Mandella Garden Update & Action Alert

Greetings,

On Tuesday, March 30th, CADA (the Capital Area Development Authority) will
have a public meeting at its offices on 1522 14th street at 9am to certify
the Environmental Impact report for the Ron Mandella Community Garden. The
final EIR is available to the public at the CADA offices. As far as I know,
it is free. Call CADA at 322-2114 and ask to get a copy of the EIR before
the meeting.

Please consider sending in comments on the EIR and attending the public
meeting, especially if you have a science-based background or are at all
familiar with the environmental review process.  This is the Mandella
garden's last hope and we need all the community support we can muster.

Here is some background about the garden and the environmental review
process...


The Mandella Community Garden was the oldest (32 years), only organic
community garden in downtown Sac...Probably, you know the story of this
garden and if not, you can go to http://www.savethegarden.org to get more of a
background. City council voted against preserving this unique cultural
resource, but the garden community has continued to try and save it. The
Capital Area Development Authority, the joint powers agency responsible for
managing the land, tried to circumvent the CEQA process by asking city
council to grant them an exemption from doing in EIR in December 2002. City
council granted them this exemption. The garden board sued CADA over this
and won. The judge ordered CADA to do an EIR (an environmental impact
report), which would assess the environmental impacts on the community from
developing the garden. In September  and November 2002, trace amounts of
toxins were found in the garden soil - normal for any urban garden. The
county recommended that CADA restrict access to the garden until a human
health risk assesment was done. CADA immediately locked out the gardeners -
in late November 2002. We have yet to see a copy of the HHRA.

In fall 2003 CADA hired a firm to draft an EIR and had the obligatory public
meeting, where the public was allowed to turn in written and oral comments
about the EIR.
Many garden members opposed the narrow scope of the draft. The draft said
the EIR would focus on air quality issues, hazardous materials, and traffic.
The public said that the EIR needed to consider 1) breakup of an existing
community 2) a conflict with applicable plans and policies 3) degeneration
of the visual aesthetics of the neighborhood and 4) damage to the existing
plant and animal life.

In regards to number four, the public said a survey of the existing plant
and animal life was needed. Apparently, the final EIR states that such a
survey of plant and animal life is now impossible because so much of the
garden has been removed.

Well, CADA was the agency that removed the garden!!! They scraped most of it
bare in early fall, 2003. They did so under the pretext of soil remediation.
In other words, they "cleaned up" the trace amounts of toxins in the soil by
removing the garden! There was no reason for them to "remediate" the soil so
quickly. The garden had been locked for about a year. No one was allowed in.
No one was touching the soil. They could have - and should have! - waited
until the EIR was certified to remove the dirt. This is how they got around
surveying plant and animal life in the garden.

Also, CADA as an agency is supposed to implement the Capital Area Plan. That
plan has three objectives: 1)Housing 2) Open Space 3) Community development.

Developing the garden conflicts with applicable plans and policies because
it goes against the Capital Area Plan - CADA's own raison d'etre! However,
the EIR does not adress this at all...

Most important of all to bring up is why the garden needs to be developed.
All of the alternative methods of environmental mitigation proposed in the
draft EIR stated the garden should not be developed. CADA's development
could have been done on the state parking lot adjacent to the garden and
within the same block. CADA is required by the Capital Area Plan to develop
that block, 14th and 15th, P & Q. But the requirement on CADA is only for 40
or 50 units (I can't remember the exact number right now) but I know it has
been proved through design proposals that the number could have fit well on
the parking lot next to the garden. Now the development CADA favors is up to
119 units, which will heavily impact the density of that neighborhood.

These are just some of the points you can bring up at the meeting or in
submitted written comments. After reading the EIR, you probably will have
your own opinions and matters of conscience you would like to communicate.

Please get involved. I firmly believe this is both an environmental and
social justic issue. The garden was used by many downtown residents who
lived in apartments that didn't afford them fat lawns to grow their own
food. It was also used by working mothers and senior citizens who felt that
the garden was their most direct connection to nature, who couldn't "drive
out of the city" to regional, state, or national parks.

There is tons of information I could share on this issue, but there is a
good chance many of you are familiar with it by now. Please email me and i
will try and answer any and all questions or give you the number of
additional garden board members who could help. We all appreciate any effort
put into this last -ditch effort.

Peace, Maria








"The persistent want of satisfaction is directly and complexly related to
the disassociation of ourselves and all our goods from our own and their
histories. If things do not last, are not made to last, they can have no
histories, and we who use these things can have no memories."

Wendell Berry from
"The Whole Horse: The Preservation of the Agrarian Mind."