Bay Area Barn and Trails :: San Mateo County News

Skyline Stables Hoping to get Back in the Saddle at New Digs
The nonprofit Skyline Stables, evicted last year from its hillside home of 60 years to make way for a crucial upgrade to a water treatment plant, is hoping to find greener pastures in a nearby location.

Supporters are salvaging the last of their equipment from the 13 acres they had leased from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission as the agency prepares for construction in March on major improvements at the adjacent Harry Tracy Water Treatment Plant.

Meanwhile, supporters of the stables are working on permits to build anew on another plot of commission- owned land in Millbrae. They hope to re-create the low-cost, member-supported model that attracted generations of equestrian enthusiasts.

“We really are determined to rebuild and really hope that we can build a new facility that will basically cost the same for the people to keep their horses there,” said Christine Hanson, president of the stables board. Hanson declined to disclose where in Millbrae the new location is.

The move of the stables is for a four-year, $250 million project that SFPUC officials say will bring long-needed fixes for the only treatment operation for Crystal Springs Reservoir and San Andreas Lake. The reservoirs make up the emergency water supply for thousands of San Francisco and San Mateo County residents if the main Hetch Hetchy supply is cut off due to maintenance or an earthquake.

The commission awarded last week a construction contract to Kiewit Infrastructure West of Fairfield for the upgrades, which include a new water reservoir, replacing pipeline segments and installing a new back-up generator. Throughout construction, the facility will still operate around the clock, making it a “tremendously complex project,” said spokeswoman Alison Kastama.

Under a settlement approved in November, just before Skyline’s remaining 30 horses had to leave for good, the commission also agreed to pay the stables $650,000 for ending the lease before its 2014 expiration. For the rebuild, the group will draw on its reserve funds, as well as fundraising drives during a phased construction process.

Horse history
Skyline Stables has pieced together a history of the stables based on interviews with the early stable users, family photos and other publications.

Late 1940s: Jimmy Dunn and Johnny Cocanaugher move their stable a half-mile south to San Francisco Water Department land, becoming what would be Skyline Stables
1951: Third barn completed, though most horses lived on the hillside pasture
1950s: Silver Spurs Riding Club for children was founded; it survived until the 1980s
1969: Road leading to the future filtration plant widened and paved
Early 1970s: San Andreas Filtration Plant built and begins treating water
1992: Treatment plant expanded
1994: Plant renamed Harry Tracy Water Treatment Plant

Millbrae Horses Face Eviction
Skyline Stables to be bulldozed as early as October 15 to make way for a new San Francisco treated water reservoir. Link to full article: MillbraePatch
September 17, 2010

Horse Owners Face Loss of Millbrae Stables
Cassie Brown is 5 years old. She sat on her first horse at six months. She's at Skyline Stables three days a week, saddling up in the barn her mother owns and her grandmother owned before her.
By October, there probably won't be a Skyline Stables. The horses will likely be gone. The barns will probably be bulldozed to make way for an 11 million-gallon water storage tank proposed by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which owns the land and the barns at the stables.

Many horse owners at Skyline Stables say they understand that the SFPUC needs to build a more stable drinking water tank for the Harry Tracy water treatment plant, which cleans the water in Crystal Springs Reservoir before sending it up through the Peninsula to San Francisco. The current water storage tanks are on a San Andreas fault line and need to be moved several hundred feet northwest of where they are now.

Horse owners just want the SFPUC to relocate their stables elsewhere on San Francisco's expansive property in San Mateo County. They say it's only fair, considering the SFPUC's proposal would break its lease with them, which guarantees them boarding rights through 2014.
"I think they'd just like to compensate us and see us leave," said Chris Hanson, president of the Skyline Stables board, a nonprofit organization that horse owners formed in 2000.

Horse lovers across the Peninsula have been buzzing about the controversy, which could leave the SFPUC's public relations arm with a black eye even as the agency tries to accommodate the needs of potentially displaced horse owners. The SFPUC says nothing is decided yet, and it has invited the public to a Planning Commission hearing Thursday afternoon at San Francisco City Hall.

Many of the horse boarders who have been at Skyline Stables for a decade or more are already trying to move their horses to another facility — but where? The draft environmental impact report lists at least 18 horse boarding facilities within 35 miles of Skyline Stables, while making the argument that the impact of moving 40 horses to new stables would be "insignificant" from a public recreation standpoint.
But horse owners say they've called all those facilities and most of them are full with a waiting list. Skyline Stables, the last stables in Millbrae, costs only $120 per month to board and feed each horse. Comparable services at other stables in San Mateo County are at least $400, and in some cases top $1,000 per month.
"This is a poor man's operation. We don't own no big companies and all that kind of stuff. It's working people, keeping horses," said Steve Flahavan of Burlingame, who has kept horses at Skyline Stables for more than 25 years.

Horse owners say losing Skyline Stables would be just another blow to the Peninsula's steadily disappearing equestrian community. Stables and ranches have given way to subdivisions since the 1940s as horse trails were lost under paved-over highways.
Skyline Stables' roots go back to 1943, when the Capuchino Land Company signed the parcel over to San Francisco. Local equestrian families continued to build a series of red wood-sided barns on the property, and the two parties coexisted in peaceful partnership for decades. As many as 61 horses filled Skyline Stables by 1977, the era during which the SFPUC built much of the modern infrastructure at the Harry Tracy water plant.

Now horse owners access the barns behind a high-security fence topped with circular barbed wire. Other than a small arena, the pastureland they once used to exercise their horses is gone.
Boarders with as much history as Flahavan remember a time when you could ride all the way from Huddart Park in Woodside to San Bruno's Junipero Serra Park without breaking stride — back when Tanforan was a racetrack, not a shopping mall.

"You could ride from Colma to Golden Gate Park, right down John Daly Drive," recalled Flahavan.
SFPUC spokeswoman Maureen Barry said the agency was hoping that planned upgrades at the water plant would not affect the stables, but the plan changed dramatically when geologists discovered the San Andreas hairline fault.

"We had to see what we were going to do to reinforce this facility," Barry said. "We only have two water treatment facilities in the whole system, and it's critical to customers."

The SFPUC's real estate director has been working with the horse owners to find another site for the stables, but Barry says that boarding horses on any portion of the agency's watershed property holdings is out due to environmental concerns. And building another set of barns for them may be impossible due to limits on approved uses of public funds for SFPUC projects.
"There are several restrictions on our watershed lands that tie our hands in what we can do," Barry said.
The SFPUC has reportedly offered to reimburse the Skyline Stables community for the remainder of their lease, but the equestrians want a new home to replace the one their horses may lose this fall.
By Julia Scott, San Mateo County Times
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15066986?nclick_check=1

*To view the environmental impact report, go to http://mea.sfplanning.org and look under the SFPUC"s CEQA Project for a file named Harry Tracy Water Treatment Plant Long-Term Improvements Project.

Equestrian Trail Riders Action Committee
ETRAC's mission is to promote creation and maintenance of a comprehensive, regional trail system for equestrian trail riders on the San Francisco Peninsula.
www.etrac-equestrian.com/home

Coastside Horse Council
Founded in 1999, the Coastside Horse Council (CHC) is an advocacy group dedicated to protecting the equestrian lifestyle for the benefit and enjoyment of the general public and to preserving, enhancing and creating equestrian trails, facilities, staging areas and related open space areas.

The CHC was originally formed to work with San Mateo County to develop a Confined Animal Ordinance. In partnership with the County and local environmentalists, we were able to create an ordinance that is fair and equitable to commercial stables and private horse owners, while protecting the sensitive watersheds.

The CHC represents horse owners on the San Mateo County Coast who rely on it as a conduit for information and an advocate for the equestrian community.
www.coastsidehorse.org/

Looking over Montara Beach

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