3 - The Bowery_PUBLIC COMMENT_RAMSEY

Home Browse Search

City of Santa Ana – The Bowery May 11, 2020 Page 6 of 28 The FEIR makes numerous modifications to the described Project including changes to the layout of the Project, the uses of the commercial space, landscaping and the ratio of required parking spaces that the Project will require 2 parking spaces per residential unit. (FEIR at 3-3.) The Project’s environmental review process is deficient since it fails to maintain a C. The FEIR’s Modifications to the Project Description, Environmental Baseline, Hazards and Traffic / Transportation Analysis Require and Recirculation Section 21092.1 of the California Public Resources Code requires that “[w]hen significant new information is added to an environmental impact report after notice has been given pursuant to Section 21092 … but prior to certification, the public agency shall give notice again pursuant to Section 21092, and consult again pursuant to Sections 21104 and 21153 before certifying the environmental impact report” in order to give the public a chance to review and comment upon the information. (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5.) Significant new information includes “changes in the project or environmental setting as well as additional data or other information” that “deprives the public of a meaningful opportunity to comment upon a substantial adverse environmental effect of the project or a feasible way to mitigate or avoid such an effect (including a feasible project alternative).” (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5(a).) Examples of significant new information requiring recirculation include “new significant environmental impacts from the project or from a new mitigation measure,” “substantial increase in the severity of an environmental impact,” “feasible project alternative or mitigation measure considerably different from others previously analyzed” as well as when “the draft EIR was so fundamentally and basically inadequate and conclusory in nature that meaningful public review and comment were precluded.” (Id.) An agency has an obligation to recirculate an environmental impact report for public notice and comment due to “significant new information” regardless of whether the agency opts to include it in a project’s environmental impact report. (Cadiz Land Co. v. Rail Cycle (2000) 83 Cal.App.4th 74, 95 [finding that in light of a new expert report disclosing potentially significant impacts to groundwater supply “the EIR should have been revised and recirculated for purposes of informing the public and governmental agencies of the volume of groundwater at risk and to allow the public