A plan to develop more than 2,500 acres of pasture and open space along East Cypress Road into more than 5,000 homes cleared its final environmental hurdle last week.

On March 10 the Oakley City Council unanimously approved the final environmental impact report (EIR) for the East Cypress Corridor Specific Plan. The plan will urbanize a mostly rural area on both sides of East Cypress Road between Jersey Island Road, Dutch Slough, Sandmound Boulevard and Rock Slough.

In what might be the largest development in the history of East County, the plan includes more than 5,200 housing units, 121 acres of shopping centers, two elementary schools and one middle school, 153 acres of man-made lakes, 190 acres of open space, 122 acres of wetlands/dunes, 6 acres of light-industrial businesses,112 acres of levees, 102 acres of parks, 37 acres of commercial recreation and a 6-acre beach club.

A large portion of the project will consist of Shea Homes’ 1,330-house Summer Lakes development, which has opened its first phase of more than 100 houses at East Cypress and Bethel Island roads.

The East Cypress area previously had been approved by county officials for piecemeal development. But after Oakley incorporated as a city nearly 10 years ago, city officials annexed much of the area and took control of the planning to produce a more comprehensive development plan.

The plan hit a major road bump two years ago when the environmental group Greenbelt Alliance sued to stop it. A judge ruled in favor of the city but said that the EIR needed to be revised to deal with the development’s reduction of agricultural land and air quality.

The final EIR lists a variety of ways to limit the air pollution, such as banning wood-burning fireplaces in houses and providing electrical outlets for recharging electric and hybrid vehicles. The city’s response to the loss of farmland is that the project is inside the county’s urban limit line, which reduces pressure to develop the land outside that line.

Members of the Greenbelt Alliance did not attend last week’s public hearing and no one spoke against the development plan.

Community Development Director Rebecca Willis listed the benefits that the plan will provide, including protecting fish and wildlife, improving water quality in the Delta, improving public safety for Delta islands, preparing for rising sea levels, providing housing, improving and constructing levees and providing $70 million for road construction. “We do feel that this project is good for Oakley, the Delta and the region,” she said.

The council members were elated to be surmounting the plan’s environmental hurdle.

“This is something I’ve been working on since the very beginning,” said Councilwoman Pat Anderson. “Before we became a city, the county had planned this area for a lot of plotted development (with) no plan of how they fit together. We have made the plan a much better process.

“I’m very, very proud of the time and the effort that staff has taken. I’m very, very proud of the (EIR) document, and I wholeheartedly believe that we should move forward. Although it probably won’t happen in a long time, it will be an amazingly well-planned area, with developers that will know what’s expected and will all work together to make a community, not just individual neighborhoods.”

Councilman Jim Frazier said to Willis, “Thank you for the exhaustive efforts. You have dotted all of the I’s and crossed all of the T’s. This will probably be a 25-to-30-year project. I’m glad that after 10 years it’s finally here.”