Housing Element Environmental Impact Report
Background on CEQA
The California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) was modeled after the National Environmental Protection Act (“NEPA”) and was adopted in 1970 and signed into law by Governor Reagan. This review and evaluation were created as an informational tool to help decision-makers understand the potential impacts of their decisions. Under these regulations, even if there is an impact – it does not mean the project cannot move forward, but rather mitigations should be incorporated into the project to offset these impacts. Acknowledgement of these impacts and mitigations requires the City Council’s adoption of a “statement of overriding considerations”.
What is an Environmental Impact Report (EIR)?
An EIR contains in-depth studies of potential impacts, measures to reduce or avoid those impacts, and an analysis of alternatives to the project. A key feature of the CEQA process is the opportunity for the public to review and provide input on both Negative Declarations and EIRs.
There are two kinds of EIRs:
Program EIR: allowed under CEQA and used to evaluate a plan or program that has multiple components or actions that are related either geographically, through application of rules or regulations, or as logical parts of a long-term plan. This is the type of EIR that will be conducted for the Housing Element of the General Plan.
Project-level EIR: examines the environmental impacts of a specific development project. This type of EIR focuses primarily on the changes in the environment that would result from the development project, and examines all phases of the project including planning, construction, and operation. Think of this as being a report on the impacts for a new housing development.
CEQA is a Decision-Making Tool
The EIR will not make a recommendation on any scenario or alternative, and is intended to inform public agency decision makers and the public about potential impacts of the Housing Element Update, possible ways to minimize significant impacts, and reasonable alternatives.
The Housing Element Update EIR will contain a project description, including maps of the City and the region, a general description of the changes that are needed to update the City’s current Housing Element, objectives of the project, and approval actions required for adoption of the Housing Element Update. The EIR will analyze the impacts associated with these two scenarios established by City Council as well as presenting a number of other alternatives and will be circulated as a Draft EIR for public comment prior to finalization.
Why make decisions based on the Draft EIR instead of the Final EIR?
The Draft EIR (or DEIR) contains the complete environmental analysis for the Housing Element. While all the information needed is included in the Draft, it’s considered draft as it is available for public comment. Public comments are accepted during a public review period and the EIR becomes finalized once responses to public comment have been incorporated into the document and it has been adopted by the City Council.
Using CEQA for Decision-Making
GPAC will use the information in the EIR to assist in making decisions. As previously stated, because an EIR analysis indicates a project may have impacts does not mean the project cannot move forward, but rather mitigations should be incorporated into the project to offset these impacts. This information is one piece of the whole puzzle and can help to understand trade-offs of the choices to be made.
The City’s public comment period for the Draft EIR will run from February 18 through April 18, 2022.
Those interested in commenting on the Draft EIR may:
Submit written comments to GeneralPlan@LoveLafayette.org through April 18, 2022
Attend the public hearing on the Draft EIR at the Planning Commission on Monday, March 7, 2022 and/or Monday April 4, 2022
To stay abreast of this and other topics before the City, please sign-up for Lafayette’s publications and e-notifications to receive meeting notices via e-mail by visiting www.LoveLafayette.org/city-hall/e-notification and selecting “General Plan Update”
What is being studied?
A program-level EIR is used to analyze adoption of planning documents like the Housing Element that will govern future development, and is more general than a project-specific EIR because the precise location, design, and timing of the individual development projects that will implement the Housing Element are unknown. The EIR covers a number of environmental topics, including: Aesthetics, Air Quality, Biological Resources, Cultural Resources, Energy, Geology, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Hazardous Materials, Hydrology and Water Quality, Land Use and Planning, Noise, Population and Housing, Public Services and Recreation, Transportation, Tribal Cultural Resources, Utilities and Service Systems, and Wildfire.
Program EIRs also provide an opportunity for adoption of program-wide mitigation measures needed to address potentially significant physical environmental impacts of the plan.
CEQA Study Areas - approved by City Council in April 2021 (Click the image above to view this map)
How does the EIR analyze traffic impacts?
In 2013, Governor Brown signed Senate Bill (“SB”) 743 (Steinberg), which created a process to change the way that transportation impacts of development projects are analyzed under California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) SB 743 eliminates the requirement to count traffic delay (measured using “Level of Service” or LOS standards) as an environmental impact under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). SB 743 requires that a new metric be adopted when evaluating those impacts, to better align with state climate policy and sustainability goals. The new metric recommended in state-level guidance is vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
The biggest difference between what VMT and LOS measure is that VMT measures how much actual auto travel a proposed project would create on California roadways whereas LOS measures the traffic congestion levels on those roadways.
The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) and the California Natural Resources Agency has certified and adopted changes to the CEQA Guidelines that identify Vehicle Miles Traveled (“VMT”) as the most appropriate metric to evaluate a project’s transportation impacts. The overall level of auto use, as measured using VMT, is much more closely related to carbon emissions and air pollution than local traffic levels are. The Contra Costa County Transportation Authority (CCTA) is setting out to better define, analyze, and develop options to mitigate the environmental effects of transportation projects throughout Contra Costa.
Housing Element - Environmental Impact Report Timeline
Notice of Preparation posted at the State Clearing House: August 2, 2021 (SCH# 2021080038)
Public scoping period: August 2 through September 2, 2021
Public scoping meeting at the Planning Commission: August 16, 2021
Draft EIR public comment period: February 18 through April 18, 2022 (submit comments to GeneralPlan@lovelafayette.org)
Public hearing on the Draft EIR at the Planning Commission: March 7, 2022 & April 4, 2022
Responses to comments issued and Final EIR certified: projected July 2022
Visit LoveLafayette.org/CEQA to view the Draft Environmental Impact Report.
Click here for a summary document of the Draft Environmental Report
For more information on CEQA and the Housing Element, please visit the CEQA page of this website.