California Forever – a company that is heavily-financed by Silicon Valley billionaires – has been working to create a city from scratch in one of the Bay Area’s eastern counties. By collecting more than the required 13,000 signatures, the group is now able to move their development project on to the Solano County’s Board of Supervisors.
The Supes will vote at the end of June; either to adopt the initiative and put it forward to voters in the fall, or to first ask for an assessment report on the impacts the project would have on their region.
The scheme – to create a city for up to 400,000 people on 27 square miles of agricultural land between Travis Air Force Base and the Sacramento River Delta – is already hotly contested. Opposition to the plan comes from conservation groups, as well as some local and federal officials, who see the effort as a secretive and shadowy land grab.
Jan Sramek, founder of California Forever, has covertly, and often anonymously, purchased more than $800 million in farmland in the area. The group has even sued farmers who refused to sell.
The Solano Land Trust, focused on protecting open lands in the county, said in a press release last week that this large-scale development will, “have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment.”
