News Subscribe  to Our Newsletter Sign  up for Email Updates CGF  In the News Press  Inquiries Past  Articles Calendar			Promised  Stanford trails long time coming by Brian Schmidt When Stanford received permission from Santa Clara  County in its 2000 General  Use Permit for five million square feet of development, it agreed  to undertake several actions to mitigate the impact from its development.  Among other things, Stanford  committed to develop two trails crossing Stanford lands as shown in  the Countywide Trails Master Plan.  The proposed "S1" trail will roughly parallel  Matadero Creek and Old Page Mill Road. This trail has encountered a series  of problems with Stanford's refusal so far to accept any alignment that  is both acceptable to neighbors and capable of providing real recreational  mitigation for the development Stanford has received.  However bad the situation with the S1 trail may  be, the other trail's situation is even worse. The "C1" trail  should run on the north side of Stanford's property, more or less along  the border with Alpine Road, San Francisquito Creek, and Los Trancos Creek.  The university has proposed that its promised C1 trail would be an already-existing  trail alongside Alpine Road, which Stanford would "develop"  by remodeling the trail. The  Committee for Green Foothills has consistently opposed this flawed concept .  On the most fundamental level, this proposal fails to achieve the central  purpose of the trail that Stanford promised to deliver in 2000: to provide  increased recreational opportunities in order to make up for the strain  that Stanford's five million square feet of new development would cause.  Labeling an existing trail as new mitigation for new impacts is ridiculous.  Expanding the trail as Stanford has proposed does very little to help  its recreational value, and may cause environmental impacts to San Francisquito  and Los Trancos Creeks. And much of this trail lies within San Mateo County.  The Committee and other environmental groups continue  to promote the "community-supported" C1-B trail alignment. The  C1-B alignment runs on Stanford land, unlike much of the Alpine Road trail,  and it is appropriate that Stanford's environmental impacts be mitigated  by a trail on Stanford land. The C1-B alignment also stays within Santa  Clara County, a crucial issue since it is the County that is supervising  Stanford's compliance with the General Use Permit. Finally, the C1-B is  a much superior and safer trail that winds away from road traffic, giving  the public and members of the Stanford community a much better place to  go. The  Committee will continue to work on the C1 and S1 trail alignments  to ensure that the public receives the mitigation they deserve, which  is what Stanford agreed to nearly three years ago. For more information, see our Action  Alert. Published October 2003 in Green  Footnotes. Page last updated November 6, 2003