A couple of quotes in the paper earlier this month caught my attention because they came from the mouths of local politicians, yet sounded so strangely right.

“In today’s world, with all the pressure on growth and development, it’s not prudent to require large lot development,” said Kern County Supervisor Ray Watson.

“We have to be smarter about how we utilize our land as a resource,” chimed in Supervisor Mike Maggard.

Yes! And double YES!

Too bad they were using the right words to justify the wrong kind of development.

They approved quarter-acre lots on about 79 acres in western Rosedale that leapfrogs past similar suburban developments out into “ranchette” land. This is the first of a four-part development, the rest of which is set to come back to the board soon.

This is Kern County being more prudent and smarter? Than what? Plopping hundreds of acres of sprawl even farther out?

This is the first of the 13 projects that were stalled during the development moratorium county supervisors called while they figured out how to pay for new roads.

In fact, this project will pay far higher impact fees than any other county project so far.

This 79-acre development at Nord and Dunn avenues, along with its three sister projects farther northwest at Nord and Palm avenues, which will bring a total 750 new houses to the area, are going to create a lot more traffic and air pollution. 

Cumulative air pollution from these developments plus our existing air quality problems will be so great, the county acknowledged that even with all mitigation measures at its disposal, including some never before implemented, the developments will have a significant impact.

None of the developments connect to already urbanized areas, so all the services — police, fire, water, drainage and sewer (likely the real issue here) — will have to be stretched to meet them.

Neighbors, who mostly live in 1- to 2-acre ranchettes, want the lot sizes increased to be more compatible.

But I say we don’t need them at all. At least not now. The housing market’s still in the toilet and the city of Bakersfield alone has more than 60,000 housing units approved but not yet built. That doesn’t count what the county has on the books.

“That’s a 20-year backlog of houses,” said Gordon Nipp, local Sierra Club member, who, like me, sees no reason to move on these developments now.

Well, other than the developer will build sewer lines out to his project, which will allow connections for a lot more homes in the area as well. That’s a laudable goal in the land of countless septic tanks. But is it worth the traffic, bad air and loss of ag lands?

Nipp says no. 

“Hold off, figure out what to do about the traffic situation. And give the community a chance to say what they want” in the Metropolitan Bakersfield General Plan update.

Nipp is even more concerned by an ag land mitigation measure offered to developers that he feels will not only not help save ag land, but will undermine his previously successful efforts at saving farmland.

The county is offering to allow developers a menu of options for ag land preservation from replacing one-for-one each acre developed, to finding other farmland to put under a “security zone” contract.

That’s only good for a set amount of years, though, so it doesn’t have the rock-solid guarantee of a conservation easement, which Nipp has been negotiating with developers independently for some time now.

“If they let these developers do security zones, I’m afraid it will set a precedent and undercut what we’ve been working for,” Nipp said.

Farmland preservation in the Central Valley is serious business.

In Kern County alone, we’ve lost more than 30,000 acres to urbanization between 1990 and 2004, according to the American Farmland Trust Web site (www.farmland.org).

About 40 percent of those acres were considered “high-quality” farmland.
And our densities appear to be going backward. In 2004, our growth patterns gave us a density of 6.9 people per urbanized acre. But projections show that will drop to about 6.4 people per urbanized acre by 2050.

The American Farmland Web site has also tracked what Kern and other Central Valley counties said they wanted to achieve under their general plans, and what actually happened.

Not good.

“What we’ve found is most counties and cities aren’t even tracking those things,” said Ed Thompson, California director for American Farmland Trust. “They have no idea what percent of development is on high-quality farmland and the lack of efficiency of those developments.”

Quarter-acre lots leapfrogging into open space is not “efficient,” in case anyone needed that pointed out.

Judging by the recent supervisors’ decision, it clearly needs to be pointed out.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. E-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.