The City of Watsonville is proposing to expand the city limits and annex the area known as “Buena Vista” for development of 2,200 homes, associated commercial buildings, and a school. The entire area is directly under the flight paths for the airport runways. In addition, this area drains into the Harkins Slough.

The adverse impacts of this development include the conversion of quality agricultural lands to non-agricultural uses, groundwater depletion due to over-pumping of the Pajaro Valley Aquifer, increased traffic on roads and highways, and increased polluted runoff into Harkins Slough. The proposed development would severely compromise operating safety at the Watsonville Airport due to building in previously “clear” zones. As a result of this factor, the Watsonville Pilots Association has filed a companion lawsuit.

The Club’s environmental goals in this lawsuit are to block urban sprawl, preserve agricultural land, preserve water quality in Harkins Slough, and reduce or confine the over-pumping of the Pajaro Valley Aquifer. The specific legal goal of the litigation is to get an order setting aside the approval of the Watsonville General Plan Amendment unless and until a legally adequate Environmental Impact Report is prepared and substantial mitigations adopted.

The Watsonville General Plan Amendment generates numerous environmental problems which are deferred for future solving. For example, there is no identification of a credible solution to increased regional traffic congestion that would be created on Highways 1, 129, and 152, nor is there a guaranteed water source to supply the huge population growth this General Plan Amendment seeks to encourage.

The proposed General Plan Amendment dismisses such deficiencies by calling them regional problems that need to be solved by someone else or by contending that these problems will be solved later.

The Sierra Club and FOBV believe that this abdication of local responsibility needs to be corrected before any part of the General Plan Amendment is implemented. In public testimony Sierra Club and FOBV sought to convince the City of Watsonville that it should not adopt a Plan that contains major regional problems without first articulating clear and credible solutions. These efforts were to no avail, which is why we are seeking correction of the situation through the courts.