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New Boundaries for Fast-growing Cities

The Bay and Delta were the indirect winners on November 5th when voters in four Bay Area communities approved long-term urban growth boundaries. The boundaries, which passed in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Pleasanton, require that all new development take place within prescribed areas. Sonoma County voters also approved a measure to protect greenbelt buffers around that county's growth boundary, and on November 14, the City of San Jose formally adopted a growth boundary endorsed last spring. Farther upstream, however, two slow-growth measures explicitly linked to water supply were defeated. El Dorado County's Measure K and a similar measure in Placer County would have tied new development to traffic capacity and water supply.

Boundary approvals overlap with counties where sprawl has been taking the biggest toll on open space and watershed lands. According to a new ABAG report (see Now in Print), urban land areas increased by 14% in Sonoma County, 20% in Solano County, and 11% in Contra Costa County between 1985 and 1995. In the same time period, 50,000 acres of open land were developed for commercial or residential purposes in the Bay Area as a whole.

Although primarily designed to protect open space and farmland, the new urban growth boundaries will benefit both water quality and supply as well. According to the Greenbelt Alliance's Jim Sayer, preventing urban sprawl can also reduce erosion, sediment loading and heavy metals in stormwater runoff. At the same time, compact development can improve water use efficiency, as it tends to mean less landscaping requiring irrigation. Recognizing this relationship, a 1993 Bay-Delta plan for Estuary protection (see CCMP cover) calls explicitly for adopting plans and policies to promote compact, contiguous development. And the new Blueprint for a Sustainable Bay Area, released this month by Urban Ecology, ties infill (versus peripheral) development to environmental and economic health and quality of life (see Now in Print).

Contact: Jim Sayer (415)543-4291

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