GABRIEL IBARRA

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Coyote Valley was once part of of "The Valley of Heart's Delight", combining fertile soil, an amiable climate and a flow of water to become an agricultural Eden_ but that role that would make farming a community resource.Farmers in the 6,800 acre valley, especially in the northern two thirds, have been dwindling away steadily in recent years as the city has changes zoning designations to alow for urban and industrial development. Now the dominant agricultural use for the land is to farm row crops and forage.The Green Belt Alliance wants to broaden the concept of agriculture from simply food production and commodity provision to a more service oriented definition.(That means not just depending on row crops that could easily be sold to large comodity trader); smaller 20-40 acre farms and community gardens; and intoducing the comunity to the farmers through educational programs in schools, farmers markets, harvesting festivals, farm to cafeteria programs, agrotourism and generally, having the Coyote Valley community sustain the farmers. Is that viable? Farms next to people have never been a good mix. "Once you tell what a farmer how he is going to farm, youre going to meet some resistance."

Sprawl, the Sequel

Developing Coyote Valley - even if the development is catered toward an environmental sensitive philosophy inheritantly runs into problems, Shmidt says. For starters, parts of the valley have an especially high water table, which could lead to potential water-quality problems; the valley lies in a flood plain that threatens any potential devlopment; development threatens farming; and most importantly, developing Coyote Valley could very well be an inducement for further sprawl.He thinks that even the best projects cannot over come these issues.The prospect of seeing a good size city of 80,000 to 100,000 residents is disconcerting for Schmidt. He would like to see Greenbelt Alliance lessen the scope of the project instead of mirroring San Jose's goals for the valley(a possibility that Greenbelt Alliance mentioned during the unveiling of the proposal).Fitchen from Greenbelt Alliance only wants to put forward an alternative development solution, not push for development. "We laid out the issues," she says,"{and} what needs to happen. Now the city has to do an comprehensive study. If it turns out that development is not appropriate in a certain place on in the whole valley, we would be the first ones not to do it." Excerpt taken from article "Coyote Dreaming" by Najeeb Hasan Metro News, July 10-16 -03 My take on this article is that as usual the city of San Jose will ask for your comments and then do whatever they want to do. Their chief reason being, Oh well we spent so much money on the research we might as well just build the project. As far as something appropriate for the area, how appropriate has been the Calpine energy plant? Pure dumb buy outs by politicicians for their campaign funds. This is the last open space between San Jose and Morgan hill and we are supposed to trust the politicians to get it right. They want to put flowers, fountains, gardens and industrial parks where the third richest agricultural land in the world is; that is not smart thinking. I don't know about you but the produce you buy from Cosco is from Chile, Australia and Turkey and Bites Big Time-meaning it has no flavor. Furthermore they do not have the strict environmental laws for applying pesticides that we do. This is called a circle of poison. What ever happened to buy California and USA.The global economy is over rated and only serves the top two percent of the wealthiest people, it does not serve the common people. Write to mayor Ronner; he is on the committee to overall see that Coyote Valley is built up. I think that is a conflict of interest. Go figuire!