SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. — The Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental group, Solano County chapter is the latest to publicly oppose the proposed California Forever city and announced a new coalition they're calling "Solano Together."
Members of various Solano County groups spoke Tuesday morning to announce the new change and encourage support from the public against the project.
"Solano County is home to a robust and delicate ecosystem, carefully crafted with all of our stakeholders in mind,” said Princess Washington, Sierra Club chair and Suisun City councilmember. “The Sierra Club of Solano County will oppose any project that is detrimental toward Travis Air Force Base."
The Solano Together coalition will consist of a partnership between the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee, the Greenbelt Alliance and the Sierra Club.
Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy, Orderly Growth Committee chair Bob Berman and a Montezuma Hills farmer also spoke at the press conference to vocally oppose California Forever. Speakers mentioned the Solano County Orderly Growth Initiative as another reason they're opposing the proposed new city.
The initiative, passed by voters originally in 1994 and amended in 2008, works to “protect working farms, ranches and watershed areas in Solano County by directing urban growth and development into our cities. "
Flannery Associates, the investors of the California Forever proposed city, say their project “explicitly adheres” to the initiative by allowing voters to decide what happens.
"(Our project) embodies its very spirit... by asking Solano voters whether they want to turn an area with the least productive and least ecologically valuable soils in all of Solano County into a new economic engine for the county," said a California Forever spokesperson. "We support the Orderly Growth Initiative and that’s why we’re going directly to voters — allowing them to decide what future they want for themselves and their kids."
A Montezuma Hills farmer, who was approached by Flannery Associates and rejected their offers to buy her land, says she appreciates the idea of the new coalition and wants to “beat” this project.
"The way that I see a community is sort of an organic, almost a living thing. You don't just pop a bunch of houses down in the middle of nowhere and expect a community to form," said Kathleen Threlfall. "You come to a place for many different reasons and a row house is not one of them."
Washington says the land Flannery Associates owns has been tended to by "generations of farmers who use dryland farming, producing up to 6 million loaves of bread each year" and is grazing land for livestock. Flannery says the land they own has the "worst agricultural soils in Solano County, which is why the area is used for pasture land rather than prime farmland."
Flannery Associates has told ABC10 their full plan is expected to be released sometime in January, 2024.
