The title to this post is what I tried to convince our Outreach Director to put as the headline on today’s press release, but she went with something more sober: “Environmental group stops secret County-developer contacts” Regardless, it’s great news – Santa Clara County will stop giving developers favored access to the County’s environmental documents,...
Category: News
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Audubon, MROSD, mercury …
Lots of news to blog about! The Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society has announced their new Executive Director, Brenda Torres. CGF works extensively with Audubon and we welcome Brenda to the neighborhood. She is replacing outgoing E.D. Craig Breon, who will be greatly missed. A new guidebook to MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District, “Peninsula Tales...
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Think globally, eat locally
There’s been quite a bit of buzz around David Mas Masumoto’s recent book, “Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm,” which describes the passions and challenges of this third-generation farmers working in the San Joaquin Valley. Masumoto’s book has been selected for the Mercury News’ “Silicon Valley Reads” program (note: this program’s...
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Santa Monica’s sustainable landscaping program
Taking a look at interesting programs in other areas, I came across Santa Monica’s program to provide grants for landscaping that replaces water-thirsty turf and other plants with water-conserving landscaping, including native plants. Sustainable landscaping has not been a focus of CGF, but it’s not completely unrelated, either. Some of the water that the good...
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Forum this Sunday on conservation easements
Today’s the last day to register for an interesting-looking community forum put together by the League of Women Voters, and cosponsored by CGF (among others), Conservation Easements: Land Preservation Tools for Local Communities. The afternoon will include two panel discussions on conservation easements and open space easements, two important tools communities can use to protect...
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Could be worse – news on Coyote Valley
We would like San Jose to take a break on developing Coyote Valley, considering that more appropriate prospects for urban redevelopment exist that could be hurt by siphoning business to the south. We knew, however, that this was unlikely, so the next best news is that San Jose did NOT clear the deck for an...
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Coyote Valley/HCP news
The Gilroy Dispatch has a very informative article on how a delay in the County’s Habitat Conservation Plan is playing into attempts to develop Coyote Valley. The Dispatch quotes CGF several times in the article. And the Pinnacle newspaper has the latest news on the Coyote Valley Task Force approving an outline of the overall...
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CGF takes legal action to stop sprawl
Yesterday, CGF and Save Almaden Valley Rural Alliance filed a lawsuit in Santa Clara County Superior Court to stop San Jose’s illegal effort to bring sprawl to Almaden Valley. San Jose has an unfortunate reputation of only listening to environmental groups after the groups have sued the City. Hopefully the City will listen now, or...
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News bits
The Metro has a nicely-titled “Secrets ‘R’ Us” piece, half-way down its collection of news items titled “The Fly”. Metro picks up where The Pinnacle newspaper left off on the story of how CGF is fighting the County’s attempts to disclose environmental documents to developers while locking them away from everyone else. The Merc has...
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Looking to the future
An excellent Op-Ed in today’s Merc by Tom Steinbach from Greenbelt Alliance looks to the future of San Jose and says if “Downtown North” is developing, why develop Coyote Valley? We may not be quite as enthusiastic about the North First Street development as Greenbelt, particularly because of the jobs-housing imbalance, but the point is...