As Stanford continues its expansive campus-wide construction project, the University plans to dig up enough dirt to bury the Cardinal football field 140 feet deep.

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Alex Oppenheimer

Construction of a new parking garage is just one part of a plan to make the campus “more dense,” according to Special Projects Program Manager Mark Bonino. If Stanford’s permit request is approved, displaced dirt from subsurface construction will find a new home at a former Christmas tree farm on Sand Hill Road.

If the University has its way, the 8 million cubic feet of excavated dirt is destined for a former Christmas tree farm off Sand Hill Road.

The dumping site was previously leased from Stanford for growing Christmas trees, but the operation closed several years ago and the former farm is now pocked with tree stumps and furrows. After depositing the construction dirt, Stanford would smooth out the area and replant it, said Special Projects Program Manager Mark Bonino.

Bonino explained that Stanford is becoming “more dense,” with more basements and subsurface construction, and the University needs a new site to dump the excess excavated dirt.

Soil from ongoing campus construction, such as the Munger housing complex, is typically handled in a spot market where dirt from one construction project goes to another project that needs fill soil, Bonino said. When buyers cannot be found, the dirt may end up in landfills.

Bonino explained that dumping the dirt on the former tree farm is a much more viable option.

“The spot market can be expensive and volatile, and we would prefer to keep Stanford soil within Stanford for sustainability reasons,” he said.

Camille Leung, project planner for San Mateo County, said the county must review the proposed project’s environmental impact before Stanford gets the go-ahead. Initially, the county decided a full environmental impact report was not needed and drafted a document called a “negative declaration,” detailing 29 ways Stanford could ease the environmental impact of the project. The draft negative declaration spent 30 days under public review, a period during which community members had the opportunity to express concerns regarding the project.

“The comments indicated that additional analysis is necessary,” Leung said, explaining that the next step is either a revised negative declaration or a full environmental impact report. The final step in the process is a permit hearing, which will occur sometime after the end of this year.

Not all of Stanford’s neighbors are happy about the proposed soil dump. Portola Valley town planner George Mader detailed his concerns in a letter to the San Mateo County planning commission. Moving 300,000 cubic yards of dirt will take 15,000 to 30,000 round trips by large trucks or trailers, Mader wrote, and the increased traffic could endanger cyclists on Sand Hill Road’s popular biking loop.

Philippe Cohen, administrative director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, also expressed his ecological concerns about the project. Cohen said the proposed dirt dump could create an opportunity for non-native species to enter the preserve, which is just downhill of the dump site.

Cohen said his concerns were taken into consideration in the former tree farm’s re-vegetation proposal, drafted by Campus Biologist Alan Launer. Since the dirt dumped on the former farm should be “biologically clean,” it could be re-seeded with native plants, Cohen explained.

“If it’s done right,” he said, “they might end up with better native habitat than they started with.”