On Thursday, May 1, I attended the special joint meeting of the Tracy City Council and the Parks and Community Services Commission to hear discussion on the proposed location of the Tracy Youth Sports Facility designed to address the current and future needs of the Youth Sports Alliance of Tracy (YSAT.) The discussion was purported to provide a comparison of the possible locations for the park. Sadly, the comparison was hardly equitable as only one site was used as the basis for the development of a Conceptual Site Master Plan.
The two locations in question are the 109-acre site at the corner of 11th and Chrissman, which was originally purchased for this purpose, and the federally owned Antenna Farm on Shulte Road, located right next to the Tracy Biomass Plant, Owens Brockway Glass, and the Tracy Peaker Plant. Given the frequent emissions violations and storage of decaying organic matter by the Biomass plant, and the recent 17-alarm fire at Owens-Brockway due to a furnace melt down, this information alone is enough to indicate that common sense would dictate that the Antenna Farm is not the best place to locate a facility at which children would be playing sports outdoors. But wait - there's more.
It is well known that a dangerous natural gas pipeline dissects the Antenna Farm site that prevented development of the site for the Tracy Learning Center. During the meeting, I learned that not one, but three pipelines traverse this path, a 36-inch natural gas pipeline, a 26-inch natural gas pipeline, and an 18-inch crude oil pipeline. Furthermore, these pipelines run as close to the surface as 3½ feet.
During the meeting, Deputy City Engineer Kul Sharma gave a presentation that included a map of the city displaying underground natural gas pipelines that ran throughout the city. With the exception of a 12-inch pipeline running underneath Byron Highway and an 8-inch pipeline under MacArthur Blvd., all other pipelines depicted on the map were 6 or 4 inches in diameter, including a 6-inch line that 'might' dissect the 11th and Chrissman site. However, the lines on the map depicting these pipelines were not differentiated in proportion to the diameters of the pipelines themselves. Mr. Sharma went on to say that the situations at the two sites were similar.
What a load! How anyone can suggest that the possible presence of a 6-inch diameter pipeline can be similar to the certain combination of a crude oil pipeline with a diameter 3 times that of a 6-inch pipeline and two natural gas pipelines with diameters of over 4 to 6 times that of a 6-inch pipeline is beyond me. Perhaps the similarity Mr. Sharma mentioned was the width of the depicting lines drawn on the map.
Furthermore, no pressure information on these pipelines was provided under the guise of terrorism protection - as if the city of Tracy was a terrorist organization from which Chevron and PG&E (the owners of the pipelines) must be protected. I would suggest rather that the citizens and most notably the children of Tracy should be protected from the city. Even though no information was provided, common sense suggests that the pressures in the larger lines, and therefore the dangers associated with their presence will be far higher.
Newly appointed city staff member Nick Pinhey provided information on environmental impact reviews of the polluting fixed facilities mentioned above, however he failed to include the impact of the mobile diesel vehicles on site at these facilities that actually doubles the negative impact on air quality. Furthermore, he failed to discuss the cumulative effect of these sites in close proximity, that when considered in total fails to fall below the maximum impact allowed by law. He discussed the impact that crop dusting has at the 11th and Chrissman site, but failed to mention that crop dusting also takes place very near the Antenna Farm.
Dr. Pinhey also discussed prevailing wind patterns with respect to the dangerous pollution emissions spewing from the three industrial facilities directly east of the Antenna Farm. As you and I know very well, even though the wind generally blows west to east, there are often times that it blows in the opposite direction. I highly doubt that officials would be motivated to canceling play at a sports facility there on such days.
A discussion of trucking traffic at both of these sites was offered, however it was noted that most of the truck traffic on Shulte is headed to the Summit distribution center and stops short of the Antenna Farm. What was not noted was that most of the traffic destined for Summit is food stuffs and dry products, while the remaining traffic that would travel the Peaker Plant access road that borders the Antenna Farm property would include hazardous materials, that if spilled would present children playing at a sports facility located there with untold dangers.
Over and over I heard uttered by nearly every city council member, city staffer and parks commissioner, that "No place is perfect," and that any site would involve hazards. I concur that this is true, however wouldn't you rather your children play at the safer of the locations? I know I would. None-the-less, unanimous votes approved the application of the purchase of the Antenna Farm property from the Department of the Interior. This was done so that an environmental review can be performed to determine if the Antenna Farm site is good enough. Good enough is not good enough for my children. I want the safest!
Finally, mayor Dan Bilbrey made certain to point out that no official discussion of the sale of the 11th and Chrissman property to developers for the purpose of construction of low-cost housing (only $250K average sale price per low cost home) had occurred. However, one can easily conclude that these officials are more motivated by the prospect of lucrative developer fees that would not be available if the 11th and Chrissman site were used for the original reason for its purchase that occurred roughly ten years ago.