News
Redwood City: New attempt to develop shore
by Carolyn Jones, San Francisco Chronicle
Developers who want to build 12,000 homes on the Redwood City shoreline said last week they're close to releasing an overhauled plan, four months after withdrawing the proposal due to public concerns over traffic, water, the environment and other issues.
"We're as anxious as anybody to bring a revised plan to the city," said David Smith, senior vice president for DMB Pacific Ventures, developer of the Saltworks project. "We had hopes it'd be out by now, but we wanted time to do our own internal evaluations. ... It's important to get this right."
The developer pulled the proposal from public review in November and asked the city to halt its environmental process. Since then, the developer has reconsidered every aspect of the plan, from the number of units to the overall footprint, Smith said.
The project, however, still faces its biggest hurdle: water. Previously, DMB proposed a complicated plan to buy 1 billion gallons of water annually from Kern County via the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
The water district wants no part of it, district spokesman Marty Grimes said Wednesday.
"We're not going to be part of any water deal for the benefit of a huge development outside our county," he said. "We don't have any deal with them. We don't have any intention of having a deal with them."
Smith said he's confident DMB will find a solution to the water problem and that several options are under consideration.
Revamping proposal
Saltworks, originally made public in May 2009, called for 12,000 apartment units and houses on an old salt pond on the Redwood City shoreline. The 1,400-acre site is among the last and largest privately owned, undeveloped properties along San Francisco Bay.
After a series of community meetings last year, DMB withdrew the plan in November and asked the city to halt its environmental review while the developer revamped the proposal.
Environmental groups, some residents and a slew of public officials called the plan a regional disaster, likely to clog traffic on already-congested Highway 101 and remove a critical piece of wetland habitat from the bay.
Vanishing wetlands
San Francisco Bay has lost 90 percent of its wetlands over the past century or so, harming birds, shoreline mammals and marine life, as well as water and air quality. In 1999, only 40,000 acres of wetlands remained, but since then another 40,000 - mostly old salt flats - have been tagged for restoration. Environmental groups have identified another 20,000, including the Saltworks site, that could also be restored.
Much of those old salt flats were owned by Cargill, the Minneapolis agriculture giant. In the 1990s Cargill sold most of its Bay Area salt ponds to the state and federal governments for wetlands restoration.
Cargill held on to the Redwood City property, though, in hopes of developing it. The plan - 12,000 apartments and houses, parks, schools, shops and other amenities, designed by noted urban designer Peter Calthorpe - will bring desperately needed housing to Silicon Valley, the developer said.
The Saltworks site is near several other wetlands restoration projects, including Ravenswood, Greco Island and Bair Island, but also borders the Port of Redwood City and an office park.
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"Our position is, you don't put housing on the bay. Period," said Stephen Knight, political director for Save the Bay. "Former salt ponds like this can and should be returned to tidal wetlands, not houses."
A group called Redwood City Neighbors United is also fighting the plan, saying Redwood City should focus its development efforts on downtown, not the shoreline. Redwood City, a city of 70,000, would grow to more than 100,000 if the Saltworks homes were built.
"We'd like to see this project abandoned, to be honest," said the group's spokesman, Dan Ponti. "People shouldn't be distracted by all the pretty pictures and rhetoric. It has not been approved yet. We can fight it."
'Not suitable for housing'
If DMB brings back a new plan, the city's environmental review process will start again and community workshops will resume. The City Council, and then probably voters, will have their say in a year or two.
"We're in favor of more housing in Redwood City," Ponti said. "But this site is not suitable for housing."
Op-Ed: Cargill’s Proposed Destruction of an Ecosystem Is Beyond Me
by Anna Dagum, a sophomore at Sequoia High School
Historically, city development coincides with water availability. There’s a reason that the Ohlones settled by the bay, for it has always been a source of freshwater and provided its residents with an abundance of fish and game. But when the population skyrockets from a small tribe of natives to a bustling metropolis home to roughly 7 million people, these resources become heavily depleted, and those which were once in abundance become considerably sparse.
Developers DMB Pacific Ventures has explored a desalination plant as a potential water source for the estimated 30,000 new residents that would live on the proposed development.
Though a desalination plant will likely impact the wetlands, the far greater impact lies in the housing that will be developed when the construction of the plant is finished and the new residents will be ensured freshwater for their everyday needs.
The question I would like to address regarding the Cargill desalination plant is not the environmental impact of the plant itself, but rather the impact it will have on the rising population of the Bay Area.
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Extending housing on the restorable salt ponds in the bay is a seemingly foolish and ignorant idea. When the majority of Redwood City’s downtown provides a perfect canvas for developers, why opt for building on a landfill?
While downtown Redwood City has been struggling to fill vacant storefronts and encouraging people to take advantage of the vibrant downtown lifestyle, why not direct the developers to a different part of the Bay Area, and redevelop Redwood City’s downtown, as opposed to paving over the fragile ecosystem that gives the Bay Area its iconic beauty and climate.
The salt ponds on the potential site of the Cargill desalination plant are one of the few restorable places left in the bay. They could provide a potential nursery for various types of wildlife and help restore the bay to its original state as a thriving waterway, diverse with plants and animals.
I oppose the development of an entire new city destroying the restoration of the bay, when Redwood City’s downtown could use some development itself. The protection of the bay is necessary for sustaining our climate and preserving the Bay Area’s wildlife habitats and why Cargill would propose the destruction of such a dynamic ecosystem is beyond me.
Redwood Shores Desalination Plant a Possibility for Saltworks Water Supply
by Stacie Chan, Redwood City Patch
The developers of the proposed Cargill Saltworks development are looking towards desalination as a potential water supply for its future 30,000 residents. It is one of many options the developer is eyeing to make the project feasible.
The location of the potential desalination plant, however, is yet to be determined, but the DMB-funded consultants have begun looking into the Redwood Shores area north of the San Carlos Airport.
In consultant Hart Howerton’s September report, sent to the city monthly, the consultant listed “preliminary investigation of San Carlos Airport Land Use planning for evaluation of requirements for developing the land north of the airport for desalination facilities.”
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The city is also still exploring the possibility of water transfer from Kern County.
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Josh Sonnenfeld of Save the Bay said he was concerned about potential impacts desalination could have on the surrounding natural habitats.
“We don’t know what the intake of all that water will do to wildlife,” he said. “We can’t assume we can just keep taking water from the Bay forever.”
As part of their desalination analysis, consultants had several conference calls discussing a desalination case in San Rafael, which has run into lawsuits and opposition from environmentalists. The Marin Municipal Water District recently appealed the court’s ruling that the environmental impact report did not adequately study impacts to marine life.
Residents of the city of Santa Cruz have similarly begun protests against a desalination plant by circulating a petition...
LTE: Deceptions behind Saltworks
Published in the Palo Alto Daily News
Dear Editor: A Stanford research group recently reported that, for decades, many doctors were paid handsomely to tout the health benefits of smoking tobacco (http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/january/tobacco-0123.html).
That led me to think of how Cargill and DMB Associates are currently spreading their money around Redwood City to show how much they “care” about it. I urge those who take that money to think carefully about whether to believe their claims of supposed benefits their proposed Saltworks development would bring to Redwood City.
Can adding 30,000 residents really reduce traffic congestion? Is the solution to current flooding and future sea level rise really to put more residents and businesses below the level of the high tides? Is paving restorable wetlands really the best way to restore them? I don’t think so. Please don’t be deceived by their money.
Karen Davis, Redwood City
City wants desalination looked at for Saltworks
Palo Alto Daily Post
Redwood City wanted a desalination plant included among options to supply water for the proposed 12,000-home Saltworks project, a senior vice president for developer DMB said yesterday.
"Desalination remains both scientifically and politically volatile," David Smith said, citing a successful legal challenge in Marin County to the environmental review of such a project there.
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The city in 2011 engaged a consultant to review desalination but work was put on hold when Arizona-based DMB sought more time to consider public comments about Saltworks.
Dan Ponti, spokesman for Saltworks opponent Redwood City Neighbors United, said the desalination option shows the challenges Saltworks faces.
"It's very expensive," Ponti said of desalination. "It's very energy intensive." "There are a lot of environmental concerns" about what is done with the salt extracted from the water, he said.
A 2003 review for the city by consultants Kennedy/Jenks concluded that issues including costs and environmental requirements meant desalination was not an option for immediate resolution of the Redwood City water supply needs...
(The above article segment was published in the Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012 edition of the Palo Alto Daily Post. You can view and purchase the full article in the Daily Post's archives at http://www.padailypost.com/)
