5 - PUBLIC COMMENT_DAVIS (SAFER)

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SAFER Comments on Addendum to One Broadway Plaza EIR March 30, 2020 Page 6 of 11 (CARB), significant emissions of formaldehyde may still occur. The residential component of the Project will have significant impacts on air quality and health risks by emitting cancer-causing levels of formaldehyde into the air that will expose workers and residents to cancer risks well in excess of SCAQMD’s threshold of significance. A 2018 study by Chan et al. (attached as Exhibit A) measured formaldehyde levels in new structures constructed after the 2009 CARB rules went into effect. Even though new buildings conforming to CARB’s ATCM had a 30% lower median indoor formaldehyde concentration and cancer risk than buildings built prior to the enactment of the ATCM, the levels of formaldehyde will still pose cancer risks greater than 100 in a million, well above the 10 in one million significance threshold established by the SCAQMD. Based on expert comments submitted on other similar projects and assuming all the Project’s residential unit materials are compliant with the California Air Resources Board’s formaldehyde airborne toxics control measure, future residents and employees using the Project will be exposed to a cancer risk from formaldehyde greater than the SCAQMD’s CEQA significance threshold for airborne cancer risk of 10 per million. The City has a duty to investigate issues relating to a project’s potential environmental impacts. (See County Sanitation Dist. No. 2 v. County of Kern, (2005) 127 Cal.App.4th 1544, 1597–98. [“[U]nder CEQA, the lead agency bears a burden to investigate potential environmental impacts.”].) “If the local agency has failed to study an area of possible environmental impact, a fair argument may be based on the limited facts in the record. Deficiencies in the record may actually enlarge the scope of fair argument by lending a logical plausibility to a wider range of inferences.” (Sundstrom v. County of Mendocino (1988) 202 Cal.App.3d 296, 311.) Given the lack of study conducted by the City on the health risks posed by emissions of formaldehyde from new residential projects, a fair argument exists that such emissions from the Project may pose significant health risks. As a result, the City must prepare an EIR to analyze and mitigate this potentially significant impact. The failure to address the project’s formaldehyde emissions is contrary to the California Supreme Court’s decision in California Building Industry Ass’n v. Bay Area Air Quality Mgmt. Dist. (2015) 62 Cal.4th 369, 386 (“CBIA”). At issue in CBIA was whether the Air District could enact CEQA guidelines that advised lead agencies that they must analyze the impacts of adjacent environmental conditions on a project. The Supreme Court held that CEQA does not generally require lead agencies to consider the environment’s effects on a project. CBIA, 62 Cal.4th at 800- 801. However, to the extent a project may exacerbate existing adverse environmental conditions at or near a project site, those would still have to be considered pursuant to CEQA. Id. at 801 (“CEQA calls upon an agency to evaluate existing conditions in order to assess whether a project could exacerbate hazards that are already present”). In so holding, the Court expressly held that CEQA’s statutory language required lead agencies to disclose and analyze “impacts on a project’s users or residents that arise from the project’s effects on the environment.” Id. at 800 (emphasis added).)