Madera Cielo Estates opposition grows

Pima County staff is recommending that plans for the 280-home Madera Cielo Estates cluster development about a mile from the mouth of Madera Canyon be redrawn.

The controversial development on a rare swatch of desert grassland just below the canyon is set to go before the Pima County Design Review Committee Thursday.

Senior Planner Dan Signor with Pima County Development Services wrote in a March 8 memo that staff cannot determine if the proposal meets the criteria for a cluster development and recommends continuing the process “to allow time for a new design.”

Signor wrote that issues have been raised about the proposed development’s impact on two-lane Madera Canyon Road—the only way into and out of Madera Canyon—and the three, one-lane bridges on the road.

The memo also cites potential impacts on the regional viewshed—the million-dollar view of the Santa Rita Mountains many homeowners in the Santa Cruz Valley enjoy—and says that many of the lots are located in riparian areas and erosion hazard setbacks.

“Ideally, lots should be located outside these areas,” the memo says.

The current daily use of the two-lane road, about 300 trips per day by the approximately 30 homeowners living in the area and visitors to Madera Canyon, could go up to 3,000 trips a day once the development is built out, according to projections made by the engineering firm working for the developer.

Each vehicle must negotiate three one-lane bridges that range in age from 50 to 80 years.

The Friends of Madera Canyon committee Defenders of the Madera Canyon has ramped up its efforts to educate the public about what its members see as the downside of the proposed development.

The group’s campaign now involves hired lawyers and hydrologists and volunteer engineers, all working to catalogue the development’s potential negative effects on the environmentally sensitive bajada stretching west from the base of the Santa Rita range.

Committee spokesman Luis Calvo said that staff with U.S. Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords, both Arizona Democrats, have contacted him about the project.

About 150 people showed up at the Community Church of Green Valley Saturday morning to hear about the project and what the opposition is doing about it. Members of the Kettenbach family, who have owned the property for 50 years and now want to develop it, did not speak at the meeting.

Naturalist and author Doug Moore said the 1,189 acres in question represent some of the last good examples of desert grasslands, a habitat that has been damaged by over-grazing and development.

Moore said the land is part of a major wildlife corridor and is home to more than 200 types of plants and hundreds of birds and mammals.

“This development would destroy the integrity of the grasslands,” he said.

Also worried about the proposed development are the scientists who work atop Mount Hopkins at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory, who need the dark skies particular to rural areas to do their work.

Dan Brocious, a spokesman for the observatory, said that the development is just five miles from the observatory. That proximity could have a detrimental effect on the work currently being done on the mountain, which primarily involves very faint and faraway objects in space.

Brocious said that the light from one house five miles from the observatory would have the same effect as 149 homes would in Tucson 37 miles away.

Developers have said that they plan to install lighting that meets dark sky requirements.

The opposition is also worried that this project will be something of a “beachhead” for the area, the first of many future developments on the bajada’s patchwork of private and public lands on the bajada that could alter the ecosystem that includes Madera Canyon.

Calvo said opponents plan to show up in force to the DRC meeting, scheduled for Thursday, 1:30 p.m., Pima County Office Building, 201 N. Stone, basement conference room, Tucson.

Tim Hull is a freelance writer