Proponents of a $1 billion, county-wide land conservation plan
predict a day when development will harmonize with the protection
of endangered species.
Proponents of a $1 billion, county-wide land conservation plan predict a day when development will harmonize with the protection of endangered species. However, property owners and developers wonder if it’s actually possible, and worry about who will be in charge and how much it will cost.
Since 1982, cities and counties throughout California have teamed up to create a dozen so-called “habitat plans” in efforts to streamline the housing permit and environmental protection process.
Officials say success has been widespread, and recently representatives from Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Santa Clara County, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Valley Transportation Authority drafted the Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan: a 2,000-page document that imagines a contiguous 500,000-acre swath, mostly in South County, to preserve and protect 30 endangered and threatened species.
It’s a winning proposal for environmental conservationists, but its benefit to developers is less straight-forward. While the plan could make the building process significantly faster and less complicated, it would likely cost more.
“In order for the plan to pass, it’s going to take all the local partners and all the groups that have differing views. But once they do, we can issue a blanket permit for that whole area and turn over the permitting to local agencies,” said Al Donner, assistant field supervisor with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “Developers will pay a fee and leave with a permit the same day.”
About 45 percent of the money needed to acquire the land, maintain it and run the program will come from planned development fees. The rest will come from grants and nonprofit land investments.
“This will cost $1 billion over 50 years, but we will make that billion back,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Don Gage said at a Gilroy City Council study session on the plan last month.
Currently, developers whose projects affect waterways or protected species must not only pass the local planning process and pay the associated fees, but also secure permits on their own time from state and federal authorities – mostly to ensure the development does not injure any animals covered by the Endangered Species Act.
The state and federal permits do not cost money, but developers typically are required to purchase comparable nearby land to mitigate any disturbance to the plant or animal in question. In addition, the process can take years due to the need for expert inspections.
Biologists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began noticing in the 1970s, however, that discordant land purchases led to pockets of habitat that do not really benefit threatened species, Donner said.
The idea behind the habitat plan is to allow local governments to issue state and federal permits as long as they ensure the acquisition and maintenance of a large, natural area, he said. This would also reduce the number of bureaucrats that developers must consult, and quicken the permit process.
Yet, Donner and Santa Clara Valley Habitat Plan Program Manager Ken Schreiber acknowledged the difficulty of rallying all the different camps and raising money in the beginning.
There’s already an $85 million funding gap, and concerns about cooperation among the various agencies when it comes to collecting fees from developers in their respective jurisdictions and then pooling that money to finance the plan. These fees will be meshed with grant funding, land acquisition efforts from county and open space authorities, and water revenue.
The water district will not level its own fees on developers as part of the plan, but will help maintain the habitat with restorative projects paid for by water bills.
At least one problem with habitat plans is unfolding in Antioch, where the city’s general plan conflicts with the East Contra Costa County Habitat Plan.
The city helped draft the county plan, which took nine years to create, but withdrew before it went into effect two years ago. This forces developers in Antioch to sit down individually with state and federal authorities instead of paying into the 175,000-acre habitat plan.
Here in Gilroy, federal and state permits required local developer Michael McDermott to pay $50,000 to a national land management group to offset impacts to the red-legged salamander as a result of his 19-acre Wildflower Court neighborhood on Mesa Road in southwest Gilroy.
He would have preferred to pay into a habitat plan then, but when it comes to his un-built 236-unit Oak Creek development on Luchessa Road – which now operates as a 26-acre bell pepper farm in south Gilroy – he said he wants to get his own permit and find his own land because no endangered species or sensitive waterways run through that property. As a result, he has not had to consult state or federal authorities.
Instead, he has had to find easements to purchase for $3,000 to $4,000 an acre – money that goes to a farm owner who is then bound by law to preserve the agriculture – versus the $12,900-per-acre fee the habitat plan imagines for developing agricultural land.
“The goal of the plan is good, but it’s also problematic to be raising fees in a time like this,” McDermott said. He pointed to real estate reports last week showing the median home price for a 1,700-square-foot home in Gilroy is $319,000.
A home that size on a 7,000-square-foot lot would run about $60,000 in city impact fees and an additional $12,000 in building permit and planning fees – all of which represents about a quarter of the home’s total revenue. The habitat plan would add more fees on top of this.
“I think the draft habitat plan needs to make it a little more equitable for everybody,” McDermott said.
McDermott may break ground on his Oak Creek project before the habitat plan kick in, which Schreiber anticipates will happen in 2011.
Depending on the housing market’s recovery, stalled developments such as Oak Creek and Glen Loma Ranch – which will add 1693 homes along Santa Teresa Boulevard – could pull building permits after the habitat plan kicks in, subjecting those approved projects to additional fees they may have otherwise avoided.
