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GRA,SSETTI ENVM0NMENTAL MULTING I. INTR D CTION' f BACKGROUND ' f The City of Stockton's Austin Road Landfill has been operated by the City Public Works Department since 1960 to dispose of a major portion of the City's Municipal Solid Waste. In the early 1990s,the City of Stockton initiated a project to expand the landfill's capacity: The City developed an expansion plan, and completed and certified an Environmental Impact Report on the proposed expansion on September 6, 1994(City of Stockton EIR 2-90, State Clearinghouse No. 90020718). Necessary permits were obtained F from the Regional Water Quality Control Board,Integrated Waste Management Board,and US Army Corps of Engineers,and the expansion is included'in the Siting Element of the San Joaquin Countywide Integrated Waste Management Plan(CIWMP),dated April 1996. However,while the landfill expansion was initiated,it was not completely'implemented. # The City of Stockton now proposes to sell the permitted landfill(including the expansion option and the permits already obtained)to a private solid waste management firm. Currently,the landfill site is a non- contiguous City island since it is owned and operated by the City. When transferred to private ownership, the landfill will revert to the jurisdiction of San Joaquin County,because it will no longer fulfill the legal { requirement of City ownership or of use for public purposes. Thus,the proposed private ownership and private operation of the expanded landfill site will require xpan q re a County Use Permit, General Plan Amendment,and zone reclassification. With the exception of these County approvals,the other required permits for the landfill expansion have been obtained,and would remain in effect. F t Therefore,pursuant to.the California Environmental Quality Act(CEQA),the projects addressed by this Supplemental EIR are the County's issuance of the Use Permit,General Plan Amendment,and zone ' reclassification for the project, as well as necessary revisions to the City of Stockton's General Plan to reflect transfer of the facility from City to County jurisdiction. The County of San Joaquin, Community Development Department is acting as Lead Agency for the environmental review of the project. PURPOSE OF THIS SUPPLEMENT CEQA recognizes that between the date that a project is approved and the date a project is implemented, F one or more of the following may occur: 1)the scope of the project may change; 2)the environmental setting in which the project would occur is changed;3)certain environmental laws,regulations,or policies may change, and/or;4)previously unknown information relevant to environmental effects of a F project may come to light. Should these occur,CEQA requires a lead agency evaluate these changes to determine their significance with respect to potential environmental effects. The proposed expansion project has not changed substantially from that analyzed in the certified 1994 EIR;however,certain background conditions may have substantially changed since that date,and the proposed realignment of I the North Branch of the South Fork of Little Johns Creek and the jurisdiction and land use approvals required for project implementation have changed. The San Joaquin County Community Development Department initiated a two-stage review of the changes to the project setting to determine if new or changed environmental impacts may have resulted. 1 Grassetti Environmental Consulting(GECo)reviewed relevant data and prepared an Initial Study updating the 1994 EIR The Initial Study identified issues where no changes,or only minor changes, occurred to environmental or regulatory conditions, and focused these issues out of further analysis. This was the case for most of the topics addressed in the Initial Study. In addition, the Initial Study confirmed the 1994 EIR's findings that the project would result in significant unmitigable impacts to visual quality and cumulative air quality. It also found that the 1994 EIR's conclusion of significant land use impact f x F