Questions to ask when reviewing a draft environmental impact report

Ray Williams, professor emeritus of biology at Rio Hondo College and veteran of many successful efforts to protect threatened areas of the Southern California, provided the Friends this list of helpful tips.

While a draft environmental impact report may seem intimidating at first--the Montebello Hills Specific Plan DEIR certainly intimidated me--they cover a broad spectrum of areas. And even the most technical areas can be scrutinized by non-specialists.

Good, basic questions are important in bringing to light the flaws, inconsistencies and short cuts in a DEIR. As in sports, its important not to neglect the fundamentals.

The list:

1. What are the project's significant unavoidable impacts?

2. Do the alternatives addressed in the draft EIR deal with those impacts?

3. What significance thresholds are used for each impact category?

4. Do the significant thresholds reflect adopted local policies and/or criteria established by a regulatory agency?

5. Does the draft EIR gauge potential impacts against existing physical conditions?

6. Does the draft EIR address all of the environmental topics relevant to proposed project?

7. Does the technical information provided in the draft EIR support the document’s findings?

8. Did the draft EIR include discussion of environmental issues raised during the scoping phase and in responses to the Notice of Preparation?

9. Does the draft EIR adequately define the resources that might be impacted?

10. Does the draft EIR provide a clear line of reasoning in its conclusions related to impacts, their level of significance or non-significance, and the level of mitigation that would be achieved by proposed mitigations measures?

11. Does the draft EIR’s statement of project objective allow for a reasonable range of alternatives?

Discovery center draft environmental impact report released; 60-day comment period open

After two years of delays, the draft environmental impact report on the San Gabriel River Discovery Center was released Friday.

The release of the DEIR also signaled the opening of the 60-day public comment period, which ends on Aug. 3, 2009.

The report, nearly 900 pages in length, is available online at the Discovery Center Authority website.

It's also available in print at three Whittier Narrows area libraries:

• South El Monte Library, 1430 N. Central Ave., South El Monte CA 91733 (Map)
  
• El Monte Public Library, 3224 Tyler Ave., El Monte CA 91731 (Map)
  
• Pico Rivera Public Library, 9001 Mines Ave., Pico Rivera CA 90660 (Map)
  

And the Discovery Center Authority has scheduled two public meetings, at which public comments on the DEIR will be accepted:

• Wednesday, June 24, 7 - 9 p.m.
  
• Saturday, July 18, 2 - 4 p.m.
  

Both meetings will be held at South El Monte High School, 1001 N. Durfee Ave., South El Monte CA. (Map)

If you'd like to comment on the DEIR, but aren't sure how to go about it, Tuesday I'll be posting a brief guide to "Questions to ask when reviewing a draft environmental impact report."

My suggestion is pick a topic (e.g., aesthetics, transportation and traffic, biological resources, cultural resources) that you feel comfortable reviewing or are interested in and just jump in.

But I'll get that guide posted in a couple of days.

Commenting on an environmental impact report

The public comment period on the Montebello Hills Specific Plan draft environmental impact report closes Thursday.

Motivated by that quickly approaching deadline, I finally got off the dime, reviewed portions of the biological resources and recreation sections of the document, drafted some comments and submitted them to Montebello's director of planning and community development, Michael Huntley.

It was the sort of new experience that, afterwards, I was left thinking, "What was so scary about that?"

The document's 5,000-page length was intimidating, no doubt about it. But as members of the Sierra Club's Save the Montebello Hills Task Force recommended, I concentrated on those areas for which I had an affinity.

Focusing on those areas, I was able to draw conclusions that I hope will offer some assistance in the effort to shape the future of what is already important wildlife habitat and could be a true oasis of public open space for the city and surrounding communities.

It seemed to me that the current proposal depends too much on other areas in the region to support survival of species that might suffer from the 1,200-unit development planned for the hills. It fails to take into adequate account the serious development threats faced by the Puente-Chino Hills and the destruction wrought by last year's Freeway Complex fire.

It was also clear that, while the proposal acknowledges the nearly 200-acre shortage of parkland in Montebello, it does little to address this shortage and in fact creates obstacles to addressing the shortage in the future. The plan includes more than 300 acres of open space and reserve, but all except 16 acres of that land will be off limits to the public.

The Sierra Club alternative, on the other hand, would preserve and restore the hills as wildlife habitat while at the same time opening them to the community for what has come to be termed low-impact recreation and education--hiking, picnicking, outdoor education.

Reviewing and commenting on the EIR was a great experience. The sort of thing that proves you don't know what you can do until you try.

And I'm sure that, as Montebello Hills Task Force co-chair Margot Eiser said, it will turn out to have been great practice for the discovery center EIR.