(The letter below is referenced in another letter that CGF sent yesterday, so I’m posting it here. -Brian) October 1, 2007 Steven Turner City of Palo Alto Re: Scoping comments for the StanfordMedicalCenter and Shopping Center Expansion EIR Dear Steven; The Committee for Green Foothills submits the following comments for scoping the EIR for the...
CEQA
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Action Alert! Oppose proposed legislation that would create 125 unplanned loopholes in California’s environmental law!
(The Action Alert below was sent out to CGF members and supporters. We will also put it up on the Action Alert section of the CGF website, but I’m reproducing it here so people can see it early. -Brian) Dear Four identical bills in California‘s Assembly and Senate have the goal of exempting 125 public agency and private...
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Letter to California legislature opposing bills that would drive 125 holes through CEQA
(CGF is sending the following letter to members of the California Assembly and State Senate. -Brian) February 23, 2010 The Honorable Lou Correa The Honorable Dave Cogdill State Legislature State Legislature California State Capitol, Room 5052 CaliforniaState Capitol, Room 5097 Sacramento, CA95814 Sacramento, CA95814 The Honorable Charles Calderon The Honorable Brian Nestande State Legislature State...
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News Alert: Success in Gilroy and great progress in San Jose!
(CGF sent out the News Alert below about victories in Gilroy and San Jose. -Brian) We’ve had great news in Gilroy and San Jose that we want to share with supporters. All four sprawl proposals in Gilroy that we’ve been fighting have now been defeated or withdrawn! Since 2008, Committee for Green Foothills fought the...
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Cal Attorney General Comments on why climate impacts must be addressed under CEQA
I thought I’d reference a letter that the California Department of Justice wrote to the City of San Jose two years ago, explaining that the City couldn’t duck its responsibility under the California Environmental Quality Act to determine whether climate change impacts were significant. The letter remains a useful tool so I wanted to make...
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Comments on Gilroy expansion SEIRs for Lucky Day, Gavilan, and Wren Investor proposals
The Committee for Green Foothills submitted comment letters below (click “Read More” to see the full letters) on proposed outward expansions of the City of Gilroy. There’s no reason to do this, and the environmental documentation is inadequate. The letters reference appendices that I haven’t attached due to length, but I can send them to...
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Brian’s unreadable notes on Public Records Act and Preliminary Draft EIRs
Several years ago, we persuaded Santa Clara County to end a practice of sharing preliminary versions of EIRs with developers while denying access to the rest of us – a practice that skewed the EIRs and gave developers a chance to argue their case behind closed doors while the community at large was excluded. I...
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Winning the Los Gatos lawsuit!
Just a quick note – we learned today that Judge Nichols ruled in our favor on a lawsuit over Los Gatos’ decision approving a development that harms Los Gatos Creek. Great news! We’ll have more about it tomorrow. -Brian
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Excellent Metro article on The San Jose Process
This Metro article does a great job of discussing the systematic problem San Jose has in conducting environmental reviews: The thing is, the science of predicting environmental impacts that haven’t actually happened yet is highly interpretive. “A lot of areas in EIRs are fuzzy,” says Gary Binger, urban planning professor at the University of California...
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More KQED Commentary on the "San Jose Process", and a response by Mayor Reed
KQED’s Forum program yesterday followed up Tuesday’s Perspectives piece on how San Jose shouldn’t give developers control over intial aspects of environmental review. You can listen to the Forum program here. Our issue comes up in the second half of the show. When I heard yesterday morning that Mayor Reed would be on the show,...