Cordova Hills head-scratcher

Sacramento County is back in the sprawl business with last week’s approval of Cordova Hills: a vast, nearly 3,000-acre-development project east of Rancho Cordova. SN&R is confounded and disappointed by the board of supervisors’ 4-1 vote (kudos to Phil Serna for the nay). As for supervisors Roberta MacGlashan, Don Nottoli, Susan Peters and Jimmie Yee, we must ask: What the hell are you thinking?!

It’s bad enough that Cordova Hills will be built on sensitive environmental habitat, and that the project flippantly defies the region’s smarth-growth design plan.

But what’s truly a head-scratcher is that by green-lighting this very ungreen housing/commercial/retail/unlikely university-campus development, Sacramento will likely lose millions in federal and state funding.

Here’s why: In 2008, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and the Legislature passed Senate Bill 375, which mandates meaningful greenhouse-gas-emissions reductions for passenger vehicles in California. If Sacto doesn’t meet benchmark reductions—which will happen, according to studies, if Cordova Hills is actually built—then Sacto is expected to lose beaucoup bucks.

SN&R hopes that Cordova Hills suffers death by lawsuits. And that in the future, the aforementioned board of supervisors are a helluva lot smarter about growth in the region.