Revised Response Letter Calls Plan Outcome “Not Acceptable”
After the city ordered staff to markedly overhaul a fact feeble Draft Response Letter (DRL) by unanimous Alameda City Council vote in the late hours of Oct 3, City Staff worked feverishly to identify and put under contract a number of scientific and policy experts in the field.
Vice Mayor Tony Daysog, in an Alameda City e mail post, referred to the first DRL as embracing too much of an “accommodating stance” towards the Oakland Airport, and expecting a more “hard line” approach, which the City got.
Staff was under the gun to do what it had not done in its initial DRL prior to the Oct 3 Council meeting, and rapidly lined up the firms of Environmental Planning Solutions, Freytag and Associates LLC, and Hughes AV Associates to dig down and provide the heavy scientific and legal scrutiny needed for a letter with substantive legal and policy based criticisms of Oakland Airport’s Draft EIR (DEIR) .
The result, after ten days of intensive scrutiny and composition, was a toothy, sixteen page DRL packed with the language of powerful rebuttal and opposition, premised in legal parlance backed by deep scrutiny of process and precedent shortfalls in the DEIR.
It is obvious that the various consultants hired had substantial input in the rewrite.
In general, the DRL asserts that the DEIR’s project description is “legally inadequate,” that its baseline assumptions “ lack substantial evidence,” and that it has multiple shortcomings for identification, analysis and mitigation of of significant adverse environmental effects.”
One major broadside to planned expansion is in the DRL’s line that “the expansion Project will directly and unacceptably affect the well-being of the Alameda community, which is not an acceptable outcome.”
The City is “deeply concerned with the (DEIR’s) failure to identify and mitigate….all of the potentially significant adverse impacts,” reads one line in the DRL.
It faults the DEIR for what it calls a “vague and misleading project Description (and) inadequate analysis of the Project’s potential air quality, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, human health risks, noise (including construction noise), and traffic/parking impacts, among others.”
In what it calls “troublesome,” the DRL asserts that the DEIR fails to “meaningfully consider a reasonable range of alternatives, including an environmentally superior and/or reduced size alternative.”
That criticism aligns in part what The Citizens League for Airport Safety and Security (CLASS) seeks in its stance on Oakland Airport Expansion. Class is against expansion of the airport — especially the construction of as many a sixteen new arrival/departure gates and the resultant increase in flights—although it supports the concept of existing airport modernization sought by The Port Of Oakland, the managing authority of the airport.
In recognition of the time crunch from when the first, rejected DRL came before The Council on 10/3, to the council’s revision deadline of 10/13, –backed up against the DEIR response and comment deadline of 5 p.m. on 10/16– the DRL also seeks a new round of public comment submission, asking “that the Port revise and recirculate the DEIR for additional public review and comment.”
Such a result will be the subject of concern in times to come, and The Port Of Oakland is not obligated to grant the request.
The new DRL paints the battle lines in a far different manner than did the first, which Acting Head of Alameda’s Planning, Building and Transportation Dept., Allen Tai, described at one point in his brief to The Council on10/3 as largely a “qualitative” letter. The next round of meetings, negotiations and probable revisions to the DEIR will be much more in depth and focused with this latest, formal, legally-contentious response from the City Of Alameda.
More On This Developing Story To Come.