Plants and animals have nothing to fear from a golf course on
Foothill Avenue, the City Council was told Wednesday night. The
course was built, without an environmental impact report, near the
old Flying Lady restaurant, by Corralitos Creek, LLC, the property
owners who include local resident John Fry of Fry
’s Electronics.
Plants and animals have nothing to fear from a golf course on Foothill Avenue, the City Council was told Wednesday night.
The course was built, without an environmental impact report, near the old Flying Lady restaurant, by Corralitos Creek, LLC, the property owners who include local resident John Fry of Fry’s Electronics. The city insisted that an EIR be written and any significant adverse impacts on wildlife or vegetation, soil or water and traffic be mitigated to the point of insignificance.
The golf course is private and will complement a research and conference center to be operated by the American Institute of Mathematics, now based in Palo Alto, from the rebuilt restaurant building. Corralitos board member Steve Sorenson told the council that AIM will hold 24 conferences of one-week duration a year at the site, with 24 participants. The course is designed to be part of the athletic attractiveness of the center which also includes hiking trails.
Randy Long from RCL Ecology, the firm hired by Corralitos to coordinate the biological issues concerning water and wildlife habitat, said the city followed a “worse case scenario”. It expected a high level of adverse affect on these entities, which were the findings of the city’s consultant, David J. Powers Associates of San Jose. In fact, he said, the reverse was true.
In addition, the applicant’s (Corralitos) view was that mitigating the effects at the city’s expected level would “have necessitated such drastic changes to the golf course as to result in a no-project alternative,” he said.
This was because the course had already been constructed and would need a complete re-design.
Instead, Long said, Corralitos hired its own consultant to perform additional and “more comprehensive studies that show that the assumptions of significant impacts were misconceived.”
The applicants have proposed alternative mitigations that, Long said, “would provide for resource protection while also accommodating golf course play.”
It was originally thought that irrigation pumping (to water course grass) would affect neighborhood wells.
“There was no discernible downward trend in the aquifer after five years of golf course pumping,” Long said.
It was thought that course fertilization would increase nitrates in groundwater.
“No significant increase in … nitrate concentration was determined,” he said.
It was assumed that construction would result in higher flood potential.
Grading and lake construction allowed Corralitos Creek to carry all “modeled” storm waters during a 100-year flood without road flooding,” he said.
It was originally thought that pesticide and herbicide runoff would pollute the creek or lake.
Water sampling, Long said, showed no increase in the tested water.
Finally, it was assumed that the breeding and summer habitats of the California red-legged frog, California tiger salamander and western pond turtle was eliminated by course construction.
Not true, Long said. The “creation of 5-acre lakes and 34-acres of uplands resulted in better habitat conditions after development than existed previously.”
Planning manager Jim Rowe said his department will be receiving and reviewing this mitigated data during the next month.
The public is invited to review the complete EIR at City Hall, the Library or on line and send comments to the city by Friday, March 14. The final EIR will go to the Planning Commission in early May and on to the City Council for final approval in early June. City Hall, 17555 Peak Ave., 779-7271.
The city’s website is www.morgan-hill.ca.gov
