The areas of the Sierra Club”s environmental concerns and the already accomplished resolutions are as follows.
Air Quality ? First, the Lake County Air Quality Management District agreed with the City”s assessment that the impacts on air quality by the Lowe”s project would be mitigated to less than significant. Second, the carbon monoxide (CO) emissions have decreased by 50 percent between 1990 and 2008. Additionally, an analysis meeting state requirements was done showing that greenhouse gasses would be decreased as much as possible. The Lowe”s store would actually exceed the state”s energy saving requirements by 20 percent. Greenhouse gasses also would be reduced when people shop locally, instead of driving to Santa Rosa or Ukiah for building materials.
Traffic ? A traffic study was completed by a registered traffic engineer and a total of $2.1 million in mitigation measures were required and built into the project to provide the improvements necessary to solve the traffic and circulation problems identified by the study. This is exactly what an environmental review is intended to accomplish ? the mitigation of impacts.
Urban Decay ? The City of Clearlake is very aware of its status and actually has significantly more blight than urban decay. Blight is more severe than urban decay and the lawsuit will actually increase it because there is very likely to be an increase in crime with fewer police officers and more unabated public nuisance properties because of the elimination of the code enforcement program. Additionally, the elimination of the planning department will mean significant degradation of services to new businesses attempting to locate here. The City adequately addressed the potential for urban decay.
Although the above items are the ones listed in the lawsuit, another substantially different set of reasons is outlined in the Sierra Club”s position paper, available at their Website ? redwood.sierraclub.org/lake. Most of the items in the position paper are economic issues which would not be covered under CEQA and so would not be addressed in an EIR. Therefore the filing of a lawsuit requesting an EIR unnecessarily negates the time and effort that the City of Clearlake has devoted to creating a more livable city for its residents and begs the question ? what is actually behind this lawsuit if it is not really environmental?
Susanne Scholz is a resident of Clearlake.
