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SIERRA CLUB LETTERHEAD Letter Was filed at Tehama County PC 11/14/08 November 13, 2008 Tehama County Planning Commission Courthouse Annex, Room 1 444 Oak Street Red Bluff, California 96080 Dear Commissioners: Thank you for providing the opportunity for public comment on the Tehama County Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), and for extending the comment period until November 14, 2008. I recall appearing at a Planning Commission meeting in Red Bluff in April 2008 at which I outlined the serious concerns of the Shasta Group about reports that the Planning Commission was about to propose the “urbanization” of the area along both sides of Interstate 5 from Red Bluff to Shasta County. I explained that the mere idea of putting a city the size of 15 new Red Bluffs in between Redding and Red Bluff was extremely alarming on a number of levels. I urged the Commissioners to rethink the idea because the resources do not exist to provide water to the area; because the people of the north valley do not want to see their air become polluted like areas just to the south in the Central Valley; because the infrastructure is not in existence and not within the realm of possibility; because the land in question possesses great beauty and it would be a shame to see it become another sprawling sea of homes and commercial structures…and because it would simply be the wrong thing to do to this special area of California, and to the Earth itself through the effects of Global Warming. At that same hearing several other citizens spoke, most if not all of them residents of Tehama County. All of them as I recall implored the Commissioners not to choose the option of unrestrained growth, but rather to move carefully and deliberately in planning for the future of the Red Bluff to Cottonwood area, also known as the North I-5 Corridor. Apparently my words and those of the citizens who spoke to you that day have fallen on deaf ears, because the DEIR clearly fails in numerous instances to do the job it was intended to do under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). I trust it is not too late to bring these issues to your attention once again and to ask that the Commission consider these concerns and decide that there are too many flaws and uncertainties in this DEIR for it to be approved in it’s present form. To begin with, better data is needed in virtually every area. That data must be viewed objectively and not with bias toward development as is the case with the extant DEIR. There is no reason to move faster than can be done judiciously and with care. The following are the significant concerns of the Sierra Club: SCOPE OF GROWTH PROJECTIONS: The purpose of an EIR under CEQA is “to provide public agencies and the public in general with detailed information about the effect which a proposed project is likely to have on the environment,” and further, an EIR “shall include a detailed statement setting forth all significant effects on the environment of the proposed project.” Unfortunately this DEIR fails any test of adequacy based on it’s vagueness, lack of specificity in critical areas, lack of information or use of outdated information, inattention to the legal requirements for EIR’s, and simply confused analysis, to name a few of many reasons. The Shasta Group is very disturbed about the manner in which the Draft General Plan (DGP) purports to allow population growth on a massive 1000% scale over 20 years along the North I-5 Corridor, and the DEIR does not evaluate it. We like most others who live in the north state area, appreciate the open space and clean air that is directly threatened by this DGP and DEIR. Our first concern is that the DEIR states in the introduction to Chapter 4 under “Buildout Projection” that “while the theoretical maximum buildout potential may produce 184,498 dwelling units with a resultant population of 416,197, the reality is that this number of units will not be built within the planning horizon of this General Plan.” If that is the case then what is the point of in effect sanctioning the massive urbanization of this vast and precious area, and of not evaluating the true and full impacts this will have? Table 4.0-2 indicates that “expected” population in 2030 will be 93,477. However, based on the growth that has occurred in nearby areas such as Placer and El Dorado Counties in the last 20 years, perhaps the maximum buildout numbers are not that far off the mark. Either way, the DEIR is inadequate on its face in this area alone because it reveals that the Planning Commission has no idea what is going to happen and is planning for two completely different eventualities in one document, without meaningfully analyzing either one. We assert that evaluating the development on the basis that only 1/16th of the potential residential development that could reasonably occur over the next 20 years will occur is patently inadequate and misleading. The use of “hedging” or minimizing language in the DEIR about what the scope of growth will be leads to ambiguity, and invites sprawl development. Opening up vast tracts of land to development, and at the same time saying that that amount of land is actually unnecessary for the 20 year period in question invites more questions than it answers and makes actual planning a guessing game. The question is why is it necessary to even go that far in the first place if there is no good reason? This type of planning may warm the hearts of developers, but it makes the future of the citizens of Tehama County smoggier, noisier, more crowded, with snarled traffic and not enough water…just like so many other beautiful places in California have gone before. We are aware that prior to the current housing slowdown, which itself raises questions about whether the DGP and DEIR need to be reevaluated, major developers were tying up land and designing major residential development projects in Tehama County and all the counties up and down the Sacramento Valley. Developable land is becoming scarce and expensive in Southern California and the Bay Area. The Central Valley is expected to be the big growth area in California’s future. The DEIR forecast of slower growth, and the Department of Finance forecast on which it is based, are related to past levels of development in Tehama County and they do not consider the huge potential for new suburban density residential growth that the DGP would add. Some of these new suburban acres are in the North I-5 Corridor and have existing entitlements (Sun City and Lake California). Some developers submitted concept plans and lobbied as part of the General Plan process, while others are filing applications for large residential development. A cynical person could not be blamed for thinking that the low but supposedly “realistic” buildout numbers contained in the DEIR and DGP are nothing more than a Trojan Horse full of developers and land speculators who would emerge to bring about growth on a massive scale leading to the “overall urbanization of the region” as envisioned under the Cumulative Impact Analysis discussed in Impact item 4.1.5. Those words should be frightening to anyone who cares about the quality of life we now enjoy in the north state, but that is what is on the horizon in this misguided planning effort. Moreover, the DEIR does not use the basic development forecast described in Chapter 4.0 consistently throughout the document. In Chapter 4.3 for example there is a reference to 28,242 housing units being developed, yet Table 4.3-3 cites a number of 27,688 housing units – this is quite different from the analysis used elsewhere in the DEIR, and frankly, it is unclear just what development forecast was used in Chapters 4.4 (Biological Resources), 4.5 (Cultural Resources), 4.6 (Geology and Soils), 4.6 (Hazards and Hazardous Waste), and above all 4.8 (Hydrology and Water Quality) in which the forecast does not even match up with the potential level of growth, and therefore grossly understates the available water supply, but more on that in the next section. WATER: The California Supreme Court has identified four “principles for analytical adequacy” for analysis of future water supply requirements under CEQA: They are 1) The EIR must not simply ignore or assume a solution to the problem of supplying water to a proposed land use project; 2) An adequate environmental impact analysis for a large project, to be built and occupied over a number of years, cannot be limited to the water supply for the first stage or first few years. “Tiering” analysis “is not satisfied by simply stating information will be provided in the future.” 3) “The future water supplies identified and analyzed must bear a likelihood of actually proving available; speculative sources and unrealistic allocations (“paper water”) are insufficient bases for decisionmaking under CEQA.” 4) Where despite a full discussion it is impossible to confidently determine that the anticipated future water resources will be available, CEQA requires some discussion of possible replacement sources or alternatives to the use of the anticipated water, and of the environmental consequences of those contingencies. (See Vineyard Area Citizens for Responsible Growth v. City of Rancho Cordova, 2007). By this measure the DEIR utterly and completely fails to provide adequate or meaningful information about potential water supplies that could provide ANY water in the near future or even in the foreseeable future. The discussion of groundwater resources in Chapter 4.8 indicates that Tehama County is already in a critical situation based on 2003 data. It describes as “anomalous” the steep drop in the water table shown in Figure 4.8-8 for 1998 to 2002, the last year for which data was analyzed, and notes “This decline occurred during years of near-normal precipitation, and might indicate that overdrafting (or pumping more water than is recharging) is occurring. This situation comes because the County used groundwater for 59% of its needs through 2002. The Shasta Group asserts that this situation alone demands further investigation and analysis by experts before a General Plan of this scope and controversy can be approved. But it gets worse. One of the reasons for reliance on groundwater to such a degree is the uncertainty about surface water reliance due to the possibility of dry years and droughts. The DEIR states that curtailment of up to 26% of surface diversions have happened before in a dry year. It further notes that Global Climate Change (to be addressed further below) could result in nearly half of years in the 21st century being “critically dry.” Amazingly, the solution, according to the DEIR can be fully outlined on one half of a page (page 4.8-17) !!! The “solution” is to hope that Shasta Dam is heightened someday, that it will be funded next year and completed 4 to 6 years later. This is the definition of speculative. Anyone who says they know how long a project of this nature will take to complete clearly does not know. The other possibilities for future sources of surface water are the Red Bank Project, with lots of words like “could” and “would” in the discussion which show that these projects are on the drawing boards at best, and are merely speculative. Another possibility raised is the proposed Colusa Reservoir Complex which would be located outside Tehama County. The DEIR concludes it’s identification of new water supplies by saying “investigations continue” into other options. It is on this basis that the DGP and DEIR advocate going ahead with growth in the 1000% range and the building of one or two new cities. The Shasta Group asserts strenuously that this water analysis is totally inadequate and does not begin to meet the criteria outlined above from the Vineyard Area Citizens case. AIR QUALITY The DEIR admits that the DGP “may “conflict with or obstruct compliance with the 2006 NSVAB Air Quality Attainment Plan, that it “may” contribute to an existing air quality violation, and that it “may” result in a cumulatively considerable increase in criteria air pollutant emissions for which the region is currently in non-attainment, all of which could have potentially significant impact on the quality of the air. Yet the DEIR states that as to the cumulative impacts, there is no feasible mitigation that can be done. For the others, the mitigation measure identified in the DEIR – to “work” on the problem – is a toothless, “pie in the sky” measure that will do absolutely noting to prevent degradation of the air quality that is admittedly already in non-attainment status. This sort of vague and unenforceable “mitigation” is nothing more than a fig leaf to conceal the naked truth - that the County does not plan for or know how to deal meaningfully with the problem. Nevertheless the DGP and DEIR would allow a huge increase in population and resultant traffic in the area. To make matters worse, the DEIR does not use maximum buildout numbers for purposes of estimating unmitigated General Plan air quality emissions. The data assumes an increase of only 27,668 new single family homes and 574 apartments (See Table 4.3-3). Yet maximum buildout would involve 184,498 new dwelling units according to other parts of the DEIR !! Nor does the DEIR discuss the health consequences of the increased health damage that will be produced by the increase in pollutant emission that the county DOES predict: over 1,500 tons/year of reactive organic gases, over 1,100 tons/year of nitrogen oxides, and over 1,500 tons per year of particulates. Multiply all that by 8 or 9 and you will get the true approximate levels at maximum buildout. Obviously the County has not done it’s homework on this issue and needs to do much more work to prepare an adequate EIR. At a minimum, the County needs to calculate impact based on full buildout of the units identified in the DGP and DEIR, not some arbitrary number that might be low enough to not attract attention. GLOBAL WARMING AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS The DEIR contains an extremely superficial discussion of Global Warming and The California Climate Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). It makes the bizarre observation in Paragraph 6.6 that “it is impossible to discern whether the presence or absence of CO2 emitted by the project would result in any altered conditions.” And under discussion of mitigation measures on page 6.0-41 it states “it is impossible to know at this time whether Tehama County residents will have longer or shorter commutes relative to their existing homes, whether they will walk, bike, and use public transportation more or less than under existing circumstances…” It is a safe bet that if you put 415,000 new people in a narrow valley that is already experiencing air quality problems, that people will be doing a lot more driving, and things are going to get a lot worse. Just look at the Sacramento area air quality for a clue, and they are in a bigger valley with frequent delta breezes. And once again the DEIR has understated the number of residential units at 27,668, instead of the maximum buildout number of 184,498, so the results are skewed significantly to the low end. The mitigation measures include things that should have been done already to prepare the DEIR itself, such as inventories of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and a Climate Action Plan for Tehama County. Other measures are so vague and weak that they hardly pass the straight face test. Once again, on the basis of the analysis of Global Warming and GHG emissions alone, the Shasta Group contends that the DEIR fails abysmally to analyze the reasonably foreseeable adverse effects of the General Plan update on both air quality and global warming, and on the implementation of AB 32, in that the increase in emission of pollutants and GHG’s are not disclosed, and no comparison is made between the increase in GHG emissions that are reasonable expected to result from implementation of the General Plan update and the reduction in GHG emissions mandated by AB 32. BIOLOGICAL RESOURCES The DEIR asserts preposterously that the DGP would have a less than significant impact on special status species, a less than significant impact on sensitive biotic communities, a less than significant impact on wildlife corridors, and a less than cumulatively considerable impact on biological resources overall, so no mitigation measures are required. Anyone familiar with the North I-5 Corridor area knows that it is now a vast open space and oak woodland area of fantastic beauty and aesthetic value. The conclusions in the DEIR fly in the face of common sense. The Shasta Group has concerns about other areas in the DGP and DEIR in other areas such as Aesthetics, Agricultural Resources, Transportation and Sewage Treatment, but time and space prevent going into them in detail at this time. Suffice it to say that the Shasta Group has huge concerns about the poor, deficient, unprofessional quality of the DEIR across the board. We are members of the community and wish to be heard on this subject. We have tried in good faith to communicate our concerns to the Planning Commission without success. We hope that by expressing ourselves in some detail in this letter, and offering to work with Tehama County on redrafting what is obviously a terribly flawed DEIR, a better result will be reached. I hope that we will be able to agree on some common ground on something that is badly needed: a properly prepared, updated General Plan and EIR that meet the requirements of the law and the needs of the people of Tehama County, so that appropriate goals and policies will be adopted that will affect the future of land use, growth, and transportation in Tehama County until 2028.
Sincerely, Bruce P. Waggoner Group Chair Shasta Group Mother Lode Chapter Sierra Club CC: Gerald R. Brown, Attorney General of California Attn: Susan Fiering, Deputy Attorney General Attn: Jamie Jefferson, Deputy Attorney General |