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t Chairman and Members of wc:Commission San Joaquin County Planning Commission October 5, 2000 Page 4 • As a result of the creation of the CSD traffic impact fee scheme and the erroneous information in the proposed Negative Declaration concerning fair share, degree of impacts,and misleading implication that significant transportation impacts of the Project will be mitigated,the Negative Declaration violates CEQA. • The Project's "mitigation"program,which fails to fund required improvements and infrastructure necessary to serve the Project violates CEQA's requirements that mitigation be adopted and that a mitigation monitoring program be adopted t ensure that mitigation is undertaken as required by law. • The Project will have significant cumulative impacts in connection with other regional projects in the area, including the significant Tracy Hills and South Schulte projects approved by the City of Tracy in 1998 and 1999. The proposed Negative Declaration and the prior program EIRs prepared for the Mountain House development did not address the significant impacts from either of these two projects,and furthermore the prior E1Rs do not address additional impacts of other developments in the nearby City of Tracy. • The Project's impacts to species and habitat have been inadequately analyzed and proposed mitigation for impacts has been deferred in violation of CEQA. Purported mitigation includes participation in a habitat conservation plan(the SJMSCP)that has not yet even been adopted. The Project mitigation measure requires unspecified property acquisition to mitigate impacts if the STMSCP is no adopted in 5 years. The specific measures proposed for mitigation of impacts to species and habitat must be identified and analyzed as part of the Project,not stated as an afterthought if a habitat conservation plan is not adopted. • The staffruport and Negative Declaration proposed biological mitigation measures improperly defer study of impacts to endangered or listed species until the"pre-construction"phase, in violation of CEQA. The studies should be conducted first,before decisions to approve or cagy out the Project are made, not afterwards. There are numerous CEQA appellate court decisions finding that after the fact surveys and analysis violate CEQA. i • There is no substantial evidence in the record to support a finding that impacts to species and habitat have or can be mitigated,or that the identified mitigation proposals are even feasible.Moreover,the deferral of the analysis of impacts demonstrates that the record does not contain evidence that impacts will be mitigated,since the nature and extent of impacts has not even been properly analyzed.