Chico Enterprise Record Strains and Stretches to Mislead

Anti-Environment Stance Only Scapegoat They Find

The Chico Enterprise Record (ER) has missed the point again in an ongoing attempt to assist developers in southeast Chico to destroy one of the few healthy stands of Chico vernal pools that also contain Butte County meadowfoam, a federal endangered species. Using the need for a high school as a wedge to open up the east side of Bruce Road for residential development, Jim Mann, consultant for several southeast Chico landowners and also an interested party in this particular development, has even convinced the Chico Chamber of Commerce and the ER into believing that there will be no high school if it isn't built east of Bruce Road. In support of the falsehoods propagated by Mann, the ER incorrectly stated on December 31, 2000 that "environmentalists" are opposed to development on both sides of Bruce Road and that we are also calling the proposed school "Meadowfoam High." Let's clear the public record one more time!

The pristine wetland site in southeast Chico is currently part of a 347-acre proposal to fill 6.85 acres of jurisdictional wetlands to build a high school and 700 single-family residential units and 300 multi-family units. Part of the property contains one of the last healthy populations in the Chico area of Butte County meadowfoam. Though the wetland and special status species values have been well known for almost a decade, the Chico Unified School District (CUSD) has married itself to a portion of this highly constrained property due to an undisclosed deal with the developer when there are four other viable alternatives west of Bruce Road that have been supported and encouraged for a high school by the environmental community and the jurisdictional agencies.

The ongoing public relations campaign by Mann, the CUSD, the Chamber, and the ER will not affect the current federal permitting process since the agencies involved are responsible for wetland and special species protection, not a community's desire or need for a new high school. As we have stated for over two years, the high school is not dependent on a housing development and has many other choice spots to choose from in the Bruce Road area. Clearly, the residential portion of the proposal is inextricably linked to the high school and the CUSD continues to allow the developer to hold the district, the high school, school children, and the bond holders hostage to the developer's desire to exploit the most environmentally sensitive portion of the Schmidbauer (see below) property.

The public is encouraged to write the CUSD regarding any frustration or confusion they may have about the two-year delay in building the high school and its alternative sites. Public pressure might also encourage it to come clean regarding the obsession with the east of Bruce site and to reveal the real asking price of the land. The school district might finally be shamed into explaining why a district that educates our children about the environment would want to destroy a healthy part of it in the name of children's education when other viable alternatives exist. And, by the way, Board of Education trustee Donna Aro is the individual who so loosely and regularly uses the term "Meadowfoam High," not the environmental community.

The Schmidbauers own a Eureka lumber company and contributed $1,000 to Rick Keene's and Dan Herbert's 1998 Chico City Council campaigns, $500 to Steve Bertagna's 1996 Council campaign (all are current City Council members and vote consistently against environmental protection), and another $1,000 to the political action committee, Chico Vision 2000 that supported all anti-environmental candidates.

This column originally appeared in January 2001 in the Chico Examiner.