California will lose 1 million acres of prime Central Valley farmland and incur huge public expense unless the state takes a new approach to development, a new study warns.
The study, produced by University of California-Berkeley researchers and an Oakland consulting firm for the American Farmland Trust, urges a shift from the current dispersed development pattern to a "compact" model."Driven by one of the nation's highest population growth rates, urban development is threatening to transform this magnificent valley from a patchwork quilt of farms and natural areas into an urban desert," said the study, "Alternatives for Future Urban Growth in California's Central Valley."
Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties, once among the nation's richest agricultural counties, have become urban centers in the past half-century. Valley counties headed in the same direction are Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Fresno and Kern, the report said.
In recent years, the study noted, valley farmland has been developed into housing and commercial developments at a pace of about 15,000 acres a year. The report sees that trend intensifying, with another 1 million acres facing development by 2040.
Analysis by UC-Berkeley's Institute for Urban and Regional Development and Strong Associates in Oakland calculated a variety of costs associated with continuing sprawl in the valley:
Providing the current level of public services to sprawl development would exceed revenues of Central Valley cities by about $1 billion a year, requiring either tax increases or service cuts. The report said compact growth would produce an annual budget surplus of $200 million.
Sprawl would reduce commodity sales by $2.1 billion a year and related agricultural sales by $3.2 billion a year. The loss would be equivalent to wiping out virtually the entire agricultural production of New York, Virginia, Oregon or Mississippi.
The Central Valley's population of 4.2 million in 1992 is expected to triple to 12.2 million, faster than the state as a whole.
"In just 45 years - the same period of time covered by this study - Los Angeles County has been transformed from the top-producing agricultural county in the United States into the sprawling megalopolis it is today," the study said.
Measures to promote compact development include building new housing adjacent to existing development to conserve land; "in-fill" development to make use of vacant tracts within built-up areas; providing incentives to developers that minimize public costs; and placing the most productive land in reserves where nonfarm development is prohibited or discouraged.