Ground Truth · 266 Acres South of Town

Sixteen dispatches make up this record. The first eleven set down what the public documents say; the last five let you see the ground itself. Start anywhere — but if you read only one, read the chronicle.

I · In the record

What the documents say

The Chronicle · 266 Acres South of Town The full documentary history, from Masonite’s wood-treatment plant to the 605-unit Esmeralda village now proposed for the parcel. groundtruth.watch/chronicle.html
Telling the Ground Truth A plain-language telling for the neighbors of what the record actually means. groundtruth.watch/telling.html
Sources & Documents Every public record the chronicle rests on, with notes on where each one lives. groundtruth.watch/sources.html
The Public Record Every comment on the 2009 Alexander Valley Resort EIR, paraphrased into plain language with the City’s responses kept verbatim. groundtruth.watch/comments.html
We Asked the Binder Plain answers to the questions a neighbor actually asks, drawn from the documentary record. groundtruth.watch/faqanda.html
Write to City Hall A builder that turns what you care about into a letter to the City, in your own words, ready to send. groundtruth.watch/write.html
The Monitoring Record Six views of the groundwater data the state collected for about two decades—then stopped: the sampling timeline, the exceedances, how deep it sits, and what the closure left unmeasured. groundtruth.watch/record.html
The Oak Tree A response to the June 2026 San Francisco Chronicle profile of the project—what the piece didn’t ask, answered from the regulatory record. groundtruth.watch/oaktree.html
The Scale of It 605 homes and 200 hotel rooms, set against every other residential project in Cloverdale’s modern planning record. groundtruth.watch/scale.html
The Environmental Review One EIR, certified in 2009. Two addenda since. A third now sought for a far larger project—read across, side by side. groundtruth.watch/review.html
The Site Dossier A documented timeline of the wood-treatment and sawmill site, built entirely from public records. groundtruth.watch/history.html

II · On the ground

What the parcel shows

The Wells An interactive map of the 45 monitoring wells, their contamination readings, and the two destroyed weeks before the case closed. groundtruth.watch/destroyed.html
A View from Above Historical aerials of the parcel set against the 2026 Esmeralda site plan, year by year. groundtruth.watch/viewing.html
Molalla / Masonite Mill, 1965 A single annotated aerial of the plant at work, marking the ground the 2013 covenant now restricts. groundtruth.watch/underfoot.html
Cloverdale, 2018 / 2024 A side-by-side wipe of USDA imagery six years apart, the do-nothing baseline the proposal is measured against. groundtruth.watch/status-quo.html
About Construction Dust An interactive wind model of how contaminated dust can drift off-site during Phase 1 grading. groundtruth.watch/dust.html