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Planning Commission San Joaquin County Re: Comments on Love's Travel Stop Draft EIR December 20,2012 Page 2 of 3 from it,Pilot has well-founded concerns that the traffic congestion and au pollution created by the Project will have long-standing significant and adverse impacts, at least some of which have not been sufficiently disclosed in the EIR. With respect to traffic, both Pilot and Love's will be negatively impacted if customers cannot easily and safely access their sites. For example,Pilot's traffic consultant expects that the intersection of Highway 12 and Thornton Road will fail once the Project is constructed as no significant impact has been identified for that intersection and thus,no mitigation(i.e., extended turning lanes and/or a signal) has been provided. As we all know, travelers and truckers along I- 5 (or any other major thoroughfare)are often focused on making quick stops for fuel and/or food and will avoid congested areas. While CEQA permits experts to disagree about the effects of certain environmental impacts, Pilot previously submitted extensive data and analysis that shows the County is significantly underestimating the traffic trips that will be generated by the Project. We believe this to be the case because Pilot's traffic numbers are based on point of sale data, whereas the County's numbers are based on ITE categories and extrapolations thereof. We believe that where there is direct and pointed evidence of a significant adverse impact,that evidence trumps indirect, extrapolated evidence. Notwithstanding, if the County is truly interested in ensuring the Project is successful and the surrounding properties are not negatively impacted,it should require its consultants to utilize point of sale data in preparing the traffic impacts analysis,which it has not done to date. At a minimum, this seems reasonable in light of the fact that any reduction in site visits to either Pilot or Love's will reduce the sales tax paid to the County, which appears to be a major rational for overriding the only two significant and unavoidable impacts identified for this Project. With respect to air quality, we submit a letter from Ray Kapahi for incorporation into the record. To supplement Mr. Kapahi's letter, we note that failure to incorporate feasible mitigation is a fatal flaw under CEQA. Here,the County could and should require Love's to purchase air emission offsets to reduce the NOx emissions from the Project as the payment of the Air District's fee is not sufficient to mitigate the air emission impacts down to less than significant. Additionally,the Final EIR states that County need not consider Idle Air as a mitigation measure for the NOx impact because the Air District's Indirect Source Rule fee will reduce the Project's NOx limits to less than significant.This is clearly not the case. As outlined in Mr. Kapahi's letter,the payment of a general fee without any linkage to relevant Project mitigation is insufficient to reduce a significant impact to a less than significant impact. Additionally, the County cannot make a finding that the Idle Air solution is infeasible given the Love's Travel Stop in Ripon, California utilizes Idle Air. Finally, the County's statement of overriding considerations is not supported by substantial evidence. For instance,the County cites the Project's creation of new employment opportunities for local residents as a tradeoff for accepting two significant and unavoidable traffic impacts on the I-5 ramps under the Existing Plus Project conditions and Cumulative Plus Project conditions.However,the statement does not identify how many jobs would be created,