A coalition of environmental groups attended a Newark City Council meeting on Oct. 23 to turn in a petition against the proposed Mowry Village housing project.
The groups included Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge and Greenbelt Alliance.
They showed up with two large banners of petition signatures, displaying the amount of support they are receiving to protect Bay Area wetlands.
The Mowry Village project is a housing proposal planned to be built at a Pick-n-Pull, next to a part of Newark called “Newark Area 4.” That region consists of over 500 acres of wetlands and is part of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. According to the petition, the wetlands are a flood buffer to protect Newark and nearby cities from flooding.
“We think the better long-term solution is to restore all of that land, to protect the remainder of Newark and Fremont from climate change impacts of sea level rise, groundwater rise coming up to the surface, flashier storms that are coming down both of those creek channels and overtopping the banks in those areas,” said Jana Sokale from the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge.
Organizers said they received 2,755 signatures so far. Seven hundred seventy seven of the signatures are from Newark residents and 888 signatures are from Union City and Fremont, with the rest from other Bay Area cities. Signatures were collected in-person. The petition signatures were emailed to each city councilmember.
“A lot of people were confused as to why the city would want to build on the outskirts of town where infrastructure for a housing development doesn’t exist,” said one organizer and Newark resident of 21 years, “when there are locations within Newark that make much more sense for development, such as the land around Newpark Mall. There is also worry about increased traffic, since this development is not near transit, and there is only one main road in and out.”
An organizer from Greenbelt Alliance said, “With the majority of the project designated as single-family housing, it fails to imagine how we can concretely tackle the region’s housing crisis. And even worse, the developers have chosen acres of land that should be restored as wetland preserves.”
Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge organizers said in an email they are anticipating the city council to approve or deny the project during a council meeting on Nov. 13.
For more information on Newark wetlands, visit savenewarkwetlands.org.
