The fate of a possible gas station moratorium in Manteca is before the City Council on Tuesday.

There are six options on the table.

*A temporary moratorium being put in place on an urgency basis via a temporary ordinance.

*Modifying zoning conditions requiring enhanced buffering improvements and longer distances from residential areas to address noise/lighting concerns and such.

*Requiring all gas stations to secure conditional use permits meaning they must be approved by elected leaders before they can proceed.

*Changing the general plan by adding measures that would effectively discourage the building of new gas stations.

*A combination of the five previous strategies done under a deliberate phase in.

Manteca currently has 33 gas stations with another five entitled and four others in the approval process.

Whatever measures the City Council takes won’t impact those 42 including the fueling station connected with the Super Walmart complex being pursued on the northwest corner of Atherton Drive and South Main Street.

The reason is because they are already are in place, have been approved, or have submitted projects that are being reviewed and as such have legal standing to stay in business or proceed.

There were five in the approval process before the ARCO AM/PM project at Pillsbury Road and Woodward Avenue was pulled by the developer several months ago.

Manteca currently has 33 gas stations in place or 3.5 per 10,000 residents.

It is lower than Modesto with 3.62 gas stations per 10,000 residents.

It is higher than Stockton at 3.0 gas stations per 10,000 residents and California statewide that has 2.65 gas stations per 10,000 residents.

Ceres, a city of 49,000 just south of Modesto, has 33 gas stations or the same number Manteca currently has with almost 97,000 residents.

Manteca’s consideration of

moratorium unique for valley

Having a city in the heart of the Central Valley — arguably among the most moderate regions in the state — having elected leaders actually weighing proposals to ban future gas station applications is a significant, if not, groundbreaking development.

The only cities to date in California that have imposed 100 percent bans on future gas stations are clustered in the Northern San Francisco Bay Area.

Sacramento has adopted a ban but only if new gas stations don’t also include electric vehicle chargers.

Given the multi-million cost of a new gas station, the market clearly dictates how many more gas stations Manteca can absorb before lenders decline to fund them.

That is why there is no guarantee that all of the nine gas stations approved, or not quite as far along in the entitlement, will be built.

That said, a shift in development patterns that could trigger proposed gas stations elsewhere in the city.

A moratorium would stop that from happening.

What makes the proposed

Manteca moratorium unique

The moratorium being considered by Manteca is unique in another significant way.

It is being advanced for the first time in a California city that is in a substantial growth mode.

Petaluma and other North Bay cities when they proposed moratoriums now in place were not experiencing growth on the level that Manteca has been for the past decade.

There is no other city in the Northern San Joaquin Valley with nine gas stations in the entitlement process.

And it is highly unlikely any other city in California have that many proposed gas stations lined up.

Also, the cry for the moratorium based on social media postings isn’t driven by greenhouse gas or climate concerns.

Instead, it is more of an “enough already” angst.

As such, the consideration of the moratorium isn’t being fueled by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s directive for the California Air Resources Board to end all oil extraction within the state by 2040.

Manteca also has a “trait” that no other city that has banned new gas stations outright has.

The Family City is part of the subregion on the Northern San Joaquin Valley that for the past decade has been the fastest growing region into the country for so-called “super commuters.”

Those are people who travel at least 90 minutes in one direction to get to work.

And except for a relatively few that may take ACE commuter rail, all travel by vehicles of which the vast majority rely on fossil fuels.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com