ADA COUNTY — An all too familiar fight in the Treasure Valley as people push to preserve farm land and open space is playing out in a beloved valley nestled between Eagle and Hidden Springs.
Home to farmers, agriculture and wildlife, the Dry Creek Valley off Highway 55 will soon be home to a huge subdivision.
Ada County Commissioners approved the project last year and on Thursday they gave developers the green light to start building homes. Starting with 96 homes - and building in phases - 1,400 acres in the Dry Creek Valley will become the Dry Creek Ranch subdivision.
The plan is to build 1,800 homes in total and developers say about one-third of the property will remain open space. But those who have been fighting tooth and nail over the last year to stop development would rather see the whole area stay farm land and foothills.
"This valley is so precious, it's been precious to me since I was a child and rode through here. I think a lot of us feel anguish; this is like horrendous for us to see. This is just the most incredible agricultural land," Dry Creek Rural Neighborhood Association President Leslie Nona said.
"I am a rural neighbor and I represent many of my neighbors, and there is tremendous concern on many levels about this type of development which is not in keeping with the rest of the Dry Creek Valley. One of our biggest concerns is what can this aquifer sustain?"
It's a fight by many who love and live in the valley to preserve what is disappearing: peace, tranquility, open space where you can hear birds chirping and watch wildlife like elk and deer migrate in the winter.
"I became familiar with Dry Creek Valley working as a farmhand at a local farm in this area for four seasons. So during that time I really fell in love with the area and really saw firsthand all it had to offer," Dry Creek Valley Coalition organizer Stephanie Rael said. "It's very peaceful, it feels like you're kind of nestled in the foothills. It's quiet; you can hear the birds and bees in the summertime and it's a really beautiful place."
"It's going to completely change the character of this entire valley. So it really makes me sad to see it," Rael added.
Boise Hunter Homes owner Travis Hunter says the subdivision is an infill project between Highway 55 and Hidden Springs and the north end of Eagle.
"Really, we think it's going to be a wonderful place to live," Hunter said. "It's a mix of farmland and foothills and really that's every single piece of undeveloped ground in Ada County. You go out into farmland and people say preserve the farmland, you go to the foothills and the entire community is in an uproar. It's really typical of what's surrounding this growing city we live in."
The 'Save Dry Creek' coalition banded together to protest, opposing the project at public meetings over the last year and a half.
"What these people fail to recognize is we're truly building most sustainable planned community in the state," Hunter told KTVB.
They are going to produce their own water on site - water historically used by farming operations on that site.
"These people hope things never change, that growth never happens. We're doing it in the best way - in a way that we think is the most sustainable you can do it," Hunter added.
Some neighbors disagree.
"There is no guarantee the aquifer can support this amount of developer which is going to be huge drain on aquifer," Nona added. "When you talk about infringement on private property rights, absolutely it's going to infringe on us rural neighbors."
Boise Hunter Homes bought the land from another developer who had entitlements to build more than 3,000 homes there. Developers didn't feel that fit the rural nature and wanted to create an open and less dense, equestrian, "farm to table" community.
"When we went to go purchase it we felt like the entitlements it currently had were not really fit for the area, the surrounding demand, and what fits well in that setting. So we dramatically reduced the impacts this project were having. And we dramatically changed it for the better," Hunter told KTVB.
Streets, sidewalks and utilities are in place and up to par, so Ada County Commissioners gave developers the OK to start putting up frames and foundations by approving the final plat for the first phase of the development.
Through the county's public process, though, members of the coalition feel they've been silenced.
"[The commissioners] felt their hands were tied, there was nothing they could do to reject this development or deny it. To me that means the public hearing process, we really as citizens were deprived of our chance to have a real say about the development if they had their minds made up prior to the public hearing," Rael said.
"The public hearing process has happened and these people have been the antis of the project - they were involved with extensive public hearings. And then afterwards they were even granted the chance to go stop this project by pursuing a referendum if they gathered enough signatures to get on the ballot. But they fell short," Hunter told KTVB. "Now they claim they're being silenced. They didn't get their way, they had their chance, they didn't accomplish what they needed to accomplish."
The opposition tried stopping the development by making it a referendum on the November ballot but fell short and didn't gather the 40,000 signatures needed.
Though Dry Creek Ranch is now a reality, its critics will continue their crusade and stay vocal.
"I understand places grow and change and we are definitely not against growth or development at all. We feel like there's a smart way to go about it and a responsible way and I believe that the community is an integral part of that process," Rael said.
"The demand is here, the people are coming, so if you're not building houses you're going to price everybody out of the market. It's really a natural path of growth," Hunter added.
A note: As of July 1, Idaho law doesn't allow planning and zoning issues to come up on voters' ballots through a referendum. Dry Creek wasn't subject to that law because the coalition started collecting signatures before then.