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Allowing the expansion of industrial-scale greenhouses and mushroom farms will harm soil, water and habitat connectivity in Coyote Valley.
On Tuesday, the Santa Clara Valley Board of Supervisors will consider waiving the Coyote Valley Climate Resilience Overlay that imposes a development area cap of one acre per parcel and two acres per parcel where there is an onsite agricultural operation. This overlay currently allows smaller operations to prosper while limiting industrial-scale greenhouse operations and mushroom farms from expanding. Approximately 120 acres in Coyote Valley have already been developed with greenhouse and mushroom farm operations.
Santa Clara County Supervisors should not allow this expanse to increase.
Industrial-scale greenhouses are rarely environmentally benign. These operations are usually built on concrete or gravel pads and are covered with plastic. Large scale greenhouses often use copious amounts of fertilizers, fungicides and other chemicals. To modulate plant growth patterns, some large greenhouse operations are lit at night, adding light pollution to the injury to the environment.
Mushroom farms add the potential of polluting our waterways. Monterey Mushrooms Inc., the largest industry in Coyote Valley, has a history of environmental violations. This includes a 2001 Cleanup and Abatement Order for unauthorized discharges of process-related wastewater to drainage channels and to a percolation pond. In 2018, Monterey Mushrooms was sued by the Santa Clara County District Attorney for intentionally dumping toxic wastewater from its holding ponds into Fisher Creek. In addition, contaminated storm water from compost processing areas was allowed to flow into waterways. District Attorney Jeff Rosen said at the time, “There has to be major accountability for years and years of preventable pollution.” The county had sought $67 million in reparations, but the eventual settlement, in 2020, was for only $2.4 million. Aquatic life in Fisher Creek and downstream may never fully recover.
When allowed to flow into our watersheds, effluents from greenhouses and mushroom production can degrade water quality with nutrients, pathogens and other pollutants. Excess nutrients can lead to conditions that suffocate fish or cause toxic algal blooms. If released to groundwater, nutrients can also harm drinking water supplies. As rainfall patterns become erratic, the likelihood of polluted runoff entering waterways is increasing, as evidently happened in February 2017, when Monterey Mushrooms Inc. pumped 400,000 gallons of polluted water from a pond to Fisher Creek. The discharge contained ammonia more than five times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality criterion intended to protect aquatic life.
The potential for environmental harm by industrial farming effluents — whether released intentionally, by accident or due to extreme storm events — is substantial.
Already, Coyote Valley is fragmented by industrial agricultural operations. A denser mosaic of industrial greenhouses and mushroom farms is not what supporters of protecting Coyote Valley envisioned for the valley’s agricultural and natural landscapes. The expansion of these operations onto fertile land will contribute to the fragmentation of habitat and loss of important soil resources. This type of development is inconsistent with planning for climate change, conservation of land and water resources, the dark sky in the valley and the effort to reduce plastic waste.
The Board of Supervisors should support earth and climate friendly farming in Coyote Valley and deny expansion of new greenhouses and mushroom farms. The board should decline to exempt any new industrial-scale greenhouse or mushroom farm development from the Coyote Valley Climate Resilience combining the district’s development area limitation of two acres.
Shani Kleinhaus is the environmental advocate for the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society.
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