Sewage treatment plant – Extreme northwest end of the property, close behind Brian Way subdivision

Sludge disposal – offsite, land fill or other

Liquid effluent disposal – partially onsite, partially to the Boise River

No word on management practices, hiring criteria, or perpetual funding details for the sewage treatment plant.

Fire – Contracted with Whitney Fire District. One engine onsite.

Schools,

Grade school onsite,
Middle – Offsite, Boise School District
Senior – Offsite, Boise School District

Main Entrance – Roundabout on Warm Springs Avenue near the junction of Warm Springs and Highway 21.

Traffic Generation

Skylines consultant is claiming about 7.5 automobile trips per house per day. According to COMPASS, the average for Ada County is 11.1. For higher income residences, as these will be, the number can be over 13! For Hidden Springs, the only PUC in the area, the number is over 9. It appears that Skyline is preparing to underestimate traffic volumes by 2,100 – 7,500 vehicles per day!

No matter how you view it, the 7.6 trips per house per day currently being suggested by Skyline is a non-starter.

Road Usage – Assumption by Skyline is that about 70 percent of traffic will use Highway 21. About 30 percent will use Warm Springs. I saw no basis for this number.

Question to the sewage and wildlife guys regarding perpetual onsite discharge of waste treatment plant effluent.

Successful farmers know that if you put the same nutrient stream on the same type of plants, on the same patch of ground, long enough, the crop will fail.

When asked how Skyline intended to deal with this problem, the consultant said that he “Did not know.”

Wildlife Habitat

Enhancement – The developer intends to irrigate some of the open space, “for the benefit of wildlife.” Their story is that by growing bigger, better, bushes, they will be able to pack more animals into less space. The result, they claim, is that this method will allow the same number of animals, perhaps more total animals, to winter in the remaining un-built area than do in the current total area.

The 700 acre development will eliminate more than 430 acres of wildlife habitat (350 acres of private land, another 80 acres of federal, and an unknown amount of buffer spaces) land from the most sensitive portion of the Boise Foothills without, so they claim, harming wildlife.

A network of roads and trails further degrades the area. There is no visible accounting for buffer zones in which wildlife are unlikely to present themselves.

One of the areas counted as acreage set aside for wildlife is the main access road! The deer will love that. Perhaps they will put in a passing lane for the antelope.

It occurs to the author that putting the same number of animals on less than half the amount of land more than doubles the number of animals per acre. In other areas such as the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, this has stressed the animals in other ways, such as increased rates of animal to animal disease transmission. There was no indication of how the developer intends to manage issues related to increased animal densities.

The was no indication of how the area set aside for “habitat” will be managed and no indication of how the development would minimize impact to the neighboring BRWMA.

A quick word about the land set aside for “Habitat.” The areas set aside as habitat are almost exclusively the higher, steeper, un-buildable portions of the property.

In the lower, flatter portion of the property, about the only areas set aside for wildlife are the gullies that need to be left open for storm drainage. These latter areas are corridors to nowhere. Each of the “corridors” is very narrow. The one furthest to the south may be as little as 200 feet wide, and therefore effectively none existent from the perspective of nervous prey animals.

Each of these corridors is bordered by, and crisscrossed by, roads and trails. One of the corridors is bordered by the main ingress / egress road which will carry as much as 17,200 vehicles per day. It funnels the animals directly onto the Warm Springs / Highway 21 intersection. This portion of the enhanced habitat will give the wildlife the pleasure of dodging a combined total of about 22,000 cars per day.

By my observations, the curlew and antelope will be eliminated from the area. None will remain. For deer, the effective habitat reduction, after buffer areas, roads, trails, dogs, increased access by unmanaged humans to the most sensitive areas, and other factors are considered, may exceed 80 percent. And, the proximity of up to 4000 unmanaged people as close as a few hundred yards to the Boise River Wildlife Management Area will degrade its ability to provide quality winter habitat as well.

Cultural Issues

Anyone with who possesses even the most rudimentary moral compass could not help but be moved by the stories of the Native Americans that testified at the Boise City Planning and Zoning hearing on the extension of Boise area of impact. Having said that, for Skyline to make their initial presentation regarding this development, and have no mention at all regarding accommodations of the wishes of the tribes is inexcusable.

I will leave you with a few oxymorons. Skyline claims that The Cliffs will be self-contained. However:

It gets its water offsite, from the Boise River.

Electricity, phone, gas, will come from the same sources that serve the rest of the valley, and will therefore come from offsite.

It discharges its waste treatment plant effluent, sludge and some or all water, offsite.

Middle and senior high schools will be, again, offsite.

There will be a fire truck on site, but as everyone in the area knows, when the fall range fires start rolling, a single fire truck is little more than a sacrifice. The real fire protection will be from BLM which is, again, offsite.

In a single breath, Skyline touts the development’s close proximity, and ready access, to major employers and retail centers, but claims Cliff residents will barely use area roads to get to them, because they will shop and work onsite.

The 700-acre development will eliminate more than 430 acres of wildlife habitat (350 acres of private land, another 80 acres of federal, and an unknown amount of buffer space) land from the most sensitive portion of the Boise Foothills without, so they claim, harming wildlife.