Green before it was ‘in’: Santa Clara banks land

ACRES FOR ENERGY USES: GEOTHERMAL, WIND TURBINES

Trivia question: Which South Bay city lays claim to more land outside its city limits than inside?

The answer: Santa Clara, which owns about 12,586 acres throughout the East Bay hills and Sierra Nevada. That’s slightly larger than the entire city footprint, from the tip of Highway 237 to the foot of Valley Fair, from Calabazas Creek in Sunnyvale to Mineta San Jose International Airport.


Spurred by the oil crisis of three decades ago, the city in the late 1970s and early 1980s snapped up that outside land. In doing so, it became among the region’s first to explore what’s only recently become a cause celebre for cities big and small: Going green.

“It’s become popular, hasn’t it?” said Don Von Raesfeld, Santa Clara’s city manager at the time, chuckling about the city’s unusual buying spree. By planning a chain of wind, water and steam plants on land that otherwise would go undeveloped, the city hoped to protect customers of its hometown power company from massive rate hikes.

“The oil embargoes were starting and the prices were starting to shoot up, so we said, ‘Shoot, if we develop our own resources and become independent from rising prices, maybe we could grab ahold of our own destiny,’ ” said John Roukema, acting director of city-owned Silicon Valley Power.

San Jose Mercury News