and water lines to sprawling developments; and 4) and extending emergency services to the residential fringes.
Here in San Benito County we are struggling with CalTrans over how to make State Highways 25, 152, and 156 safer. Is wider safer? Is new really better? Bad decisions will result in sprawl-inducing growth.
Our decaying infrastructure, which has been neglected to the benefit of new development, has focused our attention on the consequences of poorly planned over-development. A 15-million-gallon sewage pond breach into the dry San Benito River led to a reluctant admission by the City of Hollister that the sewage treatment plant is 400,000-plus gallons over its permitted capacity, and only treating waste to minimum primary standards. That fact, coupled with ever-increasing water main breaks in all parts of the community, gives even the normally uninterested citizenry pause to consider the magnitude of the problem. Emergency services continue to be spread too thin in attempts to accommodate development expansion.
Who is to blame? Is it our complacency? We move to a place, San Benito County, which we believe will offer us open spaces, uncrowded streets, clean air and water, little or no crime, and good schools. We bring with us romantic notions of how life should be. But, in reality, we long for more convenient shopping, easier access, and more and better roads to travel on. We want jobs located closer to home but can't quite get a fix on how the "fiscalization of sprawl" impacts our elected officials' decisions to continue the endless cycle of attracting and even subsidizing businesses that won't come without the housing.
San Benito County has started to become a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. Given the existence of such valuable, prime agricultural lands in the County, as well as the Club's ongoing and important campaign to rein in sprawl, residents here are concerned about efforts in Sacramento to strictly enforce new housing construction requirements, fearing that it could lead to more sprawl developments in this essentially rural county.
We cannot afford to be complacent. We've been told over and over that those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Machiavelli described how ancient Rome managed to bring the whole of the Mediterranean world under its dominion: "While one is making war in areas adjacent to his domain, other powers that are more distant and have no immediate intercourse with him will look upon this as a matter too remote for them to be concerned about, and will continue in this error until the conflagration spreads to his door, when they have no mean of extinguishing it except their own forces, which will no longer suffice when the fire has once gained the upper hand."
There is cause for hope. A citizens' group which calls itself "W.A.T.C.H.D.O.G." circulated and obtained enough qualifying signatures within the City of Hollister to limit growth, and tie that growth to the capacity of the infrastructure and other public services. This initiative is now on the November 2002 ballot. Another growth management initiative was adopted outright by the City of San Juan Bautista City Council, limiting its growth to one percent.
The Water Resources Association, consisting of the cities of San Juan Bautista and Hollister, the San Benito County Water District, Sunnyslope County Water District, Tres Piņos County Water District, and Associate members, including the Sierra Club, are crafting a groundwater management plan. This plan, as ambitious as it is progressive, seeks to define how we intend to manage our water supply. The decisions fundamentally affect the on-going viability of agriculture, which is San Benito County's leading industry, by determining whether or not the community is going to be dependent upon an imported water supply or move toward a sustainable future.
The County Board of Supervisors, which has been responsive to most citizen concerns, must continue to enact local ordinances which give voice to the electorate on large subdivision proposals and protect water and air to the benefit of current residents.
Mandy Rose is the Chair of the Lom Prieta Chapter's Water Resources/San Benito County Committee.