Couple Fear That Development Portends Paradise Lost

When Rhonda and A.J. Hanson found a small house on this piece of Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta land in 1974, they thought they had discovered paradise.

Although the house was only a 30- to 45-minute commute from A.J.’s job as a high school teacher in Concord and Rhonda’s court-reporting job in Walnut Creek, it seemed to be in another world. On one side the house faced Sandmound Slough, one of the many waterways that meander through the 1,100-square-mile delta; on the other side was open grazing land.

On Hotchkiss Tract and adjacent Bethel Island, there are no traffic lights, gas stations or shopping centers--the urban trappings that had caused the Hansons to flee the suburban East Bay shortly after their marriage in 1973.

Over the years the couple have turned a somewhat decrepit 800-square-foot house into a handsome 2,800-square-foot structure, built on pilings, as most new homes in the area must be to protect from flooding.

Moored on Sandmound Slough, close to their home, is a houseboat on which the Hansons and their two daughters, ages 4 and 6, take leisurely summer vacation trips.

But ever since the Hansons moved in, their piece of paradise has been threatened by developers who want to place thousands of new, mostly expensive homes on Bethel Island and Hotchkiss Tract.

One developer plans to breach a levee and build 550 waterfront homes that will sell for $400,000 or more. Another, based in Newport Beach, would like to place 2,000 units on what has been a 1,000-acre ranch. The owner of the grazing land across the road from the Hansons wants to build another 1,400 units.

Over the years, Rhonda Hanson has served on many local committees formed to resist this kind of large-scale development.

Hanson says she is not opposed to all development, that she and her husband are not “no-growthers.”

“I think you can do some things,” she said recently. “I’m not going to try to stop all development. That’s not my goal. I would just like to preserve the character of the place.”

Breaching levees to build expensive waterfront homes on small lots is not her idea of preserving the character of what has been a quiet backwater in booming Contra Costa County.

Rhonda and many of her neighbors worry about the flood danger that permanently haunts Bethel Island and Hotchkiss Tract, both of which lie largely below sea level.

“I just think it’s a safety issue,” she said. “The more people there are, the less time people will have to get off” in case of a levee break.

On Holland Tract, across Sandmound Slough from the Hanson home, there was such a break during the vicious winter storms of 1986.

“The cows were crying and drowning,” Rhonda recalls. “They wouldn’t get on the barges” that were supposed to carry them to safety.

But the years of meetings, reports and studies seem to be coming to an end.

A “specific plan” that would allow 5,000 new dwelling units on Bethel Island and Hotchkiss Tract was approved by the East County Planning Commission in February and is being considered by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors.

If all the units are built, population will increase from 2,500 to more than 17,000.

Karl Wandry, deputy director of the county Community Development Department, defended the plan, which he said will preserve Bethel Island as “pretty much a recreational area,” while most of the new houses will be built on Hotchkiss Tract.

Hotchkiss “doesn’t have the same safety questions” as Bethel Island, Wandry said. “You have high land you can go to. Not as much of the land is below sea level.”

Wandry said the new developments, including the 1,400 units across the road from the Hansons, will provide residents with better sewer and water service, more recreational facilities and better police and fire protection.

Wandry acknowledged that the plan would “change the character of the area somewhat” but added that “there’s pressure for development” in the delta. “And if it’s going to happen, this is the way to do it.”

Hanson said the plan reflects the fact that developers have clout with county planners and with the Board of Supervisors while local residents do not.

“The supervisors light up when the developers get up, in their suede shoes, and talk about how wonderful all this is going to be for the community,” she said. “When we speak, they try to ignore us as much as possible. It’s frustrating but I keep going back because I’m a thorn in their side.”

But lately she has stopped going to most meetings.

“The people who oppose big development have pretty much given up,” she said. “At the last meeting of the East County Planning Commission I broke down and cried. I haven’t been to many meetings since.”

She and her husband will wait to see what kind of housing is built across the road. If it is as bad as they expect it to be, she said, “we’ll be gone.”