EVANS RANCH ALERT FOR RENO RESIDENTS:
We wanted to alert you to concerns about the environmental and recreational impacts of the proposed Evans Ranch development on Reno residents who care about wildlife, public lands, outdoor recreation, and the environmental impacts of sprawl. Evans Ranch is a huge development of 5,556 homes that has been proposed for the area between Red Rock Road and Petersen Mountain, which is currently only zoned for 40 homes. If approved by City Council, this high-density development will have many negative effects on our community:
* The Evans Ranch property borders BLM on the west, and is near the beautiful Petersen Mountain Natural Area. If built as planned, the project will negatively impact wildlife, including the local herd of pronghorn and the Washoe-Lassen mule deer herd that winters there and uses a critical spring that is part of the property. Although the City’s proposal acknowledges the likely negative effects on wildlife, the proposal for Evans Ranch does not include a specific plan for how these negative impacts will be reduced. And when 15,000 people are added to this remote valley, all the nearby public lands which are so great for hiking, bicycling, horseback riding, and wildlife viewing will suffer immensely.
* The density of the proposed Evans Ranch development will change our quality of life forever. The development will have a major impact not only on recreational opportunities and on wildlife, but will produce 1.6 million gallons of sewage per day, will use more than 625 acre feet of water per year, and will add to light pollution. Although Evans Ranch is so large as to be a project of “Regional Significance,” the proposal includes no construction management plan, no adequate traffic study, no specific plan for where the water will come from or even where the effluent water will be pumped out to.
* In the form it is proposed, Evans Ranch is an example of the sort of unchecked growth and urban sprawl that threatens to ruin our way of life in the Truckee Meadows. It does not depend on principles of contiguous urban planning, instead leapfrogging open land to put dense urban developments in rural areas. It increases not only the volume of traffic but the distance it travels, and does so without adequate plans for the expansion of infrastructure. It is made possible only by unsustainable water importation schemes that ignore the environmental realities of local aquifers and watersheds as real limits on growth in the Reno area.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: PLEASE take a moment to tell the Reno City Council that you are concerned about the impact of Evans Ranch, and that you oppose the plan. If you would like to attend the hearing at which this will be decided, please join us at City Hall, 1. East 1st Street, at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 9. Or, you can email Lynnette Jones, Reno City Clerk, at jonesl@ci.reno.nv.us or send a letter to the City Clerk at PO Box 7, Reno, NV 89504. PLEASE SEND YOUR EMAILS AND LETTERS BY FRIDAY, APRIL 4! Your note to City Council can be very short, and can just say that you have concerns and so you oppose the Evans Ranch proposal.
TIME IS VERY SHORT! PLEASE HELP PROTECT WILDLIFE, OPEN SPACE, AND WATER RESOURCES BY ATTENDING THE HEARING ON APRIL 9 AT 6:00 P.M. OR BY WRITING TO THE RENO CITY COUNCIL TO OPPOSE EVANS RANCH.
I am a native Nevadan, living in Oregon for 31 years now. Tonight I felt homesick for wild open spaces so searched for blogs about Reno, and came across this site.
How sad it makes me to think of Evans Ranch in danger of being tilled and cemented over for development. How grateful I am that there are organizations such as yours that keep truth and activism alive in such cases.
The Reno City Council wouldn’t pay any attention to my comments, me not being a voter there. But please know that I will be thinking strongly of you all as you fight against the insane notion of putting over 5,000 homes on this perfect place, thereby ruining it forever.
Hi Melladee,
Thanks for your comments. Let me encourage you to send in a quick email; volume counts, and a quick personal statement like the one in this post can be a drop in a river of comments. Keep coming back to the site for more trip reports and the like! Cheers
[...] but think that when citizens look up at areas like that and then consider weather they want the City / County to limit development they think, “what’s the point? It’s just road warriors tearing shit up out there [...]
[...] Here’s an action item (and beautiful pictures!) for Reno Residents from the Weethumpers: Update on Petersen Mountain/Evans Ranch Development [...]
Dear Reno City Council,
As a native born Nevadan, seeing the destruction of available land for the profit of home-builders and construction companies greatly saddens me. I was born here in Reno and grew up enjoying the land for many uses like hiking, riding my horses and dirtbikes/quads or just for its aesthetic appeal.
I also am concerned not only for the loss of recreation but also the negative environmental effects this development will create. This development will create sewage, people, traffic, it will use water and give light pollution. Living in Reno means we live in a valley, and as an asthma sufferer I am very aware that if the right mixture of elements are not present then pollution will settle in the valley, adding 5556 homes will intensify this.
Adding 5556 homes will also destroy some of what little land is left to the wildlife. Deer, rabbits, bears, wild horses, coyotes etc are already wandering through neighborhoods due to lack of food and land. Think about all the reported sightings these past few years and realise the increase. These animals are suffering and need what room they have left to continue to live.
Another thing is the housing market, yes it will get better but Reno for the most part is a transition town, people come here gamble and leave within a matter of a few years. The home developments that have been built already arent even filled, some developments that were in progress have been stopped. This Evans Ranch is unnecessary and poses some real dangers to Reno’s humans and surrounding wildlife.
I will be VERY dissapointed if this project is approved and am requesting its denial.
Thankyou,
Courtney Burke
Owner
Peavine Services
574 Gentry Way
Reno, NV 89502
Dear habitualbipedalist,
Here’s what I sent on 4-5. Hope it wasn’t too late.
Ms. Lynette Jones
Reno City Clerk
Reno, Nevada
Dear Ms. Jones:
I passionately oppose the proposed Evans Ranch Development. Kindly add my email comments to those to be delivered to the Reno City Council at its scheduled hearing on April 9, 2008. As a native Nevadan born in Reno and raised in Steamboat, my love for Nevada’s wild places contains the intensity of heart-and-memory. I hiked the hills, camped on horseback in the Sierras, skied the slopes, flew kites at Rattlesnake Mountain, swam in Tahoe and Pyramid, rafted the Truckee, toured ghost towns, and mines, and museums, slept under the stars in the Black Rock Desert (years before “Burning Man”), and saw these in their wild and free habitat: coyotes, wild horses, snakes, and owls.
Not every American can have memories like the ones I’ve described above. I urge you to reject the proposed Evans Ranch Development that would add as many as 15,000 residents to this remote valley. That many people generating 1.6 million gallons of sewage per day in and of itself totally negates any of them ever having memories like mine. What kind of quality of living would this be for proposed new residents, let alone for the people of Reno whose way of life would be destroyed? Certainly not the kind that would allow for the kinds of memories that I have of growing up there!
Leave it alone, please, for the wildlife that need and deserve our respect for their right to live. Leave it alone for the vegetation that holds the soil. Leave it alone for space. Leave it alone for quiet. Leave it alone for future generations to know places like Petersen Mountain.
I now live in Oregon and cannot be there to attend the hearing, but I care deeply about the outcome of this case.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Melladee Makelacy
510 Norway Ave.
Silverton, Oregon 97381
The Nevada gold crew will be at the meeting Hope to see all of you there strength comes in numbers we cant let these mountains be taken away from us. Some people with the NGC have growen up out there, with there families still living there where here to help win this fight.
The RGJ provides a pretty disheartening report from last night’s meeting, to read please look in the Daily Weethump column above or follow this link: http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080410/NEWS05/804100381/1388&GID=2xOi6eVHed2IOwetKXyNA7U3BCujKYpwNl+FRWL525U%3D
Thank you everyone for their letters of opposition to this 5,000+ new home development and a bigger thanks to those who came to the meeting last night. I did not stay the entire time, but for those who did THANK YOU! The City Council obviously has a serious lack of leadership when they see little problem in allowing 3 homes per acre 18 miles from downtown.
We’ll continue to follow this project and keep you posted on the impacts and actions we can continue to take to Petersen wild.
Missed the meeting but sent an email to the Reno City Council last week in opposition of this rezoning proposal. Anything to keep up the momemtum for those who would rather see Petersen as a place where the wild things roam.
I think this is very disheartening to me. I live in the complete back of Red Rock and its already hard just to get to my high school. The morning comute is ugly and with the housing development it will only just get worse. The Peterson Mountain area should be left alone. I really dont think that this area is the right place for Evans Ranch. My papa told me about this and Im writing an article for my english class on it and things. There is the possiblity of me sending this into RGJ to have it published. I didnt hear about this until today. I heard about it on the news last night but I wasnt much paying attention so I thought it was about the Teen Ranch coming up in Bedell Flatt (which I think is also quit pitiful of Reno to do. Uncool to the families living out here and dims the prospect of selling properties since not many properties are being sold already). Definently hope for tides to turn and for the city to decide upon renigging the plans. (and think…if a 16 year old like I am is against this than people should listen more and think harder on changing things cos that means there’s more people in the next generation agreeing with me)
Better late than never I guess but I just now found your post here. I too am opposed to the proposed development of Evans ranch near Petersen Mountain. To shove that many people into the area would certainly be a disaster for the Petersen Mountain Natural Area!
When I first saw the natural area on my maps, I could not understand why such a small area would have the designation. It simply didn’t make sense to me. If an area is to be set aside for wildlife habitat, it always needs to be large enough to accomplish the task. Even though Evans Ranch was private property, that space should have been purchased by the BLM and included in the plan. The “County Highway” (dirt road! but on the map) could have remained as an access point.
My last trips to Petersen were a couple of months ago and there was still quite a bit of snow on the ground. Little evidence of recent Mule Deer activity but it did seem to have the possibility of providing good feed and cover during the limited migrations during spring and fall.
I will certainly support all opposition to the Evans Ranch development.
Al