San Luis Ranch development is a blow to the environment

The environmental hypocrisies of Mayor Heidi Harmon and her City Council of self-styled enviros are numerous, but few rival their approval for the huge San Luis Ranch development – a monster project that will destroy a last local remnant of the world’s best farmland to provide cookie-cutter “affordable housing” of indeterminate price beneath the airport’s main flight path and retail buildings to compound the city’s plethora of retail vacancies.

While environmental bonafides of anyone voting for such terracide are dubious, there’s an even more outrageous feature of the approval that’s had scant attention.

The General Plan says if this land develops — and it’s an if, not a shall — half of it must be conserved permanently for agriculture. The developer’s PR milked that with talk about an organic farm, even as he fought to save less than half.

Guess what Harmon and company signed off on?

Prior to turning the land over for ag conservation, the council’s allowing the developer to remove several feet of topsoil from it! That’s right, the “ag preserve” will have its fertile topsoil stripped prior to being turned over for perpetual conservation. And so environmental protection goes under our current mayor’s leadership.