The Loma Prietan
December 2002/January 2003
Santa Clara County to Decide on Facility Development on Unincorporated Lands
by Dan Kalb, Chapter Director
The Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter has lent its support to the Committee for Green Foothills, Greenbelt Alliance, and the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society in a concerted effort to oppose locating what are known as Large Group Assembly Facilities (LGAF) in unincorporated rural areas of Santa Clara County.
According to this environmental coalition, "While some Large Group Assembly Facilities, including schools and churches, provide essential community services, they are more appropriately located inside existing urban areas--close to the predominately urban populations they serve."
"Large-scale assembly facilities are meant to serve urban populations," said Kelly Crowley of the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. "It is not the County's responsibility to make up for the cities' lack of planning to accommodate these low to no-profit facilities. It just makes more sense to place an urban-scale development near the community that will use it."
All four environmental groups are united in their opposition to this type of development in rural areas of Santa Clara County. The impact of these facilities would likely be sprawl-inducing, environmentally disasterous, and potentially very costly to the county. Furthermore, development of these types of facilities could add to the already drastic loss of agricultural land in the county.
What You Can Do
Write a letter to the editor of the San Jose Mercury News at letters@sjmercury.com or fax 408/271-3792, expressing your desire to keep rural lands rural and free from large-scale development. In your letter, you can urge the County to let stand the existing land use policies that are currently serving Santa Clara County.