Fresno on Brink of a ‘Land War’ Over Growth : Cities: Draft of general plan envisions 1 million residents, reflecting power of building industry. Critics condemn proposal that would gobble up water and farms, even the raisin crop.

The future of California’s heartland was unveiled the other night--a bold blueprint for growth torn right from the pages of postwar Los Angeles.

It envisions a Fresno with 1 million people and paving over 16,000 acres of farmland in the next 25 years, raising the possibility of no more raisins in Raisin City.

But there is one small hitch: Fresno sits on an aquifer tainted with pesticides, a legacy of its farming past. Supplying clean water to new suburbanites won’t be easy or cheap, especially in a city that is already losing tens of millions of dollars each year because of poorly planned growth.

“This city is in bad shape,” said Joani Johnson, a member of the citizens committee offering advice on the general plan. “The costs of water and sewer and other services for these million people are going to be astronomical. It has the potential to bankrupt us.”

That Fresno would put forward a general plan hostile to its economic health speaks to the power of the building industry, critics say. And they came out in force Tuesday to lodge their protest at City Hall, dragging along their horses, cows and goats to remind politicians of their rural roots.

They won a victory of sorts when Mayor Jim Patterson conceded that the draft plan did not adequately address their concerns and would need to be overhauled before moving forward. But in rejecting the draft, Patterson emphasized that the basic tenet of growth will not change.

Fresno will continue to gobble up farmland and water as it pursues an expansionist path. “This city will continue to move outward,” he said in an interview. “It has to.”

Patterson argues that Fresno, one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities with 400,000 residents, has benefited economically from 15 years of housing and commercial boom on its fringe. Even as it faces rising infrastructure costs, the city needs to become more builder-friendly, not less, he says.

But the city’s own budget figures belie his optimism. Since 1980, according to official reports, yearly revenues attributable to new development have risen $56 million, while the yearly cost of servicing the growth has gone up $123 million. In other words, for every dollar that growth brings to Fresno, more than $2 are spent to accommodate the growth.

The Building Industry Assn. of the San Joaquin Valley argues that these figures do not tell the whole story. In a region where the unemployment rate hovers at 14% and 15%, construction jobs are vital.

Housing is not “another industry to be evaluated strictly on the basis of being revenue positive or negative to government,” said Jeff Harris of the building association. “The building industry . . . employs thousands of professionals who are consumers in the local economy.”

On Tuesday night, more than 200 citizens packed the council chambers carrying signs that read “Horses, Not Houses” and “For Once Say No!” One man scanned the map of the general plan on display and located his back yard. It was a huge high school. Not even the head of the citizens committee who unveiled the draft plan downplayed the economic, social and environmental costs.

“There will be major, major, major impact on the area,” said William Patnaude, an architect.

One flaw of the plan, according to Patnaude, was a directive from the City Council last year that growth be confined to the northeast and southeast sections of the city. The ostensible reason was that the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, which has an annexation and tax-sharing agreement with the city, mandated such a constraint.

But others say the real reason growth was pushed into the northeast and southeast is that major developers, who happen to be big contributors to the mayor and City Council, own or have options to buy vast tracts in these areas.

“This thing was stacked in the favor of big developers from the beginning,” said Ivan Evans, a member of the general plan committee. Evans said more than half of the committee came from the building and real estate industry.

During two hours of public debate, the specter of a crime- and smog-ridden Southern California that only 40 years ago boasted the world’s richest farm economy was never far away.

“I lived in the San Fernando Valley for 28 years before I was forced to leave because of uncontrolled, massive growth,” said Dennis Clement, a retired Los Angeles police officer and firefighter who moved to rural Fresno four years ago. “Now it seems that nightmare is about to descend on this valley.”

Under the plan, northeast Fresno would be annexed and transformed from the least urbanized to one of the most urbanized sectors. Planners agree that this region between the San Joaquin River and the foothills is one of the most environmentally sensitive in the valley. And it has nowhere near the ground water or sewage capacity to support the envisioned growth.

In sending the plan back to the committee, Mayor Patterson said he shared a great deal of their concerns. “We are on the verge, on the brink, of what amounts to a land war.”

Patterson believes that the plan can be modified to the satisfaction of rural residents and developers and that the infrastructure costs will not bankrupt the city. The head of the plan committee isn’t so sure. “There is going to be a huge battle on this thing,” Patnaude said. “And someone is going to have to lose.”

The biggest loser could be the farm economy. No one is talking about modifying plans for paving over thousands of acres of vineyards and orchards in southeast Fresno--land that accounts for $42.2 million in gross revenues. Almost 5,000 acres of raisin grapes, the last of the crop within city limits, would vanish.

‘The fiscal impact of this plan will be devastating,” said Liz Scott-Graham of the American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates the preservation of farmland. “It will destroy the most productive part of the economy--farmland--and replace it with houses that just take money out.”