Tassajara Valley

For twenty years Save Mount Diablo and others have been defending the Tassajara Valley and hills, sensual grasslands stretching east of Danville’s Blackhawk and San Ramon’s Dougherty Valley, to the north of Dublin and Livermore.  Tassajara Valley is just east of the county Urban Limit Line and San Ramon’s Urban Growth Boundary.  It is an agricultural and open space buffer between preserved open spaces in every direction, linked by Camino Tassajara Road and Tassajara Creek, with headwaters to the north in Mount Diablo State Park and Morgan Territory Regional Preserve.  It is beautiful and endangered species habitat.

Tassajara Hills
Applications were withdrawn for four subdivisions – totaling 1,102 acres of rolling grassland in the Tassajara hills. These projects would have led to fragmentation of wildlife habitat and corridors, while also impacting East Bay Regional Park District’s planned Doolan Canyon/Tassajara Hills Regional Park.

Tassajara Valley
County voters, including majorities in Danville and San Ramon, voted to place the Tassajara Valley outside of the urban growth boundaries in 2006. Save Mount Diablo has formed a coalition to defend the Tassajara Valley from development threats like Measure W and “New Farm” – both seeking urban development outside of the Urban Limit line. These plans would bust the line, opening thousands of acres of natural lands and sensitive habitat to development threats.

Measure W - Defeated
In November 2010, voters did not let developers and the San Ramon City Council break the voter-approved Urban Growth Boundary to develop over 1,600 acres of the Tassajara Valley. Victory for No on W!

The voters of San Ramon resoundingly voted NO on Measure W by 42% - defeating the attempt to expand the Urban Growth Boundary  (72% voting NO and 28% voting Yes). 

Thanks to the campaign committee and many volunteers who pounded the pavement to inform the San Ramon residents about Measure W. See Measure W articles in our Press Room.

Measure W:

• Development we don’t need. The City won’t say how much development will occur in the Tassajara Valley; our analysis shows between 2,970 and 4,280 new residential units.
• Real estate is still reeling. Thousands of new houses will drive our property values down even further. What’s more, over 4,600 houses not in the plans are already approved.
• More traffic. Thousands of new houses in the Tassajara Valley will make traffic worse on San Ramon’s overcrowded roads and Highways 580 and 680.
• Water is our most precious resource. Adding thousands of people there would further stretch our limited water supply, especially in drought years.
• Overloaded schools. Adding thousands of students will make overcrowding in our schools even worse. San Ramon students will have to be diverted to other sites.
• Too beautiful to lose. The Tassajara Valley is a stunning, agricultural area that’s also rich with rare wildlife. It’s part of our natural heritage. Let’s keep it protected.
• Misguided planning. By burying the proposed growth boundary expansion deep inside the City of San Ramon’s general plan voters are not given an honest choice.

New Farm Project
The “New Farm” project, submitted through the county, is a cynical attempt to break the urban growth boundaries and its developers are in the middle of a three-pronged approach aimed at gaining approval for urban development. The proposal is to build 186 houses and a cemetery on 771 acres outside of the Urban Limit line. If they are successful, other parcels in the valley will follow and urban growth boundaries would be at risk throughout the county.  Growth management would be destroyed.

The developers are: 

• seeking rezoning and subdivision of the “New Farm” parcels at the County level, despite the County Urban Limit Line, to allow 186, million dollar hobby farms and a cemetery.
  
  
• attempting to get the area included in San Ramon’s Sphere of Influence (probably as insurance; if they can’t get either the county or San Ramon to go along with their plans, they’d move their efforts to the other jurisdiction.)
  
  
• probably planning to try and get the valley moved inside San Ramon’s urban growth boundary in the November election campaign in 2010—even though the voters voted just three years ago to exclude and protect it.

Save Mount Diablo and our allies are attempting to defeat this effort to destroy our urban growth boundaries.