766 Homes Delayed By Salamander Cleared By Officials

The first fruits of the conservation strategy for the tiger salamander and endangered plants approved in December are being harvested as federal regulators have signed off on 11 southwest Santa Rosa housing projects that have been waiting for approval for nearly four years.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which regulates protected species, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates the wetlands the salamander breeds in, have reached agreement on the habitat mitigation guidelines in the strategy for those projects totaling 766 homes. Those projects already have salamander mitigation credits issued by the state Department of Fish & Game.

"This demonstrates that the Feds are very serious about the conservation strategy for the listed species, and they do not want to be an impediment to homebuilding," said Carolyn Wasem, a consultant for several builders and property owners who helped start the conservation strategy effort. "The service is ready to move forward on the interim guidelines of the strategy, regardless of progress from local governments."

Those interim guidelines include ratios for how much acreage of habitat for the salamander must be purchased or created based on proximity to known breeding ponds. Sonoma County, Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park and Cotati are developing guidelines for how they will process project applications in salamander areas, working toward a goal of a one-stop entity for project applications.

The next step will be City Council approval of the Southwest Santa Rosa environmental impact report, which covers those 11 projects and 18 others, totaling 1,400 homes and apartments. It is expected to go before the council next month. All the projects are subject to the city's allocation of the number of homes that can be built each year.

One of the 10 homebuilders preparing to build this spring is Walnut Creek-based Ryder Homes, according to Vice President of Development David Bradley. It's been five years since Ryder completed phase nine of the Bellevue Ranch subdivision in southwest Santa Rosa, six years since applying to build 39 homes in phase six at 2773 Dutton Meadow Road and a year and a half since having more than $1 million worth of mitigation credits in hand for the California tiger salamander.

Ryder is one of the lucky ones in having such credits, because none that are federally approved are currently available. When top local wildlife service official Wayne Wright, who retired in February, told a meeting of the Sonoma County Alliance a year and a half ago that the Wright Preservation Bank in west Santa Rosa had state Fish & Game Department-approved salamander credits for sale, Ryder, Cobblestone Homes and a few other builders at that meeting bought up the available credits in one day.

Fish & Game-approved credits were $25,000 an acre at that time. Now, the going rate for Fish & Wildlife-approved salamander credits, set to be available soon from the Hale mitigation bank and a few others in progress, is $120,000 an acre.

Ryder plans to have the first phase six homes, ranging in size from 1,400 to 1,800 square feet, ready for sale by the beginning of fall. Pricing will be market-rate, which was $546,000 for a median-priced home in Sonoma County in March, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

The cost of salamander mitigation for phase six added nearly $26,000 to the cost of each home, plus another few thousand dollars per house for entitlements and carrying costs for the land, he said.

Cobblestone has salamander and wetland mitigation credits for three southwest Santa Rosa affordable-housing projects, which have been stalled for three years by the federal listing of the salamander, according to Frank Denney, vice president of operations.

"The area is starting to free up," he said.