Fresno’s megadevelopment plan a tough sell for rural homeowners. ‘We’ll be pushed out’

Brett Thompson and his family moved out of Clovis eight years ago looking to escape suburban life in search of “a nice little slice of heaven, not in the city.”

The family found what they were looking for a couple miles south of the fast-growing Fresno suburb. They moved into a 1.9-acre farm with plenty of space to keep livestock and grow fruit trees and seasonal vegetables. They often gather outside their home in the evenings, gazing at star-filled skies made visible by the rural darkness.

That way of life, Thompson and his neighbors worry, may soon come to an end.

Thompson’s property falls within a 9,000-acre area where Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer seeks to develop 45,000 homes. The area, which consists of mostly farmland, has long been viewed by the city as ripe for suburban expansion under its Southeast Development Area, or SEDA, plan.

Though its origins date back to 1958, the SEDA plan remained largely theoretical for several decades as the city expanded northward. The Great Recession and Covid-19 pandemic halted prior development efforts before the Dyer administration revived the plan in 2022.

If the SEDA plan comes to fruition, supporters say it would generate housing stock for tens of thousands of new residents, yield millions of dollars in additional local property tax revenue, and facilitate economic growth in the region.

But the plan has drawn intense scrutiny since its revival. Opponents, which include the Fresno Teachers Association and Greenfield Coalition, say the mega-development would drain resources from existing neighborhoods, force school closures in Fresno Unified, and continue the harmful environmental impacts of Fresno’s history of urban sprawl.

Some of SEDA’s toughest opponents, however, are the homeowners scattered throughout the development area who say the plan would deteriorate precious farmland and impose economic hardship on rural households. Some residents who live and farm in the area have organized under the Fresno Southeast Property Owners grassroots group to oppose SEDA in any form.

“To me, if we give them an inch, they’re going to take the 9,000 acres,” Moses Killion, a neighbor of Thompson’s who resides in the SEDA area, said. “That’s what we’re worried about, it’s what a lot of us don’t want.”

The Fresno City Council was scheduled to approve the mega development in December. Instead, Dyer pivoted and asked for direction from the council for a section of the plan he calls South SEDA. It consists of about 1,963 acres, 469 of which would be used to build 4,800 residential units, with the rest for flexible research, located at the bottom portion of the SEDA area.

Dyer proposed requiring that at least 70% of the residential land in South SEDA be built out before allowing development to expand into additional areas within the sphere to address concerns about sprawl. He also floated the possibility of a voter referendum and additional environmental studies before moving outside of South SEDA.

Even if that plan were to pass, development wouldn’t happen in the central area of the plan for at least 30 years, Dyer said. He expects his staff will bring the South SEDA plan back to the council for consideration this summer.

Dyer said SEDA is crucial for Fresno to remain competitive in the housing market and attract good-paying manufacturing jobs.

“We are in a housing crisis, and we’re not building housing fast enough in our city,” Dyer told The Bee in an interview. “We’re starting to lose people who are moving to Madera, people that are building in Clovis, people that are going to Fowler, Sanger, Kerman to build because they’re not necessarily people that want to live in the infill.”

How SEDA could impact rural homeowners

At the top of the Fresno Southeast Property Owners’ concerns about the SEDA plan is the financial burden of connecting rural homes to city utilities.

Currently, residents each have wells on their property, for which they’ve paid the infrastructure, maintenance and electricity to pump water, rather than paying a city water bill.

A rural property owner has five years to connect to the public sewer system when it’s annexed into the city under the Fresno city and county Memorandum of Understanding.

“So now all of that money we’ve put into that, we just have to fill it full of concrete,” Thompson said.

Homeowners are exempt of the mandatory connection requirement if their lot is more than two acres in size, per the Fresno municipal code.

Thompson’s property is 1.91 acres. The city gave him an estimate of $50,000 to connect his home’s water line to the city system. Sewer connection is about the same in terms of cost, meaning Thompson could face a $100,000 investment.

However, Dyer said he does not believe current residents should have to bear those costs. He said he’s in support of creating a community benefit fund that would be used to offset the cost.

With personal wells, water is not metered. Some residents said they could not afford to keep the animals and agriculture they have on metered city water because of the volume it requires.

Thompson said another downside of connecting to city utilities is the quality of water, and that city water reports show the supply contains various chemicals and contaminants, including forever chemicals, or PFAS.

Rural lifestyle and agricultural land threatened, homeowners say

David and Helen Ramming have lived in the SEDA area on a five-acre property since the 1990s, and operate a small fruit stand.

David Ramming is retired from the USDA Agricultural Research Service, where he developed new varieties of peaches, plums and nectarines. The couple worries that if any development happens around their property, they will no longer be able to spray to control pests.

“We’ll be pushed out,” David said. “The city said, no, you’ll never be, pushed out. Well, there’ll be enough complaints that we will have to stop.”

Other farmers who keep animals, such as horses, have similar fears and worry that new nearby residents would complain about flies and the smell of manure.

City planning staff said that as long as current residents follow existing county regulations, they are permitted to keep farm animals, and that the Fresno County Right-to-Farm Ordinance protects local agriculture.

Rural homeowners are also concerned about the loss of agricultural land used for large commercial farms if SEDA is executed.

The area has a large population of Hmong farmers who grow specialty crops that flourish in the soil, Thompson said. The group worries that if the land is developed, the prime farmland will never become productive again.

“This area is the best land in the world,” David said. “The soil types, and with the water that we have, we can grow anything.”

Members of the Fresno Southeast Property Owners are upset that they are ineligible to vote on city elected officials who will decide the future of the plan. The decision is left up to the Fresno mayor and City Council because of a 2006 decision that designated the unincorporated land as the city’s probable future boundary.

What’s next for SEDA?

The City Council chambers overflowed with residents at the Dec. 18 meeting in which council members were scheduled to approve the SEDA plan.

Some members of the Fresno Southeast Property Owners stood out by wearing matching red shirts with “no to SEDA” in bold white letters on the front.

“It’s a statement that many people came out and gave up Christmas or holiday preparation,” Ramming said.

Public comment lasted several hours. Many of those in attendance were part of a coalition made up of around 20 organizations, politicians, residents and neighborhood groups from across Fresno. The coalition has said it would either file a lawsuit or initiate a citywide referendum that would outlaw growth on the land planned for SEDA if the plan moves forward.

In a 5-2 vote, the council sent the plan back to the Dyer administration with a long list of revisions, including new studies on SEDA’s financial viability and environmental impact.

Dyer said he’s been committed to adding infill housing within the city’s limits, but added SEDA is crucial for Fresno’s future economic development.

“Historically, I think developers determined where our growth was going to be in the city versus us, and that’s why we have a lot of sprawl,” Dyer said. “We’re not going to repeat the mistakes of our past, but it doesn’t mean we stop growing. It means we have controlled growth, smart growth, and that’s what we’re trying to do right now.”

While members of Fresno Southeast Property Owners said they left the December City Council meeting encouraged by the large number of people who showed up in opposition to SEDA, they don’t feel as though their concerns are being heard by elected officials.

“The first three words of the Constitution are we the people,” Ramming said. “With a group like that coming out and saying, enough is enough. This is no good. And they’re still pushing it. They’re not listening to people at all.”