HomeMy Public PortalAboutPublic Comment #057 (Zabriskie)November 20, 2014
Ms. Denyelle Nishimori, Planning Manager
Town of Truckee Community Development Department
10183 Truckee Airport Road
Truckee, CA 96161
Comment on 2014 Revised Draft Environmental Impact Report
for Canyon Springs Subdivision
Dear Ms. Nishimori:
The revisions to the Town. of Truckee's draft environmental impact report for the
proposed Canyon Springs Development compound the errors in the original DEIR. These
defects were laid bare in the public comments submitted to the Town during the first round of the
DEIR process. The errors are numerous and the Town Council was unprepared to address them
when it met in public session to discuss the DEIR in November 2013. Instead, the council's
members uniformly embraced the developer's request to let the process play out to a later day of
reckoning. They decided to allow all but a limited portion of the DEIR move on to the next stage
of the EIR process. The decision to defer meaningful analysis of the DEIR's defects haunts the
REIR, since its author, The Planning Center/DC &E, relies on these defects for purposes of
analyzing the REIR.
The consultant's mistaken conclusion that mitigation for greenhouse gas emissions is
unwarranted is illustrative of the DEIR's many defects. The consultant adopted GHG emissions
of 1600 metric tons per year as a threshold level of significance; any emissions in excess of that
amount would constitute a significant adverse impact requiring mitigation.
The DEIR's technical analysis revealed that the project would generate 3000 metric tons
of GHGs per year. These emissions are nearly double the threshold standard of significance
adopted by the DEIR's consultant. Accordingly, the consultant should have shown and
quantified how the excessive emissions would be mitigated to less than 1600 metric tons per
year. It did not.
Faced with the data showing excessive GHG emissions, the consultant disavowed the
standard it had just as described as the applicable one and said it was actually a meaningless
figure because the standard had never been formally adopted by any government agency. The
consultant knew when it selected the standard that the standard had never been formally adopted.
Of course, if the consultant were correct to reject the standard, there would have been no need
for the extensive technical analysis of GHG emissions and certainly no reason for the consultant
to consume twenty -four pages of the ERR discussing them. At a substantial reduction of cost to
1
the client and time to everyone else, the consultant could have stated in a few words that, without
a governmentally adopted standard for GHG emissions, there was no point in conducting a
technical analysis or discussing GHG emissions at all.
The truth is CEiQA does not require that a threshold standard for GHG emission exist as a
formally adopted limit. On the contrary, California Code of Regulations, title 14, section
15064.7, subdivision (c), expressly allows an EIR to use recommended standards. That is what
the consultant appropriately did here ... at first. As explicitly stated in the DEIR, the consultant
was using a standard that had been formally recommended for adoption by the staff for the
California Air Resources Board. Only when the consultant arrived at the part of the DEIR where
it should have discussed how the GHG emissions needed to be mitigated, did it disavow the
standard it had just embraced.
The consultant offered another excuse for not having to mitigate GHG emissions that is
equally transparent. It claimed that, because the GHG emissions from the Canyon Springs
development will not alone cause climate change, the projected emissions are insignificant.
CEQA, however, is directed at reducing the cumulative effects of GHG emissions by reducing
emissions from individual projects. The GHG emissions from Canyon Springs need to be
mitigated because they are disproportionate to the size of the project and they exceed the
threshold level of significance.
The REIR assumes the GHG emissions are insignificant in comparing alternatives to the
project. This erroneous assumption makes the Alternative Analysis in Chapter 5 of the REIR
uninformative and misleading. Alternative E is illustrative. Alternative E reduces the number of
lots in the Canyon Springs development by over one -half. It should be expected there would be
a near proportionate reduction in homes, population, vehicle miles traveled, construction activity
and other sources of GHG emissions. In light of this reduction, Alternative E might bring GHG
emissions down to insignificant levels. However, because the consultants mistakenly consider
GHG emissions to already be insignificant, it treats Alternative E as equivalent to the other
alternatives and omits to show the actual and substantial differences between them. The
consultant needs to start over.
The errors made in the consultant's analysis of GHG emissions is repeated in regard to
other environmental impacts. For example, the consultant repeatedly misapplies the cumulative
impacts analysis to issues such as water quality, traffic and deer populations. The issues are
covered in the March S, 2013 comment letter from Shute Mihaly and Weinberger. Until those
defects are corrected, the REIR cannot serve any meaningful purpose.
The council's apparent reason for allowing most of the DEIR to move on in the process
with the defects intact is that the developer will eventually pay the cost of those defects. So, if
the developer wants to throw good money after bad, why should the council stand in the way?
The REIR provides part of the answer. Until the defects are fixed, the REIR is of no value.
Second, the town needs to act responsibly, it is not enough to dismiss the DEIR's defects as the
developer's problem. Third, allowing a doomed process to continue imposes an unnecessary
burden on the town's staff, the citizens who have taken over the town's duty to identify obvious
2
defects, and the courts that would ultimately be called upon to adjudicate the defects and return
the EIR to the Town and the developer years down the road. None of this should have to
happen. If the developer wants to embark on a foolish voyage through the EIR process, that does
not mean the town's government should blindly jump on board. The town should return the
DEIR to the consultant and his client with instructions to make it legally compliant before
bringing it back.
Sincerely
A
Jan Zabriskie
10295 Snowshoe Circle
Truckee, CA, 96161