UC Selects Merced Campus : Education: The availability of water is the deciding factor as regents choose Central Valley site. But construction is years away because no funds exist.

SAN FRANCISCO —  In the end, after six complicated years of searching for a site for the next University of California campus, the decision boiled down to a simple issue: water.

Concerned largely about the uncertainty of adequate water supplies at a proposed site in Madera County, the UC Board of Regents voted 14 to 5 Thursday to approve a 2,000-acre parcel in Merced County as the home for the 10th UC campus, which has been dubbed UC San Joaquin.

When the vote was final, a standing-room-only crowd erupted in applause and cheers of “UC Merced! UC Merced!” Repeated warnings from UC officials that there is no money available to build the campus did nothing to dampen those spirits.

“We’re elated. Absolutely elated,” said Kenneth M. Robbins, an attorney and backer of the Merced site. “The Castle Air Force Base has closed. Our unemployment is high. We’re behind the university because we need them as much as they need us.”

The campus would be built on an expanse of grazing land in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Lake Yosemite, about six miles northeast of the city of Merced. The city, with a population of 61,700, is about 50 miles north of Fresno on California 99.

The regents’ decision came after consultants hired by UC said it was uncertain whether agricultural water rights at the Madera County site could be used to supply water to a campus there. Regents said they were also swayed by the fact that the owner of the Merced County site, an educational trust, has already agreed to donate the land.

And then there was the matter of the postcards. Regent Clair W. Burgener of Rancho Santa Fe held up a stack of mail he had received, much of it from backers of the Merced site. “My mailman is vitally concerned about this,” he joked.

Regents William T. Bagley of San Rafael, Glenn Campbell of Stanford and Ward Connerly from Sacramento all credited two third-graders from Merced for their particularly persuasive letters. Student Regent Terrence Wooten, meanwhile, credited divine intervention.

“I got a postcard from God,” he told the board, prompting cheers from the audience. “He told me to vote for UC Merced.”

The new UC campus would eventually serve 20,000 students. Officials estimate that it will cost more than $750 million to construct, at least half of which would have to come from state money. UC President Jack W. Peltason has said he has no intention of beginning to lobby for that money in the near future.

“We have neither the resources nor the plans to start a campus,” he said Thursday, estimating that it would be 10 years before the next campus becomes a “front-burner” issue for UC officials. “We are requesting some additional funds to stabilize the campuses we have. We know it’s not realistic to go asking for the money now.”

During the four hours of presentations that preceded the board’s vote, supporters of the Madera County site had emphasized its proximity to Fresno, the population center of the San Joaquin Valley. They said the Merced site, located more than 50 miles from the Fresno airport, was too remote. And they had pledged that if the regents would just give them the go-ahead, they would arrange to acquire the needed land at no cost to the university.

Merced County boosters, knowing that distance from the urban center could work to their disadvantage, portrayed their site as one that offered UC enormous flexibility. The owner of the land, the Virginia Smith Trust, owns 8,000 additional acres around the site and has promised to work with UC in deciding how and when to develop it.

Bob Carpenter, chairman of the Merced group, offered UC Berkeley as a point of comparison.

“Imagine how much different it’d be today if the university had directed the development of the 10,000 acres surrounding the campus,” he said, adding that a UC campus would build its own community and did not need to rely on existing urban centers.

But more than any other issue, water seemed to grab the regents’ attention. During the public comment period, Jack Schnoor, a Madera County rancher, told the board that he had come to endorse the Merced site because the alternative would “dry up the valley.”

At the Madera County site, he said, “there’s only one source of water: to take it away from agriculture. It will economically kill the area. I can promise all of you that every one of us farmers will certainly be there fighting to make sure the water stays with agriculture.”

In the wake of such comments, Regent Roy T. Brophy seemed to speak for many on the board when he described the Madera County site as simply “too iffy.”

Burgener said: “The real issue here today is which site has the best chance in the long run of becoming a reality. I think without question it’s [Merced].”

It was 1988 when the UC Board of Regents first authorized long-range planning for a 10th campus. Regents had hoped to build three campuses in the northern, southern and central regions. But budget shortfalls forced them to proceed more slowly.

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New UC Campus Site

A site six miles northeast of Merced in the San Joaquin Valley on Thursday was selected as the spot for the University of California’s next campus--the 10th in the UC system. It would eventually serve 20,000 students--although officials acknowledge there is no money to build it or even begin planning for it. The regents picked the Merced site over one in Madera County.