The influential environmental group Solano Land Trust has registered its formal opposition to the California Forever proposal for building a new city in Solano County on some dry farmland east of Fairfield.

The Silicon Valley billionaire-funded project to build a new city out of whole cloth in Solano County has, from the outset, raised the ire and eyebrows of local politicians, as well as the local chapter of the Sierra Club. California Forever, as the city-building project has been called, proposes building homes for up to 400,000 residents on 52,000 acres of undeveloped land, as well as building office and industrial space to create new jobs — though it remains unclear what, if any, industries would want to locate there.

The group also imagines a European-style, walkable, sustainable "city of yesterday," with rowhouse architecture and charming neighborhood plazas.

Solano Land Trust says that it has given "careful consideration" to the proposal, and it now says, "we urge Solano County residents to vote 'NO' on the November ballot measure sponsored by California Forever."

As Nicole Braddock, executive director of Solano Land Trust, tells KPIX that Solano County has been developed with care and consideration, and this plan runs counter to that planning. "This community has been built very clearly with the plan in mind to develop in our cities and protect the space in between our cities for working farms and natural areas," Braddock says. "That is part of the quality of life here and the charm here."

The nearly 40-year-old Solano Land Trust, which oversees and works to permanently preserve over 25,000 acres of open space and agricultural lands in the county, says that the impacts on the county by such a massive development project are not sustainable, and will be "detrimental" in multiple ways.

"The area of land covertly purchased by California Forever is larger than the cities of Fairfield and Vallejo combined," the Trust says in a statement. "The Plan would drastically increase the current population of Solano County. After careful consideration, we reached the informed conclusion that a development of this magnitude will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, farmland, and natural environment. The associated pollution will be harmful to both our community and environmental health."

The Trust adds that the California Forever plan "runs counter to Solano Land Trust’s mission of preserving land and water for current and future generations in Solano County."

The measure brought by California Forever, dubbed the East Solano Homes, Jobs, and Clean Energy Initiative, apparently already has its low bar of 13,500 signatures to qualify for the November ballot, and the push will now be on to convince voters that this cabal of billionaires knows best, and the Solano Land Trust is wrong, about what the county needs. The initiative would grant the project an exemption from the county's 40-year-old Orderly Growth Ordinance — which dictates that all dense development must occur within the boundaries of existing cities — without which it will not be able to move forward, legally.

The group cobbled together its huge swath of land over the last five years, with the help of over $900 million dollars invested so far by the likes of Michael Moritz, Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs.

So far, the the initiative is not polling well, though that may change.

Previously: California Forever Puts Out First TV Ad, Which Is Predictably Short on Specifics