Measure V is a Very Bad Idea

By Glen Holstein

The Environmental Impact Report provided by the Village Farms consortium includes the following: “groundwater beneath the project site…appears to have been impacted by the former landfill…Eight contaminants were found to exceed the Maximum Contaminant Level…detected …PFAS…compounds and manganese appear to originate from the Old Davis Landfill.  Three PFAS compounds exceeded their…USEPA water quality standards…Anomalously high…groundwater elevations were reported…for…dry seasons…the depth to water…was reported as 9.93 feet on September…elevations…not typical of dry-season conditions.”

Despite their own EIR’s abundant evidence Village Farms consortium plans to invite home buyers to live just a few feet above toxic groundwater, which it has consistently either ignored or minimized.  The resulting potential outcome is no mystery.  A New York state school district  first built schools in such a place. and then arranged for homes to be built there as well so families would fill the schools.  The only problem was that when the toxic groundwater rose in elevation, as it often does, kids and their parents living there ended up in hospitals instead of classrooms.

This Love Canal disaster of the 1970’s was so notorious it led to Superfund legislation, but those who made it happen could at least honestly claim nothing like it had ever happened before.  Those who fast tracked Village Farms in Davis, however, have no such excuse.

What in Davis allowed this to happen?  What it was didn’t just happen here.  Pulitzer Prize-winning analyst David Leonhardt examines this in his book Ours was the Shining Future, which is full of interesting facts like how wealth of the bottom half of American households changed from 21% in 1970 to 13% in 2020.  The causes aren’t mysterious since during that period wages fell relative to the cost of virtually everything else including lodging.  The result is clearly visible in thousands living on the street for the first time.

Culture changed in those fifty years as well from a time when clean air and water and rare species were valued enough for bipartisan federal protection.  Increasingly, however. focus shifted to speculation on everything from poker chips, to sports, to stocks, and even lodging as houses became something more for flipping than living in.  That, more than any imaginary shortage, is what puts lodging increasingly out of reach of all but real estate consortia like the one pushing Village Farms, which can wall paper Davis real estate-controlled properties with Yes on V signs while No on V signs are where Davis people actually live who are appalled by the environmental disaster fast tracked by the consortium and its beholden city government, which recently let another Davis consortium renege on promises of affordability with no consequences, while analysis of Village Farms affordability promises finds language that might facilitate the same.

And that government changed as well.  We were once famous for a city council that, even if sometimes a little quirky, made Davis the oasis of the Central Valley.  Now it’s all about funding to get elected to the next higher office, which real estate consortia like the one pushing Village Farms provide to get what they want fast tracked whether future families are poisoned or not.

If California’s 30X30 policy to provide space for its rarest animals and plants was taken seriously, what the Village Farms consortium wants to pave over would be our crown jewel.  Even its own EIR documents show nowhere else in Yolo County comes close to its concentration of the rarest and most endangered species.  In fact, if the US Fish and Wildlife Service hadn’t been so neutered by DOGE that it shook in its boots too much to do its job of implementing The Endangered Species Act when confronted by the powerful, the whole site would now be federally protected like other places with equally rich concentrations of the rarest species.  These need space to survive and the site as a whole is equal to the smallest place that provides such protection in California.  Thanks to DOGE, however, the consortium reluctantly agreed to only avoid paving over a tenth of the needed area and does not even guarantee that a conservation easement.

Davis once accurately considered itself an enlightened place reflecting the qualities of its world class university.  Now, however, consortium rule has caused it to fall far behind Winters to the west and Woodland to the north as a place with leaders it can be proud of!

Dr. Glen Holstein is a Davis resident and an Environmental Analysis Professional