Proposed Day Center on Eastside Road
Redding Vice Mayor Paul Dhanuka will be discussing the proposed day center on Eastside Road, next to the River Ranch Road subdivision, at his July 6 First Mondays meeting, to be held at 5:30 PM in the Community Room at Redding City Hall, 777 Cypress Avenue.
Redding City Council leased to Shasta County 90 acres of land, part of which is next to the Sacramento River, at no cost, with an option to buy at $1 if they build a correctional facility at some time in the future. River Ranch Neighborhood Association claims that the City did not complete the necessary California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review and is suing the City of Redding. This should be a lively discussion.
Recently, River Ranch Neighborhood Association won a Superior Court decision to allow a biologist to survey the property for six hours to conduct a biological assessment. The City initially only wanted to allow the biologist to stay on the property for two hours. Even six hours is not enough time to do a proper biological assessment for a property that size.
The Roadless Rule Informational and Action Meeting
The Roadless Rule was adopted in 2001 to protect important habitat, safeguard clean water, and preserve Tribal resources by limiting most road construction, timber harvesting, and development in our national forests. The US Department of Agriculture is now working to dismantle the rule and will have a draft Environmental Impact Statement issued at any time.
The Shasta Group of Sierra Club is having an informational meeting and action hour about the threat of eliminating or weakening this 25-year-old rule on Saturday, July 25, at the IOOF Hall, 1435 Butte Street, Redding. The meeting will feature Tom Wheeler, Executive Director of the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), who has been working to protect old-growth forests and protected species such as the Spotted Owl for many years. EPIC is also actively involved in organizing this event.
The meeting will start with a social gathering at 5:30 PM with free pizza (while it lasts) and soft drinks. Tom will speak in person for ~30 minutes starting at 6 PM, and then open the floor for questions. Afterwards, we will supply names of important legislators to contact with their emails, phone numbers, and website addresses, as well as postcards and several prepared scripts to choose from. Direct contact from individuals is much more effective than sign-on form letters although those are important too. I have been to a similar Sierra Club meeting in San Luis Obispo and was able to leave about five voice messages plus another five or so emails and comments on legislators’ websites. If I had simply gone home with a script, I may have never commented, thinking I could put it off until later.
Organizations supporting this effort besides Sierra Club include EPIC, North State Climate Action, Shasta Chapter of California Native Plant Society, Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC), Mt. Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, Battle Creek Alliance, Safe Alternatives for our Forest Environment (SAFE), Defiance Canyon Raptor Rescue, We Advocate Thorough Environmental Review (WATER), Citizens for Better Forestry (CBF), Mount Shasta Area Audubon, and Sustainable Obtainable Solutions (SOS). We expect to get many more groups to support this, and hope that you will too by attending this meeting.
Data Center in Mt. Shasta
Recently there have been media stories by the Redding Record Searchlight, Shasta Scout, and KRCR-TV, as well as on social media, about a possible data center being placed on the former Crystal Geyser property just outside of Mt. Shasta City limits.
From what I have been able to gather from various sources, a commercial real estate company contacted the Mt. Shasta City Planner with questions about locating a data center on the land formerly owned by Crystal Geyser (now owned by One Shasta). As word got out, many Mt. Shasta area residents became understandably concerned and circulated a petition in opposition. A change.org online petition received over 13,000 signatures in a matter of days, although many signatories are from outside of Siskiyou County.
The former Crystal Geyser site, which has a 145,000-square-foot warehouse and an industrial-scale well, could be a suitable location for a data center as one of their big issues is that they need a huge supply of water for cooling. The site also has a leach field for water disposal that is currently permitted by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.
While this was just a preliminary inquiry to the City of Mount Shasta, which did not go any further, it is important that so many people raised their opposition to the plant so vigorously, letting the City and Siskiyou County know that allowing a data center on this property would face strong pushback.
~David Ledger, Conservation Chair
