Residents share concern over Black Mountain plan in San Carlos

The 11.4-acre site was once the location of the Black Mountain Spring Water Company. Parts of that bottling factory, which was active from 1940 to 2000, still sit on the site including an underground tunnel used to harvest water from a natural spring on the eastern end of the property. 

Planning commissioners took up a discussion of the project’s draft environmental review this Tuesday during which residents living in the residential neighborhoods surrounding the site implored the body to take a stringent approach to addressing the project. Many went as far as to ask the commission to flat out deny the proposal. 

“We cannot risk the retaining walls surrounding the Black Mountain property and decide later on who is going to pay. It is too risky based on the aqueducts underneath,” said Tanya O’Malley, a resident of 17 years who compared the proposal to and its risks to the Millennium Tower in San Francisco. The structure is currently sinking as land beneath it has shifted. 

According to the draft environmental impact report, the new construction would cause a number of impacts on air quality, biological resources, the land and wildlife but Steve Noack with PlaceWorks, the firm behind the project’s environmental impact report, said all impacts could be reduced to less than significant through mitigations. 

But residents shared concerns the project, if built, would destabilize the hillside, add strain to existing storm infrastructure currently being tested by recent storms, destroy a treasured piece of largely undisturbed wooded area and cause an increase in noise from both construction and the new tenants. 

Commissioners Janet Castaneda and Ellen Garvey said they’d like to see more information about how recent storms affected existing water channels in the area which they said could be a good gauge of whether the study accurately predicted the capacity of the infrastructure or whether additional studies are needed. 

Noack said the current report uses historic figures to determine capacity and argued worse storms have been experienced in the past but residents noted portions of the city have already flooded due to recent rains. 

Residents also shared concerns the project could lead to mudslides given the amount of land that’s expected to be removed. About 35,000 cubic yards of soil would have to be removed to make way for the new project, Noack said. The developer is also planning to remove 272 of the 384 trees on site, including 159 heritage trees. 

Veev proposes replacing 124 of the removed trees, for a total of 236 on the site. But residents said more should be protected. Given that the trees likely help stabilize the hill, Vice Chair Kristen Clements said she’d also like to know more about the impacts of their removal which wasn’t clearly addressed in the report draft.

Chair Jim Iacaponi called the level of tree removal “fundamentally troublesome,” noting the new trees will likely need decades to grow to the same maturity as existing ones. The city recently updated a new tree protection ordinance with stricter standards for tree replacements but Principal Planner Lisa Costa Sanders said the developer is subject to previous ordinance, which was in place when the proposal was submitted and application was deemed complete. 

“For my part, I don’t feel satisfied with the level of tree replacement,” Iacaponi said. “I just want to register — I’m not delighted with the outcome at all.”

In 2015, city officials sought to preserve the Black Mountain property. The site was made up of three hills totaling 25 acres along Alameda de las Pulgas between Madera Avenue and Melendy Drive, through a $45 million bond measure, Measure V. 

Polling consultants told officials at the time that Measure V was expected to surpass the 66% of the vote needed for approval but the measure ended up falling far short, with only about 39.5% of voters backing the tax. 

“Black Mountain failed to garner the support needed to create a park and it’s really a shame. I think, in hindsight, many of the people who didn’t want to pay for it might change their mind now. I can’t really say. It’s just a guess,” one speaker said during Tuesday’s meeting who identified herself as Sandra. A lifetime resident and representative of the San Carlos Heritage Association, she said, “fought valiantly over the years to try to maintain some tangible sense of history in this town and unfortunately it hasn’t happened as much as we would like it to.” 

The public can continue to submit written public comments on the project until 5 p.m. Jan. 30. Comments can be emailed to Costa Sanders at lcostasanders@cityofsancarlos.org or by mail to 600 Elm St., San Carlos, CA 94070.