CP&DR News Briefs March 16, 2021: Kern County Drilling; San Jose Station Plan; Contaminated Site in Richmond; and More

Kern County Fast-Tracks Oil Drilling, Faces Lawsuit
The Kern County Board of Supervisors approved, 5-0, an ordinance that would allow the county to use a blanket environmental impact report for as many as 2,700 new oil wells a year--more than 40,000 new wells over the next 15 years. Kern County is California’s leading fossil fuel-producing county by far, and more than 10% of the county’s jobs relate to the fossil fuel industry. Almost immediately, environmental and community groups responded with a lawsuit asking the court to bar county leaders from approving any drilling permits. Drilling has been on hold in Kern County since last year when an earlier version of the ordinance was struck down by a state appeals court that determined the county had not adequately assessed likely environmental damage. In that case, the court ruled, "The ordinance’s basic purpose is the acceleration of oil and gas development and the economic benefits that might be achieved by that development…. its basic purpose is not the protection of the environment.” The revised ordinance lowers caps on new wells, from 72,000 to 43,000, and creates larger buffers between homes and wells.

San Jose Updates Station Area Plan, Anticipating Google Development
San Jose’s latest iteration of the Diridon Station Area Plan widens the downtown boundaries and allows for much taller buildings and greater densities. The new environmental report calls for a 10 percent increase in office space, a 2.5 percent increase in residential units and more than three times as many hotel rooms. The updated development plan suggests that over the next two decades, the Diridon Station Area could experience a wide range of new development in the form of up to 12,944 residential units,14 million square feet of office space, 469,000 square feet of retail, and 1,100 hotel rooms. The latest updates come as San Jose officials place the final touches on a draft of the development agreement reached between Google and the city that will spell out how much land Google will be allowed to develop and how much money it will contribute to cover the project’s impacts. (See related CPD&R coverage.)

Site for 4,000 Homes in Richmond May Be Contaminated
Just two years after voting against a housing development on a contaminated site, the Richmond City Council approved 4,000 housing units after a partial cleanup effort. Now environmental and community groups are challenging the city's decision in court. The suit said the city's environmental assessment of the project ignored cancer-causing contaminants, including radioactive material. It also alleges that Richmond ignored updated state guidelines from January 2020 warning that rising sea levels would make groundwater contamination likely. In 1998, the site was added to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's "superfund" list of contaminated sites. AstraZeneca, the former owner of the property, spent $20 million on soil cleanup and removal in 2002, but incurred several fines from federal agencies for insufficient efforts. Despite the lawsuit, the city has granted entitlements to the developers, who have contractual rights to proceed.

Increases in Auto Emissions Threaten State Climate Goals
An audit of California's climate change program criticized state officials for over-reliance on reducing car emissions as a means of meeting emissions goals by 2030. Emissions from transportation have increased since 2013. The California Air Resources Board has overstated the effects of its incentive clean-care rebates and other voucher programs, and doesn't collect enough data to determine whether the majority of its programs led people to buy cleaner vehicles, the audit reported. California lawmakers have doled out more than $2 billion of cap and trade income to fund the clean transportation programs since the 2013-2014 fiscal year. But income from the carbon trading program is variable and is expected to dwindle as the state's polluters clean up emissions. The state needs more accurate program measurements to meet its greenhouse gas goals, the audit said. Meanwhile, an analysis of the most recently available data, conducted by nonpartisan think tank Next-10 and the consulting firm Beacon Economics, found that greenhouse gas emissions from 2018 rose for the first time since 2012. The authors attribute the 0.2 percent increase to commercial facilities that use refrigeration and power plants. To get back on track to meeting climate goals mandated by SB 32, California will need to reduce emissions by 4.9 percent yearly over the next decade. (See related CP&DR coverage.)

CP&DR Coverage: Legislative Update: Potential Housing Tools Abound
The California Legislature has come roaring back in 2021 with a whole new set of bills affecting planning and development. As in past years, the Legislature has not let up on housing. But instead of focusing on the number of units that it wants localities to allow, this year’s housing-related bills — which number in the hundreds — focus largely on the nuances of how localities can meet the state’s need. Many bills could be important for cities that want to meet RHNA targets but are having trouble deciding how to go about doing so. And they give resistant cities fewer excuses.

Quick Hits & Updates

San Francisco has instituted a $27 million program aimed at boosting home ownership. The program, which offers interest-free down payments to first-time home buyers, will favor low- to-moderate-income homebuyers and prioritize teachers and first responders. Eighty recipients will chosen by lottery to receive loans of up to $375,000. Home buyers aren't required to make monthly payments but when they sell their homs, they repay the loan amount plus an equitable share of the appreciation.

The Milken Institute released its annual Best-Performing Cities index that tracks economic performance in 400 metro areas nationwide. California's usual standouts, including number 24, San Francisco, and number 22, San Jose, dropped to tier 2 of the index due to the high cost of housing and a strong negative shift in short-term job growth amidst the pandemic. Agribusiness hubs in California's Central Valley like Stockton, Merced, and Visalia ranked in the index's top 25 percent for job and wage growth over the short- and medium-term.

A draft environmental study published by the city of Inglewood reveals new details for a proposed monorail-like system intended to connect the Crenshaw/LAX Line with the Forum, SoFi Stadium, and a proposed basketball arena for the Los Angeles Clippers. The suggests that roughly 3,100 passengers would ride on an average weekday, and could swell to as much as 25,000 on days with events. Construction is slated to begin as early as late 2021.

A Terner Center Analysis of San Francisco's successful 833 Bryant project, which is on pace to build homes 30 percent faster and at 25 percent less cost per unit than similar projects, found that streamlined ministerial approval under Senate Bill 35 was pivotal to the project's success. The analysis credits 3 other factors that set the project apart: committing to defined and ambitious cost and timeline goals, deploying unrestricted capital during construction, and using off-site construction of units.

A 14,838-acre property north of San Francisco was purchased by Save the Redwoods League in a $24.7 million deal that will permanently protect the largest family-owned coast redwood forest that remained in California. The Mailliard family will still conduct commercial logging at a reduced rate, but more than 1,000 acres of land rich with old-growth giant redwoods will be preserved in perpetuity.

San Francisco has sunk as much as 3.1 inches, on average, according to new research from a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. A well-documented case--Millennium Tower in downtown San Francisco--has dropped about 16 inches in a decade, but new findings suggest the net weight of buildings in metropolitan area is another drag on coastal areas already threatened by rising seas.

The Golden State Warriors will pay Oakland and Alameda County's $1.2 million in legal fees in addition to millions of dollars in debt from its arena renovations. The announcement comes on the same day the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority voted to release $20 million that had been sitting in a reserve fund set up by the Authority in case the courts ruled in the Warriors' favor.