Everybody loves Google, but ... Everybody loves Google, but ... (October 07, 2005)

By Lenny Siegel

Everybody loves Google. We use its products every day.

And NASA Ames Research Center isn't far behind. Our community respects its scientific achievements, even as the Bush Administration, in its rush to step on Mars, treats Ames like an unwanted stepchild.

But the partnership between Google and NASA, announced last week, deserves close scrutiny. It could have a significant negative impact on the quality of life in this area.

Google plans to build a corporate campus in the Ames Research Park, located on former Navy property at Moffett Field. In fact, it will replace California universities as the anchor tenant in NASA's redevelopment plan.

By locating its expansion on federal property, Google will avoid community oversight of its plans. NASA has the legal authority to approve development at Moffett. In fact, it already has.

In July 2002, NASA issued a final impact statement for the Ames Development Plan. NASA's consistently competent environmental office found that the proposed development would cause significant, unavoidable impacts. It proposed a series of mitigation actions to reduce those impacts, but they would fall far short of eliminating them. And it brushed aside concerns that it shouldn't build on the buffer habitat it calls the Bay View parcel.

It's too soon to know how much the Google-adapted version of the Ames Development Plan will differ from the original, but in 2002 NASA said its plan would generate over 7,000 new jobs and 3,000 students. Even with planned mitigation, NASA concluded that the development would increase vehicle trips and traffic congestion on nearby freeways, including the already overloaded highways 85, 101 and 237.

In response to criticism that the project would aggravate our area's jobs-housing imbalance -- a fancy term for the housing shortage -- NASA upped the number of proposed housing units in the 2002 plan. There would be 810 dormitory units, 870 apartments, and 250 town-homes, together capable of housing 2,960 employees and students. The planned housing is also supposed to help mitigate the transportation crunch on local and regional freeways. It's better than nothing, but far from adequate, especially since few Google employees are likely to want to live in dormitory rooms.

To top it off, NASA proposed placing the apartments and town-homes in an unsuitable location, the "Bay View parcel," a grassy floodplain between the large wind tunnel and the Moffett wetlands. In partial recognition of the hazards of building on a floodplain -- something we all know about these days -- NASA proposes to bring in fill to raise the Bay View housing area's elevation to 7 feet or more. It calculates it will take 160,000 cubic yards, or 12,300 truckloads, of dirt. NASA is unconcerned that the development will eliminate 23 acres of scarce Bay buffer habitat and degrade much more. According to NASA's own study, several threatened and endangered bird species have been observed at Bay View.

Thus far, public officials and the press have focused on the tax implications of Google building on federal land. That's just one symptom of a more general problem: By expanding on NASA property, Google is exempt from direct local oversight. Cities and other local jurisdictions, as well as the public at large, can comment on development plans, but NASA alone makes the final decisions.

Still, NASA reports to Congress, and Google probably wants to be on good terms with its host community. Local residents can hold them accountable. We can organize, once again, to influence what goes on at Moffett Field. We have been successful in the past.

I'm not against Google building a campus at Moffett Field. But Google and NASA must look beyond the Bay View parcel and the previously proposed dormitories to create suitable housing near the new campus. If, in cooperation with local communities, they can't find ways to avoid the significant environmental impacts that NASA itself has identified, then development plans should be scaled back until they do.
Lenny Siegel is executive director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight and a Mountain View resident.

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