HomeMy WebLinkAboutPreserve SLO Life_Comments on Froom Ranch DEIR_12-23-19December 23, 2019
Via E-Mail
City of San Luis Obispo
Community Development Department
Attn: Shawna Scott, Senior Planner
919 Palm Street
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401-3218
sscott@slocity.org
Re: Comments on Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Froom
Ranch Specific Pan (State Clearinghouse # 2017071033)
Dear Ms. Scott:
Please accept the following comments on the Draft EIR for the Froom Ranch
Specific Plan referenced above (“Project”), submitted on behalf of Preserve the SLO
Life and Los Verdes Park Unit One Homeowners Association. Preserve the SLO Life
is an unincorporated association of San Luis Obispo City and County residents and
business owners. Los Verdes Park Unit One Homeowners Association, Inc. is a
California non-profit corporation operating as the homeowners association for the
Los Verdes Park Unit One subdivision in San Luis Obispo. Members of both entities
live and/or own property in the Project vicinity and will be directly affected by any
adverse environmental impacts the Project may foreseeably cause. Our comments
and concerns follow, organized by impact category.
I. Biological Resources
The Draft EIR identifies several potentially significant impacts to biological
resources from construction and operation of the Project. These include permanent
loss of sensitive riparian, wetland, and native grassland habitats, as well as direct
impacts to special-status species. In nearly all instances, the Draft EIR identifies as
mitigation a requirement that the applicant submit a “Biological Mitigation and
Monitoring Plan” to the City for review and approval before grading permits are
issued and the final vesting tentative map is recorded. The Plan is meant to
incorporate “additional measures or requirements” recommended by the California
Department of Fish & Game, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Regional Water
Quality Control Board, and NOAA Fish eries (aka NMFS), an “specify all mitigation
site locations, timing of surveys and activities, species composition, habitat
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compensation, species avoidance measures, and other required information, including
identification of appropriate onsite construction staging locations.” The Plan is to be
reviewed by “a qualified Environmental Coordinator/qualified biologist.” Likewise,
for impacts stemming from the realignment of Froom Creek, the applicant is to
submit a “Froom Creek restoration plan that identifies measures for securing the
proposed low-flow channel berm along the stretch of Froom Creek proposed
adjacent to the Calle Joaquin wetlands to protect the bank from erosion and prevent
migration of the Froom Creek channel into these wetlands.” The Draft EIR
concludes that notwithstanding the se requirements for pre-construction plan
submittals, impacts to biological resources will be significant and unavoidable.1
The Draft EIR has improperly deferred meaningful analysis and mitigation of
biological resource impacts in contravention of CEQA. Under Section 15126.4 of the
CEQA Guidelines, formulation of mitigation measures for impacts identified in an
EIR ordinarily may not be deferred. Only if the EIR identifies specific, objective
performance standards that can be feasibly accomplished in more than one way may
mitigation specifics be deferred to a future time. Even then, CEQA requires
mitigation to be demonstrably feasible, incorporated into the design of the project,
and legally enforceable. In the current case, the Biological Mitigation Monitoring Plan
and Froom Creek Restoration Plan do not meet the requisite requirements for
specificity, demonstrated feasibility and enforceability to warrant the proposed
deferral of formulation of precise mitigation measures . It is impossible, for example,
to gauge whether “additional measures or requirements” recommended by state and
federal resource agencies will be feasible, whether they can be incorporated into the
Project’s design, or be enforceable. There likewise will be no opportunity for the
public, sister agencies, or anyone other than City staff to review the Plans for
adequacy before they are approved by an amorphously “qualified” biologist before
grading permits are issued and habitat is irretrievably lost.
To the extent the deferral of formulation of precise mitigation measures is due
to a lack of sufficient detail in the applicant’s construction plans, as the Draft EIR
acknowledges is the case for wetland impacts, the City should require the applicant to
provide new plans that contain enough information to allow the City, with input
from the resource agencies and the public, to formulate actual mitigation measures
that will be feasible, effective, and legally enforceable. Please note that the Draft
EIR’s conclusion that these biological resource impacts are significant and
unavoidable has no bearing on the City’s duty under CEQA to thoroughly evaluate
1 Notably, with respect to wetlands, the Draft EIR states that “[d]ue to the lack of detailed
plans and setbacks for these minor drainages at this stage in the process, these wetlands could be
directly impacted through culvert-headwall installation and sedimentation from grading and
development, and the ability to reestabli sh and maintain rare plant species present within these areas
is unknown.”
December 23, 2019
Page 3
and mitigate those impacts. An agency may not simply label an impact unavoidably
significant in order to dispense with analysis. Berkeley Keep Jets Over the Bay Committee v.
Board of Port Commissioners (2001) 91 Cal.App.4th 1344, 1371. The City should circulate
a revised Draft EIR containing these measures after they are formulated.
II. Air Quality/Health Risks
The Draft EIR correctly notes that the California Supreme Court has held that
with limited exceptions CEQA does not require an EIR to analyze impacts of the
existing environment on a proposed project. However, when a project includes both
residential and commercial components, as is the case with Froom Ranch, the EIR
must disclose, evaluates, and mitigate any impacts that the commercial component
may impose on the residential component. Specifically, if long-term operation of
commercial retail uses will result in the delivery truck traffic, then an assessment of
health risks from long-term exposure to the particulate component of diesel exhaust
DPM”) is necessary to gauge whether senior citizens or other sensitive receptors
occupying the site will be exposed to undue health risks in excess of applicable
significance thresholds. Likewise, if construction activities are to occur on site after
the senior housing is oc cupied, then construction emissions must be factored into a
risk assessment. Regardless, the City should update the Draft EIR to disclose the
number of diesel-fueled truck deliveries expected to occur at the Project site on a
weekly basis during both construction and operational periods, and model any health
risks to on-site receptors due to long-term exposure to DPM or other toxic air
contaminants.
The Draft EIR does not adequately assess potential cumulative air quality
impacts/health risks to off-site receptors living near the Project site and LOVR
and/or U.S. 101, which is less than 1,000 feet away. These thoroughfares, and the
commercial uses operating along them, likely generate DPM emissions that already
bring an elevated health risk to residents, and any additional DPM emissions
generated by Project construction and operation could be a cumulatively considerable
contribution to an already significant cumulative impact. A cumulative risk
assessment should be performed and circulated for public review and comment.
III. Noise
As with air quality/health risks, the Draft EIR should evaluate the impacts to
sensitive noise receptors in the senior housing component of the Project from noise
generated by delivery, loading, and unloading activities associated with the Project’s
commercial component. Depending on the number, frequency, and time of day of
heavy truck deliveries, and whether those truck carry top -mounted refrigeration units,
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impacts to nearby on -site receptors could easily exceed the City’s residential noise
standards. If that is the case, mitigation or avoidance measures will be required.
IV. Traffic
The Draft EIR’s analysis of traffic impacts is highly complex, and does not
meet CEQA’s standards of readability to the general publ ic. Nearly all EIRs this
office has reviewed for similarly scaled development projects have included tables
that plainly disclose a project’s share of projected future impacts to nearby roadway
segments and intersections. This Draft EIR lacks tables compa ring, for example,
Existing Without Project” conditions to “Existing With Project,” or “Future (2025)
Without Project” to “Future With project,” or similar tables documenting the
differences between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 in the year 2025 analysis. This forces
the reader to print out multiple tables from the EIR and appendices and then try to
create their own tables in order to reveal the differences. Absent such table, the Draft
EIR does not meet CEQA’s standards for disclosure and analysis and hence fails as
an informational document.
In addition, there are two major development projects nearby, Avila Ranch
and San Luis Ranch, that include major additions to transportation infrastructure as
part of their plans. The Draft EIR’s analysis, claiming conservatism, analyzes the
Scenario 2 condition as the Near Term 2025 Condition baseline, a scenario that lacks
the fundamental Prado Road westerly extension and interchange revision , which
would mitigate the effects of these three major projects and cumulative regional
growth. This is contrary to CEQA’s requirement that the environmental baseline for
evaluating impact significance sho uld be conditions as they exist at the time a notice
of preparation of the EIR is issued. The Draft EIR contains an existing conditions
analysis but not an existing plus Project analysis. It likewise does not disclose impacts
or mitigation measures in its Existing Plus Project analysis, leaving it to the 2025
Near Term analysis.
The 2025 Near Term analysis includes the San Luis Ranch and Avila Ranch
projects and significant transportation improvements required for their development,
but omits details of funding, environmental clearance and, where appropriate,
Caltrans or County approvals necessary for each of the improvements assumed in
either of the two Scenarios. Often, where several development projects are
contributing fair share funds to a roadway improvement that does not return the
condition to an acceptable level, but is arguably sufficient to mitigate a particular
project’s incremental contribution to the condition, several projects claim the whole
of the incremental mitigation even though they are only contributing a fair share to
the cost of the improvement. In this case, where the Draft EIR finds that traffic
impacts are significant and unavoidable, but also identifies some level of mitigation, it
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impossible to determine whether this Project is overclaiming mitigation. The City
should revise the traffic analysis to cure the foregoing informational defects and
recirculate for further public review and comment.
Thank you for your consideration of these comments.
Yours sincerely,
M. R. WOLFE & ASSOCIATES, P.C.
Mark R. Wolfe
on behalf of Preserve the SLO Life and
Los Verdes Park Unit One Homeowners
Association
MRW:sa