The Cristallago project, which would put 650 houses, 325 resort units and an 18-hole golf course onto undeveloped land outside the North Lakeport Community Growth Boundary, has been under consideration in various guises since 2005, and will finally come before the Board of Supervisors at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
A number of serious environmental effects have been identified. To mention only a few of the most significant, the project will require the disturbance of one-half million cubic yards of soil and rock, much of it asbestos-laden serpentine. Nearly a hundred acres of oak woodlands will be destroyed, with no mitigation beyond the planting of saplings that cannot even begin to resemble the lost habitat for generations. Since appropriate preliminary surveys have not yet been conducted for either biological or cultural resources, the potential loss of rare plants and hitherto undiscovered archeological sites is impossible to estimate.
The intense darkness of the night skies and equally intense silence of this rural neighborhood will be lost forever. Increased traffic will burden adjacent streets, and add to the load in downtown Lakeport and elsewhere in a manner that has not been analyzed. Six hundred acre-feet of Clear Lake water ? nearly a quarter of the entire Community Service Area 21 allocation ? will be used to irrigate a golf course. Possible sedimentation impacts on Scotts Creek and Lyons Creek, and by extension on Clear Lake itself, have not yet been fully investigated.
Worst of all, the growth pattern for the whole North Lakeport region will be distorted: rather than expanding in the orderly manner prescribed by sound planning principles and defined by a Community Growth Boundary, development will leapfrog out into open countryside adjacent to ongoing agricultural operations. Cristallago is a poster child for sprawl, and the antithesis of modern smart growth principles.
Nor does the analysis provided by the EIR offer the Board of Supervisors a sound basis for reaching a decision. Many of its defects stem from an inherent structural confusion between a “project” and a “programmatic” EIR, which has resulted in analysis of many highly significant impacts being deferred under the pretext of being programmatic, with others evaluated on a project level, while the distinction between the two is never made clear. Several specific inadequacies are particularly glaring.
Water supply: Neither possible conflicts with the obligation to supply water to the Geysers nor effects of using Clear Lake water for golf course irrigation are evaluated.
Traffic: Both cumulative impact analysis and proposed impact fees are inadequate.
Air Quality: The EIR unreasonably finds cumulative contributions to greenhouse gases to be insignificant, contrary to State of California standards, and it disregards comments from the Air Quality Management District warning that cumulative impacts from this project could result in the loss of attainment status for the air basin as a whole, meaning among other consequences a requirement for annual smog inspections.
Cultural and biological resources: Both preliminary investigations and proposed mitigations are inadequate.
Alternatives analysis: Essential information about land use conflicts is not provided, even though these impacts have been identified as significant and unavoidable.
General Plan inconsistencies: The EIR unreasonably fails to admit many policy inconsistencies that were identified by planning staff and members of the public.
Some of these environmental impacts are still subject to debate ? and if the Board of Supervisors does not reject the project outright it should allow that debate to continue by decertifying the EIR, substantively addressing the many questions that have been raised, and recirculating it for public review ? but unquestionably “significant and unavoidable” impacts have been identified to scenic views, to woodland habitat, and to surrounding land uses. A finding of “overriding considerations” will thus be a necessary pre-condition to project approval, and such a finding cannot reasonably be supported.
It has been repeatedly asserted that Cristallago would provide an economic engine not only for the Lakeport area but also for the whole of Lake County. This assertion, dubious even during the unprecedented housing bubble that prevailed at the time of the original application, has become absurd. Part II will run Tuesday.
Victoria Brandon is a representative of the Lake County Sierra Group.
