Publication Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Editorial: Opposition explodes to Alpine 'trail'
Editorial: Opposition explodes to Alpine 'trail'
(December 14, 2005) What looked like the end of a long trail dispute this week has burst into fierce new opposition to Stanford's Alpine Road trail/bike-lane strategy
Fed by flying e-mails, a Web site, a petition drive and even a TV commercial that aired during the Stanford/Cal Big Game, a vigorous opposition movement has coalesced around Stanford's moves to force-feed an Alpine Road trail/bike lane alignment on Santa Clara County and local residents in San Mateo County.
Stanford is required under its long-term expansion plan, approved in December 2000 by the county, to build and maintain two connector trails to the foothills as partial mitigation for the impacts of adding up to 2 million square feet of new academic space and 3,000 housing units over 10 to 20 years.
The battle over where those trails should go has raged ever since, until many of us -- especially Santa Clara County supervisors and planning staff -- have developed acute "trail fatigue." One journalist noted the trail-route debate has continued for twice as long as it took Lewis & Clark to trek to the Pacific Ocean and back. Angry Alpine Road area residents and supporters -- including some affiliated with Stanford -- crowded the supervisors' meeting Tuesday afternoon to protest adoption of the latest trail plan insisted on by Stanford. That plan links approval of a southern trail (generally along Page Mill Road, considered acceptable or even desirable) with a highly controversial plan for the northern trail.
The northern plan moves most of the trail completely off Stanford lands and runs it adjacent to Alpine Road in San Mateo County and Portola Valley. (Stories on the dispute -- and Tuesday's action by the supervisors -- are posted on www.PaloAltoOnline.com.)
As the Weekly disclosed last week, Stanford has now offered nearly $20 million to pay for building the trails -- tenfold higher than initial estimates. Of that, $11.2 million would go to San Mateo County and Portola Valley IF they approve building the Alpine Road trail within the next five, possibly seven, years.
Stanford says it will not build the favored southern trail unless it is linked to approval of the northern alignment. It has threatened legal action if other routes are required.
If the Alpine Road trail is not built, Santa Clara County Manager Pete Kutras says the $11.2 million will revert to Stanford. This to us would be an unheard-of, irresponsible giveaway of mitigation funds.
Rich Gordon, a San Mateo County supervisor who was quietly briefed on Stanford's trail plan last September, says he doubts the trail will ever be built because of local opposition, environmental regulations relating to nearby creeks and safety concerns relating to Alpine Road.
In addition, the Committee for Green Foothills and other environmental groups are looking into suing over the adequacy of an environmental review of the northern alignment. Such a review has not even begun -- about as inadequate as one can get -- yet Santa Clara County is being asked to approve the alignment in a package deal.
Not building the trail could mean Stanford is freed of more than half its mitigation commitments.
"A deal is a deal" is the theme of local opposition, despite Stanford's protests that it never committed to "interior" trails on its Dish and Felt Lake lands, only to "peripheral" routes.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Liz Kniss, who prior to Tuesday's meeting expected again to be voted down 4-1 in her opposition to linking approval of the two trails, took a new tack this week. She proposed that the $11.2 million simply be given right off to the Santa Clara County parks department for some other mitigation within the area most impacted by Stanford's huge expansion.
Not to do this, or something much like it, would be irresponsible governance. It would set a terrible precedent for future development throughout Santa Clara County: "If you resist hard enough, we'll let you off the hook."
We hope Stanford officials and Board of Trustees (possibly the true source of Stanford's intransigence on this issue) will at last listen to their many friends in the surrounding communities -- and the Weekly is one -- and do a cool-headed reevaluation of the northern-trail alternatives.
But if Stanford really wants to buy its way out of a significant mitigation, then it should just propose that in a straightforward way and perhaps we can begin to get this whole endless, trudging trails slog over with.
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