![]() But at the end of the night, one city planner said there may not be a need for more meetings after the fall. If East Palo Alto wants more, they can drill wells, which they’re trying to do right now, or ask other cities like Mountain View or Palo Alto to sell their extra water.Īt a planning meeting a few months ago, it’s no surprise that water was on the agenda. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) only gets a fixed amount of water from Hetch Hetchy and its other reservoirs, an average of 265 million gallons a year, and it divides that water between San Francisco and other Bay Area cities. If those are commercial projects, people will be using the restrooms and using water in general,” Martinez says. “If those are housing units, more people would be taking showers. Construction requires water, which is why East Palo Alto officials halted new development and put the 11 existing projects on hold. Back then, it seemed sufficient, but it’s become an issue as the city’s grown. Per-person, it works out to just over the minimum someone needs to survive. When it left San Mateo county it took with it a really small water allocation, about two million gallons a day. He says maybe East Palo Alto didn’t plan ahead enough, especially around water. “Well they have to start paying for their car insurance and for their rent and for their food and their transportation and insurance and so forth.” “They said, ‘I want to be independent, and chart my own future,’” he says. Martinez likens it to a teenager leaving home for the first time. “Most of the undesirable uses in San Mateo County landed in East Palo Alto: the hazardous recycling waste plant, most of the auto dismantlers,” says Carlos Martinez, the East Palo Alto City Manager.Įast Palo Alto decided to incorporate so they could clean up that mess. The problem goes back to the early 80s, when East Palo Alto was an unincorporated pocket of San Mateo county, with a lot of problems. They can start digging the wells so you can get water.” Grant wonders how the city got into this situation in the first place. “I don’t care where you get it from, they can buy water. So this year, when East Palo Alto imposed a moratorium on development because it didn’t have enough water, she was mad. “That’s how every city survives, with developers coming in,” she says. She saw tech companies move in, and Ikea. Volunteer Millicent Grant’s been here longer, and she’s seen a lot of changes over the years. The senior center has been here since the early 80s, before East Palo Alto even incorporated as a city. Inside, a group of women sit in a circle, dancing in their chairs. Right down the block from the construction site is the East Palo Alto Senior Center. ![]() But it doesn’t, and the major hold up may surprise you. The new Sobrato development on the corner of Donohoe and University in East Palo Alto.Ī handful projects are ready to go, so the rest of East Palo Alto should sound like a city under construction.
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