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Oakley is a small, new city on the eastern edge of Contra Costa County. No major highways pass through the town, and the closest highway, State Route 4, is one of the most congested in the Bay Area. Oakley is growing at a rapid pace as people seek affordable housing on the region's outskirts.

The City has hundreds of acres of vacant land within its limits, but the small parcel sizes make it unattractive to developers. So Oakley is turning to the East Cypress Corridor project, also known as the Hotchkiss Tract, a 2,500-acre island in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta. Like many Delta islands, the tract would be mostly submerged at high tide if not for the unengineered earthen levees around the island. In fact, 95% of the island is below mean high tide, and there are large portions of the proposed development area that are as much as 5 feet below sea level.

Oakley is proposing to build 5,609 houses on the East Cypress Corridor project. The development would also include 638,600 square feet of commercial development, 152.3 acres of man-made lakes, and 112.5 acres of flood-control levees. Housing would replace 1,600 acres of important agricultural land and alter the rural character that current residents treasure.

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The East Cypress Corridor project is not an area where there should be development. It is unwise and unsafe to develop in the Delta floodplain. Thus, Greenbelt Alliance has pursued a legal battle against this project since 2006. In a precedent-setting decision announced October 1, 2009, Superior Court Judge Barry Baskin ruled against the City of Oakley, denying its request to move forward with its plans to build a housing development on the Delta floodplain and farmland.

“Inexplicably, the City failed to consider a reasonable range of mitigation measures or potentially feasible alternatives to lessen the impact to important farmland,” the judge stated. The court went further and rescinded the approval of the environmental impact report for the project, effectively blocking the development. This is a huge victory for the Bay Area and the state because this case sends a clear message that public agencies cannot circumvent the intention of the California Environmental Quality Act. Cities cannot just pave over farmland without compensating for that loss.

This case began in 2006 when Greenbelt Alliance sued the City of Oakley over four issues that the city failed to address in their Environmental Impact Report. The original lawsuit alleged that the city’s environmental review had not adequately mitigated impacts to endangered wildlife habitat, air quality, and farmland. Greenbelt Alliance prevailed in that lawsuit, and the City was ordered to address air-quality problems and loss of farmland. (Read the original court ruling here.) Unfortunately, it later readopted the Specific Plan without any measures to compensate for the loss of agricultural land or protect surrounding farmland, such as conservation easements or programs supported by developers’ fees. Because such measures are required under the California Environmental Quality Act and the original court order, Greenbelt Alliance sued the City of Oakley again. It is this current phase of the lawsuit that Greenbelt Alliance prevailed.

Now the City of Oakley will have to redo their Environmental Impact Report where hopefully the City learned its lesson and will provide true farmland mitigation.

See Greenbelt Alliance’s letter on the Supplemental Environmental Impact Report and the Final Supplemental Environmental Report that describes mitigation measures that the City of Oakley could have implemented. It cites other cities and counties that mitigate for farmland.

See Greenbelt Alliance's comment letter to the Army Corps of Engineers, dated November 25, 2006, and a letter written in response to the City’s environmental document.

What's at Stake

This project would pose a grave risk to the lives and property of its future residents, as well as to the approximately 500 residences already located on the site. To safeguard the new housing, the developers plan to pump water off the island 24 hours a day, potentially threatening water quality in the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, a source of drinking water for 25 million Californians. In addition, the site's poorly drained soils are subject to liquefaction during earthquakes, posing risks to structures and the levees. The traffic created by the project would result in additional congestion on Highway 4, leading to more traffic and air pollution.

The project also poses significant threats to the CALFED Dutch Slough restoration project, a joint state-federal project to restore the Delta ecosystem and improve drinking water quality. Polluted stormwater or floodwaters would harm Delta wildlife, and could also impact the drinking and irrigation water of Southern California and Eastern Contra Costa County.

What You Can Do

• Ask your state representative to call Oakley's Mayor and express concern over the project's impact on the CALFED restoration project and agriculture in the region. Click here to find your representative's contact information.

• Email Greenbelt Alliance's East Bay Field Representative, Christina Wong to receive updates on the project's progress.