UC Merced Hits Environmental Barrier

The political leaders rushing to build a 10th University of California campus north of Merced have been forced to slow down and reconsider the plans because of concerns about the survival of fragile wetlands and an endangered creature called the fairy shrimp.

Complaints have increased in recent weeks among federal regulators, university faculty and students that the 2,000-acre UC Merced campus could devastate California’s largest remaining cluster of vernal pools. Each spring, these shallow ponds teem with tiny crustaceans on the brink of extinction.

Gov. Gray Davis responded this week with a $44-million proposal to keep the campus on track by preserving 60,000 nearby acres of open space and seasonal wetlands in the Central Valley foothills.

The governor’s conservation plan, to be outlined to the public today, would more than make up for any property degraded in the building of a new campus and leave plenty of habitat for the fairy shrimp and its cousin, the tadpole shrimp, say UC officials and boosters in the San Joaquin Valley.

But federal environmental regulators said that before they grant permits to fill in wetlands and eliminate rare species, they will put the university through a rigorous review that is expected to last three to five years.

UC officials must start by reexamining a dozen or more possible locations for the campus, to find which alternative would create the least environmental damage.

That means the governor’s plan to sacrifice some wetlands for broader regional conservation may not help university officials clear their first federal environmental hurdle--at least not right away.

“The idea of the Clean Water Act is not to allow people to just buy their way out of these protections,” one key federal regulator said in response to the Davis proposal.

Even some UC planners who had hoped to open the first buildings by 2004 now concede that delays are likely. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials predicted that UC will be able to keep the new university site in the pastoral setting near Merced, but probably by reconfiguring or reducing the planned campus community of 32,000 residents.

“I’ve joked that we may have to build the whole thing on stilts,” said one university advisor.

Although much of the Central Valley’s civic and political elite is aligned with the project, a cadre of environmentalists has joined forces seeking to minimize damage to 7,000 vernal pools that dot the campus site and surrounding lands.

“The bottom line is: I don’t think that the site can survive the environmental review,” said Steve Burke, a Central Valley activist. “The natural resources have to be protected. If we have to go to court to do that, so be it.”

UC President Richard C. Atkinson said the university stands by its selection. The Merced site was chosen over dozens of others after eight years of study and environmental reviews.

“Despite all the concerns, we think this is the right place,” Atkinson said Wednesday. “The campus will be at Merced. I don’t think there is any question about that.”

The San Joaquin Valley has long lobbied for its own UC campus, arguing that the economically struggling area is the most populous region without one.

UC administrators say they need the new campus to absorb part of a tidal wave of 714,000 extra students expected to flood California’s colleges and universities by 2010. As now planned, UC Merced would enroll only 1,000 students by its opening and 6,000 by 2010.

It was five years ago today that the UC Board of Regents selected the site near man-made Lake Yosemite in the rolling pasture land six miles northeast of Merced.

Few environmental critics surfaced at the time. They would later say that construction seemed far off, or unlikely to occur at all.

But the state’s improving economy, its continued population boom and a galvanized political hierarchy have made the project much more likely. When Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante from the Central Valley controlled state purse strings as Assembly speaker, he set up a special committee to propel the campus forward.

Davis, while courting voters in the region, realized the project’s popularity and made delivering the campus a campaign pledge. Most recently, he has promised to open the campus a year ahead of schedule, in 2004. A “red team” of Cabinet officers has been assigned to speed the project along.

Even Vice President Al Gore got behind UC Merced. In a campaign swing through the Central Valley a year ago, he vowed to help cut red tape.

The flurry of activity roused environmentalists. In March, 29 biologists and other academics from UC Berkeley wrote a letter expressing concern about the potential destruction of “arguably one of the more important habitats left in the entire state in terms of endemic biological diversity.”

A UC Davis scientist has arranged a workshop next month to quiz administrators about the potential damage. Rick Grosberg, an evolutionary biologist, said he was initially skeptical about the site’s environmental value.

“But then I went there, and it is just a staggering place,” he said. “On a clear day you can see 80 to 100 miles right up to Badger Pass and Yosemite Valley. There is nothing but rolling hills; no power lines, no road cuts, just vernal pools and grazing land.”

Thousands of depressions mottle the parcel. The lowlands fill with water in winter and spring, exploding with wildflowers and tiny life forms. The vernal pool tadpole shrimp and conservancy fairy shrimp are on the federal endangered species list.

Critics see a bitter irony in those creatures being threatened by a project that university officials tout as a model for “living lightly on the land.” A Sierra Nevada Research Institute at the campus is one day supposed to study the valley’s ecology.

“This is a place that bills itself as the environmental campus, but they are starting out by fragmenting this very fragile ecosystem that is the best of its kind,” said Carla D’Antonio, a UC Berkeley biologist.

The university’s preliminary drawings outlined a campus on hillsides relatively free of the seasonal pools. But maps also showed an adjoining community of 2,000 or 3,000 acres intruding substantially into federally protected wetlands.

In order to build on that land, the university must obtain a permit under the Clean Water Act, proving that the property is the “least environmentally damaging” of the possible sites for the campus.

That means UC planners may have to compare their site with some they rejected earlier, including an urban Fresno tract and range land not covered with wetlands.

One key federal regulator said it will be “very difficult” for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees wetlands, to rule that the Merced location is the least environmentally harmful. “I don’t think we have room in our regulations for that,” said the regulator, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

UC officials have said some of those comparisons are not justified. They contend, for example, that the Fresno site is not big enough for a campus and that other locations do not have an adequate water supply.

UC planners are also exploring construction of the campus and community elsewhere within the 10,300-acre plot outside Merced.

The Virginia Smith Trust has promised to hand over 2,000 acres for free. In turn, it hopes to generate money for its college scholarship program by building on the surrounding acreage. Operators of the trust--created by a daughter of one of Merced’s early families--have not said how they would respond if less of their property could be developed.

Davis and UC Merced allies hope to trump such concerns, however, by protecting an expanse of grasslands in eastern Merced County.

The governor recommended this week that the Legislature give $30 million to the state Wildlife Conservation Board to buy the development rights on about 60,000 acres of adjacent grazing lands. He asked for $13.8 million more for the state Department of Fish and Game to help develop a habitat conservation plan that would satisfy federal, state and local environmental requirements.

Davis also recommended $5 million to accelerate the working drawings of the first two campus structures: a $72-million science and engineering building and a $55-million library and information technology building.

Campus supporters have said the conservation money will for the first time compensate for grassland losses that long preceded the UC plan. Merced County has lost an average of 3,000 acres of vernal pool pasture each year for a decade, according to one survey.

“We will take 3,000 acres at full build-out over the next 20 years and preserve 60,000 acres in perpetuity,” said UC Merced Chancellor Carol Tomlinson-Keasey. “It’s a huge environmental win.”

At least one environmental group likes the idea of broader conservation. “This money is going to protect a whole bunch of vernal pools, and we think that is a really good thing,” said Steve Johnson of the Nature Conservancy.

Campus boosters say environmental hurdles are inevitable at any location and must be overcome.

“If we cannot resolve these issues,” Bustamante said, “it will be two decades before another university in the San Joaquin Valley will be built.”

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UC Merced Plan

The University of California wants to build a 2,000-acre campus 6 miles north of Merced. There could eventually be a nearby community of 32,000 people.

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