One of the biggest concerns about the proposed Metcalf power plant is its proximity to suburban housing in the area. To see how close it might be, I rode my bike down Monterey Highway along Tulare Hill and made notes of the odometer readings. I came up with the following measurements (in miles):

0.0 Last house on the east side of Monterey Highway
0.2 Last house on the west side of Monterey Highway
0.4 Metcalf Road
0.5 Middle of a valley in the east side of Tulare Hill
0.8 Creek crossing under Monterey Highway. The edge of Tulare Hills
meets the railroad tracks here. This is the closest possible location to
build on the valley floor.
1.1 Traffic light on Monterey Highway before the Coyote Bait shop.
1.2 Road to Coyote Ranch, roughly the end of Tulare Hill, the farthest point to build at the base of the hill, though this is far west of Monterey Highway.

My guess is that the plant will be over 0.6 miles from the nearest house in the suburbs, in straight-line distance. Whether this is too close depends on what this proximity means in terms of noise, air and water pollution, danger from accidents, and visual pollution. I can't answer the first 3 concerns, but I can check the last.

So, the next concern is whether the plant can be seen from the local neighborhood. The question is over sight lines. That's much harder to evaluate without knowing the site plan for the power plant. Using the "Topo!" topographic map program. I drew a line from the end of the last street on the west side of Monterey Highway to a point the same distance from the railroad tracks at the other end of Tulare Hill and measured the distances and heights of the following:

0 mi. 264' End of street.
0.18 mi 354' High point of 1st hill
0.30 mi 276' Middle of small valley
0.43 mi 368' High point of 2nd hill
0.58 mi 239' Point where hill hits valley floor

Along this line, the plant would have to be over 129' high to be as high as the 2nd hill. Even if it were this high, it would not be visible from the nearby neighborhood on the west side because of the angle of the sight line close to the hill. (The plant will be 145' high). The first hill is very steep and effectively blocks the view along the line. The plant would have to be thousands of feet high to be seen from this close to Tulare Hill. The farther away you are along this sight line, the shallower the angle, and the lower the plant would need to be to be visible. Since Tulare Hill falls steeply on the east side, the farther east the plant is, the more visible it will be. The farther west, the less visible. The high point of Tulare Hill is 565'.

I did a similar plot from the east side of Monterey Highway:
0.00 mi 242' Last house on east side of Monterey Highway (est.)
0.15 mi 314' High point of 1st hill
0.35 mi 263' Low point of small valley
0.43 mi 322' High point of 2nd hill
0.70 mi 233' End of hill

>From this angle, the plant would only have to be 89 feet to be as high as the 2nd hill along this line, but again, because of the angle of the sight line, it would not be visible. The first hill blocks the line of sight the closer you are to the hill.

So the next question is, how far away would you have to be to see it? Assuming the plant is 145' high and is located 0.14 miles from the end of Tulare Hill, right next to the railroad tracks, it would be visible from 0.17 miles away from the end of the neighborhood on the east of Monterey Highway, right along the Coyote Creek Trail. Conclusion: the plant might be visible in the neighborhood east of Monterey Highway, but just barely.

On the other hand, the plant would probably be visible from Monterey Highway, Hwy 101, the Coyote Creek Trail south of Metcalf, Parkway Lakes, "downtown" Coyote, parts of the proposed Cisco Site, Encinal School, and most of the Coyote Valley, all the way to Morgan Hill. It might be visible from parts of the Basking Ridge neighborhood.

Ron Horii