We need housing! Should we cut down 4,000-plus oak trees to make that happen?
That’s a tough question. There has to be a way to both build and not totally destroy, right? Maybe.
The largest residential development proposed in SLO County in a quarter of a century could make its way into Nipomo in the future—bringing more than 1,200 new housing units to an area that arguably might not be able to handle the population influx. And the developer, NKT Commercial, seems to think the best way to do it is to level oak woodland and oak forest on 228 acres of land west of Highway 101 and south of Willow Road.
The environmental document accompanying the Dana Reserve project said the 75 acres of coast live oak woodland and oak forest slated for potential destruction—or about 40 percent of the project area—“contributes significantly to … the region’s overall biological diversity.”
Well, don’t worry, everyone! The project also wants to make up for killing that habitat by preserving 388 acres of habitat somewhere else that really isn’t that similar. But wait! The project also wants to preserve 20 acres of woodland and plant new oak trees. Problem solved!
Wrong. Nothing can make up for the loss of untouched habitat, for the loss of trees that are older than I am. Planting new trees along freshly paved streets doesn’t fix that loss.
“We’re sill left with a net loss of all of those oak trees,” said Neil Havlik, who worked as the city of SLO’s natural resource manager for many years. “Do a smaller project and leave the oak trees alone.”
Will a smaller project give us the housing injection we need?
“We need affordable family housing to both buy and rent,” Arroyo Grande resident Angie Mello said in a letter she wrote to the county supporting the project. “I am 100 percent positive that we need to do everything possible to make the Dana Reserve a reality.”
I’m 100 percent positive we need to do a better job of figuring out how to build without destroying the natural environment we all enjoy as part of living on the Central Coast. Not that the project shouldn’t move forward. We absolutely need housing. Can’t we do it better?
In Buellton, officials are more concerned about new cars than old oak trees when it comes to residential development proposals. Ugh. The traffic that much-needed new housing units bring with them, amirite? Buellton Vice Mayor David King wants proof that a new development won’t have a negative traffic impact on Industrial Way—because people need somewhere to park before they drink, you know?
“I’m very concerned about how many cars are going to be associated with this project,” King said at a July 7 hearing for a mixed-use development known as Campus 36. “This is not The Jetsons; we’re not flying cars to our house, and those cars are gonna have to be somewhere.”
Well, we might be flying cars to our houses in the future, Mr. King! And if that’s the case, maybe we’ll have levitating houses by then, too, and the oak trees can stay put. And all we’ll have to mitigate is the ruined viewshed of the people flying down Highway 101.
The Canary will take traffic impacts over environmental ones. Send flying cars to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2022.
