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Weston/Lowden Comprehensive
Plan Amendment Review Preface This is a non-political website and all residents, red and blue, can find things to like and dislike about development in Washoe Valley. You might cherish the natural aspects of the valley like the views, wildlife and open space. Others will see new homes as prosperity, jobs and convenience as stores and services follow homes. Would changing the character of Washoe Valley from rural to high density housing hurt the property values of all current residents? Whatever your opinion it would be a good idea to take a look at what is proposed at the corner of Hwy 395, Eastlake and Skinner. The first step in this development is underway now. It is the reclassification of the parcel in question from from rural to those that will allow a large residential subdivision on the property. The residents of the valley will have another chance to examine the application and make comments at the next Citizens Advisory Board Meeting at Pleasant Valley School March 14th. One of the bizarre things about development in Washoe County is that you can have a certain amount and type of development approved for a parcel without proving that that proposal will even work beforehand. Presumably then you can go back and push through an undesirable project because that use has already been approved. I'm not saying that is the case here, but it just seems like it creates a situation easy to abuse. The following is my review and questions that I have. If you have questions or comments, please let me know and we can explore those before the meeting. Background The Weston/Lowden Comprehensive Plan Amendment Application is an application before Washoe County to change the land use designation for several contiguous parcels of property in Washoe Valley in anticipation of building a subdivision of potentially 479 homes. This proposal would change the land use designation from general rural (1 dwelling per 40 acres) to Medium Density Suburban (3 dwellings per acre), Low Density Suburban (1 dwelling per acre), Medium Density Rural (.2 dwellings per acre), and General Rural (.025 dwellings per acre) on +-707 acres in the area bounded by Eastlake, Skinner and 395. This is across the street from Little Washoe Lake (Washoe Lake State Park) and the Scripps Wildlife Management Area. The proposed area breakdown of the various densities is: MDS 77.85 acres At the November East Washoe Valley CAB meeting the developer's representative said that slopes on the property were the limiting factor in determining the placement of homes and their densities. Some steep slopes would be unbuildable while other, more level sites would be suitable for the high density MDS. I downloaded the PDF files from the Summit Engineering site (see the link on the Links page) and below is my layman's review of it. I urge everyone to take a look at the document for themselves and come to their own conclusions. Review in the form of notes on the content of the application The property owners, who are from Washoe Valley; Minden, NV; and Seattle, WA, are proposing to change the land use designations to enable them to build more homes than is now allowed on the parcel. The application is a standard form that has sections asking various standard questions about the proposal. The developer, offers a short, sometimes yes or no, answer to these questions as they see fit. There is a lot of room for personal interpretation (spin) in these questions and answers. One who has a vested interest in getting something approved might answer a question in a completely different way than one who is independent or against the proposal. An example of this is on page 14, item 5: Describe the natural resources associated with the site under consideration. Your description should include resource characteristics such as water bodies, vegetation, topography, minerals, soils and wildlife habitat. The applicants response is: "There are no significant environmental features such as lakes, streams or forested areas on the property." Huh? Does that mean there are no significant environmental features on the property? It is of no use for anyone or anything but homes? Or they just chose to note the features that weren't there. It doesn't appear to me that the question mentioned "on the property". There does happen to be a small Nevada State Parks facility across the street at Little Washoe Lake. Also, there is the Scripps Wildlife Management Area right across the street. These are insignificant? Building 479 homes for 1307 new residents will have an insignificant impact on these resources? The Scripps WMA currently allows hunting. Will that current use be lost with 479 homes across the street? The Scripps WMA is closed from Feb 15 to August 15 to provide quiet and undisturbed nesting for waterfowl. How is having 1307 people across the street who consider that their neighborhood park going to affect that? I think the applicant made a mistake in not showing a little more awareness and concern for our existing resources. Page 4, item 6d asks: "Does property contain...hillside or mountain areas....?" The is "No." It doesn't take much imagination to see that there will have to be a major road system throughout the project to get to all those homes. Roads in a hilly area will require "roadcuts" requiring large areas of earth to be stripped of vegetation and exposed to erosion. We saw during the News Years storm that our storms can create large gullies and roadside ditch filling erosion- the effect on the massive cut and fill operations for the new homesites on the east side of Eastlake Blvd south of New Washoe City are testament to that. What's downstream? Little Washoe Lake. Page 7, item 9 asks about water facilities. The applicants say they will provide "water lines, pumps and tanks" for water provided by "Washoe County". Where the actual water will come from is not considered. On page 19, item 6e asks: Does property contain prime farmland; is within a wildfire hazard area; geothermal or mining area, and/or wildlife mitigation route? The applicant answered "No". I guess these items have to be officially designated by the county or another entity but isn't Nevada a wildfire hazard area? Wildfire hazard is a legitimate excuse for limiting development in our county. The residents got a campground banned from Galena because of the fear of fire (although I have never heard of a wildfire starting from a campground fire pit.) Another neighborhood is currently fighting a trailhead with the wildfire danger angle. What about the local neighborhood that lost several homes when a couple of the juvenile residents were setting the lizards on fire? I would guess that homeowners at the urban/wildland interface cause a significant number of wildland fires. Page 23, item 8 notes that the owners don't have all the water rights they need for the development yet. Item 9d states that the water facilities needed will be built with the developments funds. Page 23, item 9 states that sewer service will be provided by Washoe County. In other places in the application the applicant states that there is a public sewer extension planned for Pleasant Valley and the developer will pay the cost to tap into that system. Included in the Application is a letter from Washoe County from 2001 stating that the land is private property and not "Potential Open Space On Private Land" as depicted in the Washoe County Open Space Plan. How does that happen? Do plans get made up to make us all feel good then get changed as developers desire by memo? In the section titled "Applicants Comments" the applicant explains that prior to the 1995 Comprehensive Plan Update, the area was designated "one dwelling per acre". The applicant then apparently assumes that because of septic tank concerns the designation was changed to General Rural in the update. I don't know why it was changed. Was that the reason? The applicant goes on to explain that because of recent changes in conditions the parcels don't meet the criteria needed for General Rural designation. they go on to say that, in essence, that because 1200 homes have just been approved just to the north, across Hwy 395, that anything nearby qualifies for high density housing because that is the new character of the area. This is a very convenient rationale for developers. Using this, you can expand outward to infinity if you just keep tacking on one more high density development on to the last. If this proposal and philosophy succeeds, the next developer will be able to say, "See, Washoe Valley is a high density housing area!" Apparently, to a developer, the way you want things is a bigger reality than the way things are. It was interesting that scenic values were not addressed by the county's form or the applicants responses. That is strange for an area such as ours where the community touts it's scenic beauty as one of the big draws of the area. Since the parcels are of varying slopes, remember that not only will there be 479 houses there to look at but the interconnecting roads across those slopes with the associated road cuts also. The separate traffic study seems to say that the only change needed is to lengthen the left turn lane from southbound Hwy 395 to Eastlake Blvd. That's nice, just make more cars wait in line. In accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative, they said the new freeway will lessen the traffic impact but they chose not to include the impact of the 1200 unit subdivision across the highway. Conclusion Oops, sorry, I wanted to be a little more "balanced" but I really can't get over the weird spin in this proposal. But I encourage you to read the amendment proposal for yourself and come up with your own arguments for or against. In my next article I'll discuss why I think both red and blue
residents can be against this project without guilt. |
