Great Oaks Water Company, a privately owned utility, has received permission from the California Public Utilities Commission to deliver water to another 50 homes in the South Almaden Valley Urban Reserve.

The water company filed the request on Jan. 7. Of the 50 homes listed, 31 actually requested service after the company began petitioning reserve residents late last year to sign up. The other 19 homes did not object to being included.

"Some want help with backup fire protection; others just need service," said Robert Moore, director of construction for Great Oaks. "We already have water lines in the area, a few hundred feet from Schillingsburg [Avenue]."

But the city of San Jose and the Local Agency Formation Commission are protesting the approval on the grounds that extending water service will be growth-inducing, even though neither has authority over the PUC or its decisions.

LAFCO is a state-mandated local agency that regulates how and when cities can push their boundaries into open-space areas like the urban reserve. It exists to limit urban sprawl in favor of regulated development.

The agency will send a letter to PUC saying that extending Great Oaks' service area would amount to allowing urban-scale service delivery outside the city limits. Although the Local Agency Formation Commission has no authority over a private water company's service boundaries, Neelima Palacherla, its executive officer, said she hopes that the PUC takes its concerns seriously. Palacherla said the Great Oaks service extension doesn't follow either the agency's or Santa Clara County General Plan's policies. The agency made similar arguments when asking that the city of San Jose not approve the environmental impact report for the proposed McKean Road sports complex in December.

Piecemeal development

Concerns about growth inducement hinge on the triggers set for development of the urban reserve. Until those triggers--which include criteria like housing and the number of jobs in the area--are met, urban-scale development is not supposed to take place.

But Great Oaks said that it's the county's job to control growth and that laying new pipe for existing residents would not lead to any new building in the reserve.

"I don't see how we can induce growth; the county has to issue permits for any development out there," Moore said.

However, the county argues it is also responsible for planning development when the triggers are met. Piecemeal development--such as first water service to five or six homes, then adding 50 homes a few years later--is what the plan is supposed to prevent.

The agency argues that extending water pipes will change sites that were formerly supposed to be self-sustaining to sites that now have greater resources to justify development.

"[Moore] is correct in that the county has land-use authority in the area and is responsible for issuing development permits. But ... the area is unincorporated and is outside San Jose's urban service area. The county general plan does not allow extension of urban level of services to such areas," Palacherla said.

She explained that under current land-use and zoning policies, new development has to be self-sustaining by using on-site resources such as wells. "With the extension of piped water, the type and scale of development is no longer limited by the availability of on-site services. Larger homes could be built and additional uses could be added that were originally not feasible due to lack of water," Palacherla said.

Those "additional uses" are what the agency points to as potentially growth inducing.

Regardless, the PUC had already approved the extension by the time officials at the agency and the city of San Jose got wind of the request.

Now Great Oaks just needs to arrange financing and pipe-laying, Moore said. "Financing: that's the biggest one. When we'd actually be putting pipe in the ground--I would hate to even guess."

Pipes to sports fields?

The San Jose Unified School District also requested service on Nov. 22 for 20720 McKean Road, the site proposed for a 20-acre private youth sports complex. However, Great Oaks did not include the district among its prospective clients when applying for approval.

Moore said that it's likely the company will run a water main down there in the future. But since the site does not need immediate service, he said, the school district's request was left off the list submitted to PUC.

Many homes that were listed--along Schillingsburg and San Vincente avenues--border the sports complex site.

Water supply has been one of the issues at the heart of the controversy over the multimillion-dollar sports complex. According to the EIR, the groundwater supply at the site may not be able to support the proposed 20-acre sports complex without potentially damaging water supply to residents of the urban reserve, most of whom rely on well water drawn from the same pool of groundwater to maintain ranches, orchards and homes.

Agendas from the city's biweekly meetings between the Almaden Youth Association--a private nonprofit that plans to run the sports complex--and city staff in February 2004 indicate that former District 10 Councilwoman and sports complex proponent Pat Dando was meeting with Great Oaks representatives but revealed no other details.

Upon leaving office in December, Dando purged District 10 records; therefore, there is no record of her discussions with Great Oaks regarding the sports complex.

Moore was unable to clarify what Dando had discussed with company representatives in regards to the sports complex.

The sports field project came under scrutiny because of its cost to San Jose taxpayers. The total amount of taxpayer money invested in the private sports complex is more than $2 million to date, mostly from District 10 funds.

That amount is now rising. A law firm representing opponents of the project filed a lawsuit on Jan. 13 against the city, the youth association and the school district, asking that the certification of the McKean Road Sports Complex EIR be overturned.