Letters pour into Army Corps on Benson project

Does it offer relief to a stressed community and county where businesses are closing and jobs being lost regularly? Or does it spell doom for a fragile ecosystem, a globally recognized river and hundreds of bird species that depend on it?

These opinions and many more just as passionate — and many others loaded with technical and economic detail — have found their way to the Army Corps of Engineers in nearly 60 letters and emails in the past two months. The Corps is considering whether to revisit a federal permit it granted back in 2006 to what’s now known as Villages of Vigneto.

The Vigneto project, covering 12,300 acres, would straddle Arizona 90 in an area south of Interstate 10 and north of Kartchner Caverns State Park. It’s planned by the Phoenix-based El Dorado Holdings Inc. Requests for reconsideration or revocation of the 2006 Corps’ permit have come from the Tucson Audubon Society, the Sierra Club’s Phoenix-based Grand Canyon Chapter and the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

Correspondence opposing the project, and favoring reconsideration of the permit, outnumbered those that supported Vigneto and opposed permit reconsideration by a 2-1 ratio. But it’s impossible to say how that difference translates to numbers of persons on either side. That’s because some letters on both sides were from chambers of commerce, economic development groups and environmental groups representing hundreds if not thousands of people or more.

Here is a sampling of comments on both sides. The Star obtained the letters from the Corps under the federal Freedom of Information Act. The Corps redacted names of private individuals who wrote letters under a legal exemption aimed at protecting individual privacy rights.

Pro

• The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association wrote on July 2 that the project could potentially bring the community $20 billion in economic benefits due to increased property and sales tax revenue, and a higher demand for goods and services. The project is expected to create 16,000 new jobs over 20 years and 8,500 jobs permanently, said the letter from SAHBA’s

• Shawn Cote

• . The developer has commissioned an economic analysis that predicts many such benefits, but it hasn’t been publicly released.
• The Vigneto project continues the historic “rich amalgam of cultures, societies and traditions” that came together over the centuries in Southeast Arizona along the San Pedro, Gila and San Francisco Rivers, wrote the nonprofit Western Heritage Cultural Center, based in Benson.

“We have looked at this project from the environmental, social and historical viewpoints and have found this project to be one that celebrates and seeks to preserve the culture and unique lifestyle” in Cochise County, wrote George Scott, who is both a center board member and executive director of the Southeast Arizona Economic Development Group.

Far from damaging the San Pedro River’s ecology as opponents have predicted, this project will ease the river’s continued erosion and siltation since the developer must manage storm runoff by building large flood control detention basins, Scott wrote.

• Cochise County had the biggest population loss of any Arizona County last year, wrote the Benson/San Pedro Valley Chamber of Commerce.

“We are the gateway to Cochise County, and this project will not only help our economy, but build up our county’s population as a whole,” wrote Deborah Kilpatrick, the chamber’s operations manager. “The originally approved plan of approximately 60,000 homes offered nothing in this way. It was just houses. The plan that El Dorado Holdings proposes includes quite a few features that offer necessary infrastructure needed to maintain the population that this project will bring.”

Con

• “Unfortunately, just like the illusionary and mythical Spanish El Dorado, this development is not real nor realistic,” wrote a family whose name was redacted. “We have lived in the area, the high desert, for the last 11 years, and have come to understand how fragile this area is.

“Everyone wants a piece of the American Dream. We all know that this development and the Whetstone Ranch are planned to be bedroom communities of Tucson, offering low home prices and more lot space. Nothing wrong with this dream except it will turn into a nightmare if the size of it does somehow happen. There is not enough water to substantiate this much development. Look at California. Their over-development has caused the dire situation they are in.”

• The Lower San Pedro River watershed has provided a “default repository” for mitigation of damages done by other development projects in the growth areas of Arizona, wrote the Lower San Pedro Watershed Alliance, a group including 95 landowners and 100 supporting individuals and nonprofit group representatives, on June 12.

“It is imperative that these mitigation designations, which were made in good faith by federal agencies, as well as over a half-million acres of other conservation investments and currently sustainable working landscapes in the watershed be taken very seriously in any planning effort for a new development, wrote Peter Else, chairman of the alliance. “The Vigneto development is planned to consume over ten times the water currently used by the town of Benson.”

• “When I first read about the proposed Villages at Vigneto development, my response was probably the same as all of yours: “What?” really “What?’” wrote a Hereford biologist whose name was redacted on June 12. “27,760 homes in the desert ... with golf courses, vineyards and orchards? Seventy thousand new residents? What twisted reality do these people inhabit?

“Reality check: There are at least 14 rivers flowing through Tuscany, the land Villages at Vigneto is modeled after. They’re fed by upwards of 40 inches of rain per year. Go to Benson now and look at the San Pedro River. It’s a sandy wash, not a lush teat to be sucked by 70,000 new residents.”