Home > Resource Center > In the News Home > Greenbelt Alliance in the News

Greenbelt Alliance In the News

November 9, 2005

Voters reject proposed Livermore solar community

LIVERMORE – A developer's attempt to build what it claimed would be the country's largest solar-powered community on currently protected land was rejected by voters Tuesday.

With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Measure D lost 72 percent to 28 percent.

The measure sought to expand Livermore's urban growth boundary to include more than two square miles of ranchland and give approval to Los Angeles-based Pardee Homes to construct 2,450 solar-powered homes on 450 acres of that land.

Opponents, including environmentalists and the majority of the Livermore City Council, said the project would have swallowed open space, promoted suburban sprawl, harmed sensitive habitat and clogged traffic on one of the San Francisco Bay area's most congested freeways.

Voters rejected the idea of "changing Livermore from a livable, walkable town to another sprawling suburb of the Bay Area," said David Reid, spokesman for the Greenbelt Alliance, which opposed the measure.

Supporters said the initiative would have helped ease the region's housing shortage and promoted renewable power at a time of rising energy prices and growing concerns about global warming.

Pardee, the measure's sponsor, also offered to build a 130-acre sports park, preserve 750 acres as open space and provide land and funding for a new high school.

Pardee officials could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.

The election was being watched closely to see whether a developer could bypass the traditional planning process – and a hostile city council – to change land-use regulations through the ballot box.

Reid said Tuesday's victory set an important precedent "that developers cannot use the election process to get around a community's planning laws."

Livermore, a city of about 75,000 residents about 45 miles east of San Francisco, is home to a burgeoning wine industry and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, known for nuclear weapons and energy research.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the Net:
Livermore Trails: www.livermoretrails.com/
Friends of Livermore Valley: www.friendsoflivermore.org/

###