Fresno City Council
December 18, 2025

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1 2
Table of Contents
EIR Circulation: July 14 – August 28, 2023 ...................................................... Pages 3-360 EIR Partial Recirculation: October 3 – November 17, 2023 ........................... Pages 361-372 EIR Full Recirculation: February 7 – March 24, 2025 .................................. Pages 373-1375

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3 From:

To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Annalisa Perea; Mike Karbassi; Miguel Arias; Tyler Maxwell; Luis Chavez; Garry Bredefeld; Nelson Esparza; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Mayor Subject: In opposition to SEDA
Date: Monday, August 28, 2023 11:51:44 AM
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The first objective documented by the SEDA-EIR is to "accommodate between 40,000 and 45,000 dwelling units". The population of the State of California has now declined by close to 1 million people over the last two years. This population decline was not forecasted. According to a June 2023 LA Times survey, 40% of the people in California are seriously considering leaving. The EIR and SEDA plan have failed to recognize the quickly changing current population statistics and need to be reconsidered in light of the potential for this trend to continue.

1. Have you accounted for an un-forecasted decline or flat population for Fresno? What will be the taxpayer and environmental cost of annexation on every key element of the SEDA plan if Fresno's population declines along with current California trend?

2. If Fresno's population does decline or stays flat, how would this annexation still make sense? Would you allow massive housing development without the new people to fill it? Would it result in people abandoning city apartments for new housing? Might this cause Fresno home resale values to plummet and the inner city to crumble? Or would it just result in abandoned housing projects spoiling our prime agricultural land....Like the old Running Horse project?

3. What alternatives have you considered should the California population trend continue? Would it be wiser to focus on investing the state’s 250 million dollar gift to improve infrastructure inside the current city limits instead of promoting this urban sprawl; potentially without the population to support it? Would it make better sense to postpone this plan for a few years to understand 4 if the current population trends will continue?
Given the uncertainty about California's declining population trend, a massive city expansion via annexation is too risky. Ignoring this possibility and continuing with outdated population assumptions is simply irresponsible. It has the potential for a huge wasted investment that only benefits a few real estate developers at the expense of prime agricultural land, county property owners and residents, and the people of the City Fresno.

Virtually every resident and property owner in this area is against the plan.

Please let us vote on it. Or are you afraid of what we’ll say with our votes? Alan Cederquist
5 6
7 8
“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment” DISTRICT 6 OFFICE
1352 WEST OLIVE AVENUE |P.O. BOX 12616 |FRESNO, CA 93778-2616 (559) 981-7284 | FAX (559) 488-4195 | TTY 711
www.dot.ca.gov
August 25, 2023
FRE-180-64.104
Southeast Development Area
Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR)
SCH #2022020486
GTS #: https://ld-igr-gts.dot.ca.gov/district/6/report/28801

SENT VIA EMAIL
Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner III
City of Fresno
Planning and Development Department
2600 Fresno Street, Room 3065
Fresno, CA 93721
Dear Mx. Asadoorian:

Caltrans has completed our review of the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) in the City of Fresno.

The proposed development area covers nearly 9,000 acres. It is bounded on the north by the Gould Canal, on the east by McCall and Highland Avenues, on the south by Jensen and North Avenues, and on the west by Locan, Temperance, and Minnewawa Avenues.

The mission of Caltrans is to provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment. The Local Development Review (LDR) process reviews land use projects and plans through the lenses of our mission and state planning priorities of infill, conservation, and travel-efficient development. To ensure a safe and efficient transportation system, we encourage early consultation and coordination with local jurisdictions and project proponents on all development projects that utilize the multimodal transportation network.

Caltrans provides the following comments consistent with the State’s smart mobility goals that support a vibrant economy and sustainable communities:

DEIR-Traffic Impact Analysis (TIA) Comments:

The concerns below should have been adequately addressed in the DEIR or TIA. While the DEIR is a comprehensive planning document, it is recommended that the DEIR endorse procedures that address traffic safety on the State Highway System. Caltrans did provide a comment letter dated March 18, 2022, during the Notice of Preparation with a public comment period from February 22, 2022, to March 25, 2022, which is included in Appendix A of the DEIR. Comments one through eight presented herein are included in the attached letter dated March 18, 2022, and are as follows:
9 Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian – Southeast Development Area Draft EIR August 25, 2023

“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment”

1. This development region will likely add vehicles to the State Road (SR) 180 interchanges at Clovis Avenue, Fowler Avenue, and Temperance Avenue. As a result, there may be significant speed differences between the off-ramp queues and the freeway mainline. Each of these interchanges is recommended for a peakhour ramp queuing analysis to assess potential impacts. This development area is also expected to add vehicles to the SR 180 intersections at De Wolf Avenue, Highland Avenue, and McCall Avenue. The result may be significant speed differentials between the turn lane queues and the through-lane traffic caused by insufficient left-turn lanes or intersection control. It is recommended that a peakhour queue analysis be completed at each of these intersections to determine potential impacts.

2. It is recommended that the lead agency include a traffic safety review that examines new pedestrian and bicycling desire lines, multimodal conflict locations, and changes in traffic composition (such as an increase in bicyclists or pedestrians, where features such as shoulders or sidewalks may not exist or are inconsistent with facility design). This analysis should include the SR 180 interchanges at Fowler Avenue and Temperance Avenue and the SR 180 intersections at De Wolf Avenue, Highland Avenue, and McCall Avenue. For future residential development, Caltrans recommends that project proponents consider working with the City to convert a portion of the planned residential units to affordable housing.

3. The City should develop policies for installing Level 2 EV charging stations in singleand multi-family residential units and DC Fast Charging EV charging stations in retail, commercial, park, and public facilities.

4. Caltrans recommends that the Project use multimodal methods, such as those derived from transit-oriented development (TOD), to minimize the traffic-related impacts of future developments. Active Transportation Plans and Smart Growth efforts support the state’s 2050 Climate goals. Caltrans helps reduce VMT and GHG emissions by increasing people's likelihood of using and benefiting from a multimodal transportation network.

5. Early involvement with Caltrans is strongly encouraged for future projects affecting the state right-of-way.

The Caltrans Traffic Safety Bulletin 20-02-R1: Interim Local Development Intergovernmental Review Safety Review Practitioners Guidance provides direction on analyzing the safety impacts on the State Highway System by proposed land use projects. Subsequent projects included in this development area should incorporate this guidance.

VMT Analysis Comments:

The preparer of the VMT Analysis concluded that the VMT per Service Population in the SEDA project region will fall from 45.72 to 5.07 when the project is completed in 2035.

The move from a primarily rural location (as the SEDA project area is now) to a developed urbanized mixed-use site results in a significant drop in VMT. Additionally, the VMT Analysis preparer claims that this is attributable to residents and employees 10 Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian – Southeast Development Area Draft EIR August 25, 2023

“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment” being better connected to jobs and services within the SEDA project area, reducing travel times on both the production (residential) and attraction (commercial) sides.

Conversely, the Year 2035 No Project Conditions VMT for the SEDA Project Area is 371,397 per Table 7. Table 10 presents the Year 2035 With Project Conditions VMT for the SEDA Project Area is 974,369. This translates to a net VMT increase of 162.35%.

In theory, the relationship between production (residential) and attraction (commercial) may minimize VMT at full buildout; nevertheless, a typical land-use plan buildout begins with the production (residential), followed by the attraction (commercial). The concern is that the attraction (commercial) will develop slowly over time, causing a VMT impact in the SEDA region.

Based on our review of the VMT Analysis, we recommend that the EIR preparer address the safety concerns by undertaking a peak hour ramp queue analysis at the interchanges/intersections on SR 180 from Clovis to McCall Avenues, as stated previously.

The SEDA Specific Plan should also explore several possible VMT migration strategies, such as:

1. Creation of regional-level VMT bank or VMT exchange program;

2. Improved Public Transportation: Expanding and enhancing public transit options to encourage more people to use buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation instead of driving individual cars;

3. Enhance parallel routes near SR 180, such as Belmont Avenue or Kings Canyon Road. For example, the plan is to extend the Bus Rapid as cited in Policy UF-5.2. In addition, the City may consider signal synchronization along the corridors, if not already.

4. Active Transportation: Creating infrastructure and promoting walking, biking, and other forms of active transportation, especially for short distance trips;

5. Telecommuting and Flexible Work Arrangements: Encouraging remote work options to reduce the need for daily commuting;

6. Carpooling and Ridesharing: Promoting carpooling and ridesharing initiatives to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles on the local road system and highways;

7. Transportation Demand Management (TDM): Implementing policies and programs that encourage the use of alternative transportation options and reduce the reliance on single-occupancy vehicles; and,

8. Incentives and Subsidies: Providing incentives, subsidies, or tax breaks for using public transportation or purchasing electric or fuel-efficient vehicles.

The SEDA area may aim to establish more sustainable and efficient transportation systems while addressing environmental and social concerns related to increasing vehicle use by implementing these and other VMT mitigation strategies. 11 Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian – Southeast Development Area Draft EIR August 25, 2023

“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment” If you have any other questions, please call Keyomi Jones, Transportation Planner, at (559) 981-7284 or [email protected].

Sincerely,
David Padilla, Branch Chief,
Transportation Planning – North
Attachment: Caltrans comment letter March 18, 2022
C: Sophia Pagoulatos, Planning Manager, City of Fresno
State Clearinghouse
12 Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian – Southeast Development Area Draft EIR August 25, 2023

“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment”

ATTACHMENT
Caltrans comment letter March 18, 2022
13 14
Shawn Monk, Planner- NOTICE OF PREPARATION, EIR
March 18, 2022

“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment” Avenue should be included in this analysis.

4. Future development(s) should conduct a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) study for projects that may substantially induce Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). Pedestrian and bicycle facilities within the project site should be considered in this study. The project proponents should also consider coordinating with nearby planned bike networks for a larger active transportation network. The City should consider creating a VMT Mitigation Impact Fee to help reduce potential impacts on the State Highway System.

5. For future residential development, Caltrans recommends project proponents consider working with the City to convert a portion of the planned residential units to affordable housing units.

6. The City should establish policies for the installation of Level 2 Electric Vehicle (EV) charging for single- and multi-family residential units as well as DC Fast Charging EV charging stations for retail, commercial, park and public facilities.

7. Caltrans recommends the Project implement multimodal strategies, such as those that originate from Transit-oriented development (TOD), in an effort to further reduce future projects’ traffic related impacts.

8. Active Transportation Plans and Smart Growth efforts support the state’s 2050 Climate goals. Caltrans supports reducing VMT and GHG emissions in ways that increase the likelihood people will use and benefit from a multimodal transportation network.

9. Early engagement with Caltrans is highly requested for future projects that would impact state right-of-way. Furthermore, prior to initiating the traffic study, please include Caltrans in the scoping.

If you have any other questions, please call or email Edgar Hernandez at (559) 981-7436 or [email protected].

Sincerely,
David Padilla, Branch Chief
Transportation Planning – North
Sincerely,
15 Cb 6
August 24, 2023
City of Fresno
c/o Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
2600 Fresno Street, Third Floor, Room 3065
Fresno, California 93721
RE: “Program Environmental Impact Report, Fresno Southeast ĞǀĞůŽƉŵĞŶƚƌĞĂ^ƉĞĐŝĮĐWůĂŶWƌŽũĞĐƚ͕ŝƚLJŽĨFresno, Fresno County, California State Clearinghouse Number 2022020486”
Dear Ms. Asadoorian:
/ĐŽŶƚĞƐƚ^ĞĐƟŽŶϯ͘10 Hydrology and Water Quality for the following reasons:

The plan ĚŽĞƐĞdžƉůĂŝŶ>ĞǀĞů/ǁĂƚĞƌďƵƚŽīĞƌƐŶŽĞdžƉůĂŶĂƟŽŶĨŽƌ ǁŚĞƌĞ>ĞǀĞůϮǁĂƚĞƌǁŝůůĐŽŵĞĨƌŽŵĂŶĚŚŽǁƐƵĸĐŝĞŶƚƚŚĞ ĂŵŽƵŶƚǁŝůůďĞƚŽƐĞƌǀĞϰϱ͕ϬϬϬĂĚĚŝƟŽŶĂůŚŽƵƐĞƐ͘dŚĞƌĞŝƐĞǀĞƌLJ ŝŶĚŝĐĂƟŽŶƚŚĂƚ>ĞǀĞůϭǁĂƚĞƌǁŝůůŶŽƚďĞĂĚĞƋƵĂƚĞ͘WůĞĂƐĞĞdžƉůĂŝŶ͘ Sincerely,
Dr. Carol Bloesser
ZĞƟƌĞĚ&ƌĞƐŶŽhŶŝĮĞĚĚŵŝŶŝƐƚƌĂƚŽƌ
SEDA Area Property Owner
DĞŵďĞƌ^ŽƵƚŚĞĂƐƚWƌŽƉĞƌƚLJKǁŶĞƌ͛ƐƐƐŽĐŝĂƟŽŶ
cc: Fresno County Board of Supervisors
District 1: Brian Pacheco [email protected]
District 2: Steve Brandau [email protected]
District 3: Sal Quintero [email protected]
16 District 4: Buddy Mendes [email protected]
District 5: Nathan Magsig [email protected]
Fresno City Council Members
District1: Annalisa Perez [email protected]
District 2: Mike Karbassi [email protected]
District 3: Miguel Arias [email protected]
District 4: Tyler Maxwell [email protected]
District 5: Luis Chavez [email protected]
District 6: Garry Bredefeld [email protected]
District 7: Nelson Esparza [email protected]

Mayor Jerry Dyer [email protected]

17 Cb 7
August 24, 2023
City of Fresno
c/o Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
2600 Fresno Street, Third Floor, Room 3065
Fresno, California 93721
RE: “Program Environmental Impact Report, Fresno Southeast ĞǀĞůŽƉŵĞŶƚƌĞĂ^ƉĞĐŝĮĐWůĂŶWƌŽũĞĐƚ͕ŝƚLJŽĨFresno, Fresno County, California State Clearinghouse Number 2022020486”
Dear Ms. Asadoorian:
/ĐŽŶƚĞƐƚ^ĞĐƟŽŶϯ͘15 Public Services:

1. The plan shows regional, community, and neighborhood town centers plus many forms of increased housing. Nowhere in the ƉůĂŶŝƐƚŚĞƌĞĂŶLJĐŽŶƐŝĚĞƌĂƟŽŶĨŽƌĮƌĞƐƚĂƟŽŶƐŽƌƉŽůŝĐĞƐƚĂƟŽŶƐ͘ With developers ready to purchase any land they can for housing and retail, thesĞǁŝůůƉƌŽďĂďůLJďĞĨŽƌŐŽƩĞŶ͘tŚĂƚĂƌĞLJŽƵƌƉůĂŶƐ ĨŽƌĞƐƐĞŶƟĂůƐĞƌǀŝĐĞƐ͍
Sincerely,
Dr. Carol Bloesser
ZĞƟƌĞĚ&ƌĞƐŶŽhŶŝĮĞĚĚŵŝŶŝƐƚƌĂƚŽƌ
SEDA Area Property Owner
DĞŵďĞƌ^ŽƵƚŚĞĂƐƚWƌŽƉĞƌƚLJKǁŶĞƌ͛ƐƐƐŽĐŝĂƟŽŶ
cc: Fresno County Board of Supervisors
District 1: Brian Pacheco district [email protected]
District 2: Steve Brandau district [email protected]
18 District 3: Sal Quintero district [email protected]
District 4: Buddy Mendes district [email protected]
District 5: Nathan Magsig district [email protected]
Fresno City Council Members
District1: Annalisa Perez [email protected]
District 2: Mike Karbassi [email protected]
District 3: Miguel Arias [email protected]
District 4: Tyler Maxwell [email protected]
District 5: Luis Chavez [email protected]
District 6: Garry Bredefeld [email protected]
District 7: Nelson Esparza [email protected]

Mayor Jerry Dyer [email protected]

19 Main Office Phone:
310-798-2400
Direct Dial:
310-798-2400 x 1
Carstens, Black & Minteer LLP
2200 Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 318
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
www.cbcearthlaw.com
Douglas P. Carstens
Email Address:
[email protected]
August 28, 2023
City of Fresno
c/o Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
2600 Fresno Street
Third Floor, Room 3065
Fresno, CA 93721
Email: [email protected]
Re: Comments on Draft Program Environmental Impact Report for Fresno Southeast Development Area (SEDA) Specific Plan
Project City of Fresno, Fresno County, California State Clearinghouse Number 2022020486 dated July 14, 2023
Dear Ms. Asadoorian,
On behalf of the Sierra Club and the Central Valley Partnership, we submit the following comments on the Fresno Southeast Development Area (SEDA) Specific Plan project Draft EIR (DEIR). The SEDA project would be a massive development project with extensive impacts that must be carefully planned and mitigated. It has been accurately described as follows:
[the project will] transform nearly 9,000 acres southeast of Fresno into a new Clovis on Fancher Creek.

The project up for the city council’s vote will be one of the biggest suburban sprawl projects in Fresno’s history. The Dyer
administration’s plan includes 45,000 homes and up to 150,000 people, on a stretch of land that is currently a patchwork stretch of farmland, rural homesteads, two-lane country roads, and stop-signs.

Known as the Southeast Development Area (SEDA), the transformed community would rival the size of Clovis – 16 times the size of the Copper River project in northeast Fresno, and seven times as large 20 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

as Riverstone and Tesoro Viejo, the major new communities across the San Joaquin River in Madera.
(Weaver, Fresnoland, August 25, 2023, “Another Clovis, but in southeast Fresno? City moves forward on mega-development plans” , available at https://fresnoland.org/2023/08/25/city-of-fresno-eyes-seda/. ) As required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the City of Fresno (City) must address the impacts of this massive project, along with its cumulative impacts with other similar developments in the region.

CEQA has been described as a bill of rights for an environmental democracy.

It is intended to provide a “road map” and a “price tag” for proposed projects:

The CEQA process is intended to be a careful examination, fully open to the public, of the environmental consequences of a given project, covering the entire project, from start to finish. This examination is intended to provide the fullest information reasonably available upon which the decision makers and the public they serve can rely in determining whether or not to start the project at all, not merely to decide whether to finish it. The EIR is intended to furnish both the road map and the environmental price tag for a project, so that the decision maker and the public both know, before the journey begins, just where the journey will lead, and how much they-and the environment-will have to give up in order to take that journey. (NRDC v. City of Los Angeles (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th 268, 271.) Unfortunately, the SEDA EIR falls woefully short of providing the public and decisionmakers with sufficient information to evaluate and mitigate the project’s impacts. These deficiencies must be rectified and a legally adequate EIR recirculated for public review and comment.

A. Agricultural Resources and Forestry Resources Impacts are Not Sufficiently Mitigated.

The SEDA DEIR, in its Agricultural Resource and Forestry Resources section, identifies the amount of farmland threatened with conversion to urban uses. The Plan’s proposed development will effectively eliminate approximately 6,741 acres in agricultural production, which are specified as 2,475 acres of Prime Farmland, and approximately 1,352 acres of Farmland 21 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

of Statewide Importance, 1,189 acres of Farmland of local importance, and approximately 1,725 acres of Unique Farmland. (DEIR p. 3.2-16.) The prominent problem of the SEDA DEIR pertaining to agricultural resources is that its proposed farmland mitigation measures for these thousands of acres of farmland rely upon inadequate policies that have not been adequately implemented. When Fresno’s General Plan was adopted, farmland mitigation was perhaps the most contested and difficult policy of the entire document. Inevitably, after intense debate, the final 2014 Fresno General Plan contained key values and provisions that were structural in nature, including no sphere of influence extension, a prioritization of infill over greenfield development, and defining an easily implementable farmland mitigation policy.

Specific to the structural land use policies promoting farmland conservation, the 2014 Fresno General Plan stated, “Policies in the Plan will help preserve farmland by incentivizing new development within and adjacent to already-urbanized land, only extending public utilities to new development that adheres to the Plan, and not expanding the City’s SOI.”1 So, the proposed development of the Southeast Development Area effectively punctures the previously agreed upon sphere of influence boundary and violates the integrity of the city’s hoped for revitalization as it re-initiates a historic pattern of sprawl development.

The achievement of a farmland mitigation policy was another important outcome of the 2014 Fresno General Plan. Originally, this General Plan specified under policy RC-9-c that when farmland was converted to urban uses, the City of Fresno would “permanently protect an equal amount of similar farmland elsewhere through easement.” This simple, straightforward and implementable policy was consistent with other farmland mitigation programs that typically require mitigation at a 1:1 ratio on soils of similar quality under a conservation easement, however RC-9-c 1 Fresno General Plan Adopted: December 18, 2014, Resource Conservation and Resilience Chapter, Farmland Section 7.6, pg. 7-42. 22 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

was later amended in ways that made it more muddled, less definitive and more difficult to implement.2
Today, as cited in the SEDA DEIR, the Fresno General Plan policy RC9-c (the amended portion in italics) states:
“Farmland Preservation Program. In coordination with
regional partners or independently, establish a Farmland Preservation Program. When Prime Farmland, Unique
Farmland, or Farmland of Statewide Importance is converted to urban uses outside City limits, this program would require that the developer of such a project mitigate the loss of such farmland consistent with the requirements of CEQA. The Farmland
Preservation Program shall provide several mitigation options that may include but are not limited to the following: Restrictive Covenants or Deeds, In Lieu Fees, Mitigation Banks, Fee Title Acquisitions, Conservation Easements, Land Use Regulations, or any other mitigation method that is in compliance with the requirements of CEQA. The Farmland Preservation Program may be modeled after some of all of the programs described by the California Council of Land Trusts.”3
After a decade, the 2014 General Plan’s originally clear farmland mitigation policy has been amended, diluted, and as yet remains unimplemented. Even worse, its explicit direction to establish a “Farmland Preservation Program” remains incomplete. This reticence toward implementation erodes confidence that such measures will now be taken up within the Southeast Development Area’s Specific Plan.
2 The hearing to consider General Plan Amendment Application No. P18- 03553 and related Environmental Finding was initiated by the Fresno City Council on March 3, 2017 through Council Resolution No. 2017-61. The final resolution approved the General Plan Text Amendment No. P18-03553 amending Farmland Preservation Program RC-9-c.
3 Fresno General Plan Adopted: December 18, 2014, Resource Conservation and Resilience Chapter, Farmland Section 7.6, pg. 7-43. 23 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

Given the lack of compliance with earlier planning policy plans and directives related to farmland conservation, it is recommended that the City of Fresno institute a SEDA-specific urban growth boundary requiring fifty percent vote of city residents to all future proposed greenfield developments in the Plan Area. This would raise the level of planning diligence, democratic participation, and environment promoting policies as each future development project is considered. In addition, each future development proposal in the area should be authorized under a similarly constituted initiative process in authorizing community benefit agreements on each proposed development project to ensure its equity values can be programmatically achieved, such as in future apprenticeship programs and local hire mandates. Environmentally, community benefit agreements would better ensure that proposed “school and neighborhood gardens, community orchards, agricultural education centers and small farming operations in green belts and on the buffer edge” will be realized. (DEIR p. 3.2-17.) Both urban growth boundaries and community benefit agreements ensure resident-involved planning and democratic, participatory involvement through voter initiatives on each proposed future development projects within the Specific Plan area.

Specific to farmland mitigation, the SEDA DEIR inadequately identifies mitigation that can be expected to be meaningfully implemented. A proposed “Buffer District” is a much lesser threshold to breach in the future than an existing sphere of influence boundary in a general plan. Yet this is just the mitigation policy remedy being suggested in SEDA’s DEIR policy framework. (DEIR p. 3.2-17.) The proposed Buffer District is purely aspirational without explicit mechanisms to hold the line on future greenfield development and residential sprawl. Most troubling is that the SEDA EIR’s primary farmland mitigation policy proposal yet again relies upon the forever dormant 2014 Fresno General Plan policy RC-9-c guiding farmland mitigation, and MM AG-1.1 that was supposed to establish a Farmland Preservation Program (FPP), now planned to be initiated by 2025. (DEIR p.

3.2-15.)
Given the past lack of planning policy follow through, the SEDA EIR makes contingencies, “because the FPP has not yet been developed, the proposed project would implement project-specific MM AG-2, which requires all future development to mitigate the loss of Prime Farmland, Unique 24 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

Farmland, or Farmland of Statewide Importance, on a project-by-project basis before the initiation of construction or ground-disturbing activities.” (DEIR p. 3.2-17.) A project-by-project policy makes oversight of mitigation policy unworkable though it becomes necessary given the City of Fresno’s past reticence and resistance to mitigate for the loss of farmland.

B. Air Quality Impacts Would be Significant And are
Insufficiently Mitigated

1. Fresno’s Current Air Quality Situation is Dire and
Would be Worsened By the Project.

There is no dispute that the air quality in Fresno is abysmal. The prestigious American Lung Association’s annual report State of the Air 2023 lists Fresno as the fourth-most polluted city in the country for ozone4, and the second most polluted for short-term particulate pollution, and the third-most polluted city for year-round particle pollution5. The federal EPA classifies the San Joaquin Valley Air Basin, of which Fresno is a part, as in “extreme” nonattainment of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for ozone, and in “serious” nonattainment for fine particulates (PM2.5) (DEIR, PP. @@.). The San Joaquin Valley is one of only two air basins in the entire country classified as in “Extreme” nonattainment for ozone. (EPA Green Book, at https://www3.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/jnc.html, last visited 8/24/23. Classification of the San Joaquin Valley as in “Serious” nonattainment of the federal standard for PM2.5 is at
https://www3.epa.gov/airquality/greenbook/rnc.html, last visited 8/24/23.)) Fresno is an unhealthy place to breathe, and especially so for sensitive groups, including children, the elderly, and the sick.

Both state and federal law require air basins to comply with the healthbased state and federal Air Quality Standards. [E.g., 42 USCA §7401, et seq.).] The San Joaquin Valley Unified Air Pollution Control Agency (APCD) 4 The listing is for Fresno-Madera-Hanford, at
https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities; last visited 8/24/23.
5 The listing is for Fresno-Madera-Hanford, at
https://www.lung.org/research/sota/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities; last visited 8/24/23.
25 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

has devised an Air Quality Management Plan (AQMP) to reduce the levels of health-damaging pollution in the air and make the air healthier to breathe.

According to the DEIR, a new AQMP for ozone was due for submission to the EPA by August of 2022. There is no information in the DEIR as whether it was submitted or when an evaluation of the new AQMP by EPA might be expected; the fact remains that the Valley is in extreme nonattainment. A new plan for PM2.5 was submitted in June of 2020. (DEIR p. 3.3-25.) EPA has postponed the deadline for the Valley to meet the PM2.5 standard until 2024, but has not yet approved or disapproved the APCD’s new plan to meet the federal standard. The Valley remains in serious nonattainment for PM2.5. However, these facts appear to matter little, since the DEIR clearly and unequivocally states that carrying out the SEDA plan is not consistent with the Air Quality Management Plan now in operation to meet healthbased federal and state Air Quality Standards, and would conflict with that Plan and with project significance thresholds established by APCD to prevent increases in ozone. (DEIR, pp. ES-6, ES-14, 3.3-45.) The DEIR states at page

3.3-45:
[T]he proposed Specific Plan would generate long-term emissions of criteria air pollutants that would exceed the Valley Air District’s regional operation-phase significance thresholds, which were established to determine whether a project has the potential to cumulatively contribute to the [San Joaquin Valley Air Basin]’s nonattainment designations. Thus, implementation of the proposed Specific Plan would result in an increase in the frequency or severity of existing air quality violations; cause or contribute to new violations; or delay timely attainment of the AAQS. (DEIR, p. 3.3-45, emphasis added.)
The DEIR also states, at page 3.3-51, that the Project will cumulatively increase the airborne pollution to which Fresno residents are exposed daily:

The proposed project would result in a cumulatively considerable net increase of any criteria pollutant for which the project region is nonattainment under an applicable federal or state ambient air quality standard.
(DEIR, p. 3.3-51.)
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2. Project Construction Emissions Would Be
Significant For Every Pollutant Category.

The DEIR explains that, by itself, construction of the Project will cause emissions of every pollutant for which the Valley is in nonattainment in amounts that exceed APCD significance thresholds during each and every year of Project construction, 2023-2043, except the very last year. (DEIR, Table 3.3-8, p. 3.3-53.6) The DEIR makes no comparison between the emissions that Project construction will cause to the emissions provided for in the AQMP, a critical failure to provide the information that should be in the DEIR.7 It also asserts that it is “unavoidable” - if the SEDA plan is carried out – that “sensitive receptors” (e.g., children, the elderly, and people who already have respiratory illnesses) will be exposed not only to air that far exceeds the health-based state and federal Air Quality Standards, but they may also be exposed to toxic pollutant emissions, including carcinogens, during construction of the Project. Such carcinogens and other toxic chemicals are contained in diesel particulate emissions (commonly referred to as “DPM,” for diesel particulate matter”), an airborne soup of chemicals and small particles, many of which either are carcinogenic, or have carcinogens adhered to them, that are emitted by diesel trucks and diesel-powered construction equipment.8
6 We note that, while the DEIR states that “[b]uildout of the proposed project would occur over approximately 25 years, or longer,” the Table showing pollutant emissions from construction goes out only 19 years. There will, apparently, be even more pollutant emissions than the Table shows. 7 Nor is Appendix B, the Air Quality Appendix, much help. It contains only the same Table (in a slightly different format) and the outputs of the computer model used to predict Project emissions (these cannot easily be read by laypersons). It does not compare Project construction emissions with the AQMP.
8 For context, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) estimates that 50% of the risk of cancer from airborne carcinogens in the greater Los Angeles are comes ; last visitd 8/24/23.)from exposure to DPM. (Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study V, SCAQMD, 2021, page ES-7. Available at https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/planning/mates-v/mates-v-finalreport-9-24-21.pdf; last visited 8/24/23. 27 City of Fresno
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The potential health impacts from diesel particulate emissions are quite significant, as the DEIR shows at page 3.3-17. The DEIR, at page 3.3- 59, tersely acknowledges that “Project construction would involve the use of diesel-fueled vehicles and equipment that emit DPM, which is considered a [Toxic Air Contaminant].”9 The DEIR disclaims the ability to estimate DPM emissions from the Project, but it admits that, as to toxic emissions, especially DPM:
[I]t is possible that the proposed project would result in cumulatively significant impacts to sensitive receptors, even if individual projects were each less than significant.
(DEIR, pp. 3.3-60 to 61.). The DEIR’s inability to estimate the amount of DPM emissions the Project would cause is severely undercut by the DEIR’s ability to calculate the particulate emissions of the Project, both gross particulates and fine particulates, which should include many components of diesel particulate emissions. Some reasonable estimate should be possible, and it is a failure of information required by CEQA for the DEIR to make a good-faith attempt to provide this information. It has not done so.

Overall, the DEIR concludes that air pollutant emissions attributable to the Project, even after all feasible mitigation is applied, would have a “significant and unavoidable” impact, including on sensitive receptors. (DEIR, p. 3.3-61.) In short, the DEIR demonstrates that carrying out the SEDA Project is a recipe for Fresno to continue having some of the very dirtiest, unhealthful air in the nation for decades into the future, and a blueprint for allowing the Project to dump more ozone-causing emissions and particulate matter into the air Fresno residents breathe every day. It is a plan for forcing another generation of Fresno’s children to grow up breathing air that compromises their lungs and may permanently harm their health. (See State of the Air 2023 Report, pp. 24-25 [health effects of particulates] and 26—27 [health effects of ozone].))
9 Diesel exhaust has been formally designated a Toxic Air Contaminant by the California Air Resources Board. (Cal. Code of Regs., title 17, section 19000.)
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3. The DEIR Does Not Show That it has Applied All
Feasible Mitigation.

As set out above, the DEIR thus acknowledges that the Project would make Fresno’s already abominable air even worse, which creates significant impacts on the environment. It then asserts that:

No further measures to reduce operation-phase criteria air pollutant emissions are available beyond the applicable Valley Air District rules and regulations in addition to the proposed project’s policies and design46.) guidelines [as set out in the DEIR].
(DEIR, p. 3.3-46.) The DEIR asserts that there are no further feasible mitigation measures. In fact, the DEIR implies that the Project is too big for its air quality impacts to be feasibly mitigated (DEIR p. 3.3-46), a concept that is antithetical to CEQA’s purposes and requirements. Instead, the City should consider making the Project smaller, so that mitigation is feasible.

CEQA requires that once significant impacts from a Project have been identified, the project should not be approved if there are feasible mitigation measures that would lessen or prevent such impacts. (Public Res. Code § 21002.)
The City must re-think mitigation. The SEDA is a major project, one that will greatly expand the City’s population and infrastructure, and one whose construction will stretch out for a quarter-century, up to the time when California is committed to being carbon-neutral. (AB 1279; EO B-30-

15.) Its operation will last much longer. The City is approving a Project that will define Fresno and its legacy for the rest of this century. If aggressive and effective mitigation for air pollutant emissions is not enacted now, when it will be most effective because it acts on a relatively blank slate, when will it be enacted? To avoid a future of decades of continued air that sickens Fresno’s residents, we urge the City to adopt additional mitigation measures now that are specific and effective, and not just aspirational. We believe that there are many mitigation measures set out in the DEIR that could be made more effective, that would reduce the pollutant emissions of the Project, and that are feasible. Below is a summary of the more prominent ones. 29 City of Fresno
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4. Mitigation Measures Already in the DEIR Must be
Strengthened.

The DEIR lists policies in the Fresno City General Plan and the SEDA plan as potentially lessening the air quality impacts of the Project. Many, if not most, of these policies are so conditional and aspirational as to be unenforceable. Examples include policies that include wording such as “support,” “promote,” “incentivize,” or “pursue.” (E.g.: Land Use Policies LU2(b), LU 3(c;, HC 3.d; MT-2(c), (g) and m; Open Space Policy OS-10.5; Conservation Policies RC1.1, RC 1.3 (a) and (b), RC 1.4.) Particularly important are those mitigation measures listed as “Municipal,” which are under the City’s direct control and discretion (e.g., Conservation Policies RC 4 (f) and (j), and 8(j).) Where a mitigation measure is within the City’s direct control (such as setting energy efficiency standards for municipal buildings), and where the environmental impacts to be mitigated are as dire as violating the AQMP, the City must enact mitigation measures that are fully enforceable. (CEQA Guidelines §15126.4(a)(1) and (2).)
DEIR mitigation measures specific to the Project must also be made mandatory. Specifically, MM AIR 2.1’s full list of controls for diesel-powered construction equipment should be made mandatory unless individual measures are proven infeasible under clearly defined standards, and MM AIR-3.1’s measures to control emissions of Toxic Air Contaminants should be mandated for use, not merely for identification.

In addition, many measures in the DEIR could be made enforceable by defining terms in the measures (such as “feasible” in MM AIR-2.1) or by setting schedules and enforceable deadlines for measures calling for the adoption of controls or plans, or for the setting of standards. (E.g., Resource Conservation Policies RC-4(b), 4(g), and 4(k), RC-8(j), and others.) We also note that several mitigation measures that should be made mandatory for individual developers for projects within SEDA could also be used to provide offsets for their projects’ pollutant emissions, if also carried out outside SEDA. These include creation of off-site renewable energy projects, such as installation of solar panels on rooftops in existing Fresno neighborhoods, tree planting, and replacement of inefficient appliances in 30 City of Fresno
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homes in existing neighborhoods, and installation and maintenance of electric vehicle charging stations in Fresno neighborhoods or at facilities like shopping centers and sports facilities.

5. Because The DEIR is Inadequate as an Informational
Document, Vital Information Must be Added, and the
DEIR Recirculated.

The CEQA Guidelines require an agency to “use its best efforts to find out and disclose all that it reasonably can” in an EIR. (Guidelines § 15144.) The City has failed to do so here. Table 3.3-9, at page 3.3-55, which is the only table showing operational pollutant emissions from the Project, is an example of how uninformative the EIR is. It shows only a single year’s emissions total: 2050, the year of full build-out of the Project, and seven years after the last year (2043) for which construction emissions are projected.

Presumably, many individual SEDA projects, from housing developments to transportation facilities, will be completed in the years prior to 2050 but their emissions are undisclosed. This is a critical failure of the DEIR to provide full disclosure of environmental impacts from the Project; the public has no clue about operational emissions from the Project for 46 years prior to 2050. There is not even information as to when the first individual SEDA projects will begin to operate and will have operational emissions.

The SEDA projects’ expected operational emissions appear for the first and only time as they are expected to be in 2050. It is beyond credulity to assume to none of the SEDA component projects will emit any conventional pollutants until 2050, and that all of the individual SEDA projects will begin emitting at once, several years after construction emissions end. The DEIR states that “[r]egional construction and operational emissions reported in this analysis were modeled using CalEEMod using version 2020.4.0” (DEIR, p.

3.3-40), so the City presumably has at least some of this information. If it does not have it, the City must have, or must generate, this information to the extent it is feasible to do so, and the DEIR must provide it. The DEIR does state that, if climate change causes temperatures to rise, the number of days when ozone will form in the Valley:
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If temperatures rise to the medium warming range, there could be 75 to 85 percent more days with weather conducive to ozone formation in Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, relative to today’s conditions. This is more than twice the increase expected if rising temperatures remain in the lower warming range. This increase in air quality problems could result in an increase in asthma and other health-related problems. (DEIR, pp. 3.8-9 to 10.) Further, the DEIR states:
[Fresno] temperatures are predicted to increase by 4.5°F (degrees Fahrenheit) under the medium emission scenario and 8.5°F under the high emissions scenario.

DEIR, p. 3.8-10.)
The increase in pollutant emissions and the increase in temperatures and number of days when ozone is likely to form add up to a potential public health crisis, necessitating the fullest information that can be provided.

Further, since this information is essential to any understanding of the health impacts of the Project, the DEIR must be recirculated with that information prior to certification. (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5.) It is imperative that the decision makers and the public have this information.

Further, Table 3.3-8, at DEIR page 3.3-53 shows projected unmitigated yearly emissions of conventional pollutants from construction over the life of the Project. In the first year, 2024, the Table shows 1770.60 tons of volatile organic compounds VOC), a precursor of ozone, projected to be emitted. In the second year, 2025, the figure drops by more than half, showing 668.30 tons of VOC projected to be emitted. After those two years, projected VOC emissions plummet, with the 2026 VOC emissions projected to be 30.45 tons. No reason is given for this remarkably high and the subsequent drop-off and extreme drop-off, respectively, of the next two years’ VOC emissions. Clearly, there must be a reason for this weird pattern of VOC emissions that must be disclosed by the EIR.

The emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from construction listed in the Table show a steady decline over the years, as do other pollutants. Notably, PM2.5, which almost certainly contains carcinogenic DPM from construction equipment and diesel trucks, remain fairly steady throughout the years, with 32 City of Fresno
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2024’s emissions and 2043’s emissions being within 6 tons per year of each other.

Possible explanations for the high early VOC numbers are that the City knows of specific projects planned for construction in 2024 and 2035 that emit high levels of VOC, or that the emissions modeling failed to accurately predict or report VOC emissions in the first two years of the Project.

However, the City is not sharing those- or any - explanations with the public.

This is a further failure of the DEIR to provide full information to the public.

Finally, the DEIR does not predict pollutant concentrations in the ambient air that will result from both construction and operation of the Project.

6. The DEIR does not Correlate Pollutant Emissions
From the Project with Resulting Health Impacts.

The California Supreme Court, in Sierra Club v. County of Fresno (2018) 6 Cal.5th 502 (“Friant Ranch”), held that that the EIR on the Friant Ranch Project approved by the County of Fresno “fail[ed] to provide an adequate discussion of health and safety problems that will be caused by the rise in various pollutants resulting from the Project's development.” (6 Cal.5th 502, at 527.) The DEIR here also fails to comply with the requirements of the Friant Ranch decision.

We first note that the DEIR does describe some health effects of ozone and PM2.5. (DEIR, pp. 3.3-12 to 3.3-12.) However, its description of the health impacts of PM10 and PM2.5 fails to point out the disproportionate impact of airborne particulate matter on disadvantaged communities. The APCD stated in a 2021 letter to the California Air Resources Board:
“As recent research indicates, there is a disproportionate health impact of PM2.5 exposure to people of color, and the burden of mobile sources to the Valley contribute significantly to these health effects. The State’s CalEnviroScreen 3.0 tool indicates that a significant number of communities in the Valley are among the most disadvantaged in California for a number of indicators, including overall pollution burden, and diesel PM exposure (Figure 1). In fact, 20 of the top 30 most disadvantaged communities in California are within the San Joaquin Valley. As emissions from mobile sources contribute a 33 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

significant portion to the overall pollution burden in these disadvantaged communities, achieving emissions reductions from mobile sources is paramount to improving the health of the most impacted residents in the State.”
(APCD Comment Letter on Revised Draft 2020 Mobile Source Strategy, May 14, 2021, footnotes omitted. (https; ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2021- 05/8-SJVAPCD_Comment_RevisedDraft2020MobileSourceStrategy.pdf; last accessed 4/6/23.) Here, the DEIR does not discuss the disparate effects air pollutant emissions increases may have on the disadvantaged communities within SEDA and elsewhere within the City.

In fact, the DEIR does not predict the impacts of its pollutant emissions on the ambient air at all, except to say that those emission will not be consistent with the AQMP. (DEIR, p. 3.3-45 [“implementation of the proposed Specific Plan would result in an increase in the frequency or severity of existing air quality violations; cause or contribute to new violations; or delay timely attainment of the AAQS.”]) Beyond that, the DEIR says nothing about the magnitude of the increase in frequency and/or severity its new emissions will cause. Instead, it says tersely: “Air dispersion modeling is not applicable at a program level.” (DEIR, p. 3.3-42.) No further explanation is provided.

However, the California Supreme Court in Friant Ranch was presented with a similar claim, and held that “if it is not scientifically possible to do more than has already been done to connect air quality effects with potential human health impacts, the EIR itself must explain why, in a manner reasonably calculated to inform the public of the scope of what is and is not yet known about the Project’s impacts.” (Friant Ranch, supra, 6 Cal.5th at p. 520.) Here, the DEIR has not done the analysis of the impact on human health of the Project’s new emissions (or even shown what all emissions are projected to be). Nor has the public been given an explanation of why it cannot provide that impact analysis, other than one short sentence saying it can’t be done. As the Supreme Court in Friant Ranch made clear, more explanation is required.

Further, such an analysis can be done. When Cal State San Diego proposed a master plan to develop a new community, it eventually certified an EIR that did perform a Friant Ranch analysis, correlating the project’s emissions with impacts on human health (although it acknowledged that the 34 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

analysis was not perfect). That analysis is available at https://missionvalley.sdsu.edu/pdfs/feir/appendices/4-2-3-sdsu-mv-healtheffects-memo.pdf, and is hereby incorporated into this letter by reference. We also formally submit it into the administrative record for this Project by reference, as demonstrating that an analysis correlating emissions from a major project with impacts on human health is feasible.

The City has proposed a huge, multi-year Project that will transform Fresno. It must perform an analysis of the effects on human health of that Project’s pollutant emissions, with the degree of precision that is currently possible and has been demonstrated in practice. The DEIR must be recirculated with the analysis when it is completed. CEQA and the public health demand no less.

C. GHG/Climate Change Impacts Are Not Adequately
Analyzed or Mitigated.

As with its analysis for conventional air pollutants, the DEIR’s analysis for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fails to provide the most basic information to the decision makers and the public. It also fails to adopt all feasible mitigation measures for the impacts of its emissions of climateforcing gases, and it appears to be self-contradictory as to what the standard is as to the significance of those emissions.

1. The GHG Analysis Fails as an Informational
Document
While the DEIR bestows considerable attention on the existing legal framework of the federal and state laws and regulations applicable to GHG emissions, it is remarkably short on information as to the GHG emissions to be expected from the Project. Like its description of SEDA emissions of conventional and toxic pollutants, described above, the DEIR provides only very limited information on the GHG emissions to be expected from the Project, and downplays the significance of those it does acknowledge.

In Table 3.8-2, at page 3.8-44, the DEIR sets out the Project’s expected GHG emissions from construction. These are reported year by year for the years 2024 to 2043 (only 19 years from now, despite the DEIR’s statement 35 City of Fresno
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that “[b]uildout of the proposed project would occur over approximately 25 years, or longer” at page 3.3-57).

The emissions expected from construction total 2,316,578 tons of carbon-dioxide equivalent GHGs.10 The DEIR downplays the potential significance of this emission of over two million tons of GHGs by saying that “[s]hort-term construction GHG emissions are a one-time release of GHGs and are not expected to significantly contribute to global climate change.” (DEIR, p. 3.8-44.) This is nonsensical, since the fact that construction emissions are “one-time” for each individual project is somewhat meaningless, given that the DEIR has already shown that GHGs can remain in the atmosphere for decades or even centuries; carbon monoxide itself has a residency time of 50 to 200 years. (DEIR, p. 3.8-4.) It is their long period of residence in the atmosphere that enables GHGs emitted anywhere in the world able to affect the entire planet, as the DEIR observes at page 3.3-6 (“GHGs have long atmospheric lifetimes, several years to several thousand years. GHGs persist in the atmosphere for a long enough time to be dispersed around the globe.”)
The DEIR itself states that “although it is unlikely that a single project will contribute significantly to climate change, cumulative emissions from many projects affect global GHG concentrations and the climate system.” (DEIR p.3.8-7.) The Project’s construction emissions cannot be made less than significant by calling them “one-time,” since their effects will last for many decades or even for centuries.

As it does with the Project’s expected emissions of conventional pollutants, the DEIR provides the Project’s expected operational GHG emissions for only one year: 2050. (DEIR, Table 3.8-3, at p. 3.8-45.) The DEIR reports a surprisingly low total: 515,791 tons of GHGs. (Id.) We note that 2050 is the time by which the state is expected to carry out its many programs to reduce GHG emissions, including mandating zero-emission cars, setting low carbon fuels, reducing the carbon footprint of transporting water, and mandating electricity that is mostly or exclusively produced by non10 Because of the widely divergent longevity in the atmosphere of various GHGs, they are usually described in terms of the amount of their climateforcing ability when compared with a single GHG, viz., carbon monoxide.

This is called carbon monoxide equivalence. (DEIR, p. 3.8-3.) 36 City of Fresno
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carbon, renewable sources. (DEIR, p. 3.8-49.) Therefore, the 2050 GHG figure is almost certainly not representative of the Project’s GHG emissions in all, or even most, of the years of its operation, before all the state programs have had full effect.

The DEIR is required to make a good-faith effort to discover and provide all the information it can. (CEQA Guidelines §§ 15003(i), 15144.) Here, the City had enough information to provide the expected total 2050 GHG emissions from operations. It also had enough information to provide the expected the GHG emissions from construction for each year between 2024 and 2043, showing that it has data on the expected year-by-year pace of construction and, by extension, on the pace at which SEDA projects would begin to operate. The DEIR used a widely accepted computer modeling system to predict the GHG emissions from the Project.

The short-term construction-related and long-term operational GHG emissions associated with future buildout of the Plan Area allowed under the proposed Specific Plan were estimated using California Emissions Estimator Model (CalEEMod) Version 2020.4.0. CalEEMod is a Statewide model designed to provide a uniform platform for government agencies, land use planners, and environmental professionals to quantify GHG emissions from land use projects. The model quantifies direct GHG emissions from construction and operation (including vehicle use), as well as indirect GHG emissions, such as GHG emissions from electricity use, solid waste disposal, vegetation planting and/or removal, and water use. Emissions are expressed in annual metric tons of CO2 equivalent units of measure (i.e., MT CO2e), based on the GWP of the individual pollutants. (DEIR, p. 3.8-43, italics added.) CalEEMod would have given the City information on the operational GHG emissions from the Project. With all this information, the DEIR could -and should- have provided approximate figures on the Project’s operational GHG emissions year by year, giving the decision makers and the public a much better understanding of the amount of GHGs that would be emitted by SEDA. As it is, the DEIR has not performed a goodfaith analysis and has not provided all the information it can. It does not comply with CEQA and cannot support the approval of the Project. 37 City of Fresno
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D. The EIR Fails to Address the Consequences of the City’s General Plan Deficiencies.

1. The City General Plan is Inadequate and its
Deficiencies Preclude Approval of SEDA, Since Such
Approval Relates to the General Plan’s Deficiencies.

The general plan is the “constitution for future development ... located at the top of the hierarchy of local government law regulating land use .... " (DeVita v. Napa (1995) 9 Cal. 4th 763, 773, internal citations omitted.) Government Code section 65300.5 requires that all general plan elements be consistent with one another. County and city zoning ordinances also must be "consistent with the general plan." (Gov. Code § 65860(a); San Francisco Tomorrow v. City and County of San Francisco (2014) 229 Cal.App.4th 498, 508-509.) If a city or county’s general plan is inadequate, it cannot support project approvals. (Camp v. Board of Supervisors (1981) 123 Cal. App. 3d 334, 352 [County could not approve subdivisions because some of its general plan elements were inadequate].) A permit may be challenged due to general plan inadequacy where the inadequacy is factually related to the characteristics or implications of the permit. (Garat v. City of Riverside (1991) 2 Cal.App.4th 259, 293.)

2. The General Plan Does Not Comply With AB 170.

AB 170, passed in 2003, enacted as Government Code section 65302.1 subdivision (b), requires that all cities and counties in the San Joaquin Valley amend their General Plans to add specific information on air pollution in their jurisdictions. This information must include “(1) A report describing local air quality conditions including air quality monitoring data, emission inventories, lists of significant source categories, attainment status and designations, and applicable state and federal air quality plans and transportation plans. (2) A summary of local, district, state, and federal policies, programs, and regulations that may improve air quality in the city or county. (3) A comprehensive set of goals, policies, and objectives that may improve air quality consistent with the strategies listed in paragraph (3) of subdivision (a). (4) A set of feasible implementation measures designed to carry out those goals, policies, and objectives.” (Govt. Code section 65302.1(c).) Government Code section 65302.1, subd. (e), set a deadline for compliance with GC 65302.1 of “no later than one year from the date 38 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

specified in Section 65588 for the next revisions of its housing element that occurs after January 1, 2004.”
A publication by the Air District (bearing the revision date of 04/02/09) reads, “AB 170 requires cities and counties to comply no later than one (1) year from the date specified in Government Code Section 6588 for the next revision of the housing element after January 1, 2004 (Section 65302.1.e).

Based upon the schedule outlined in the bill, jurisdictions in Fresno and Kern counties are required to adopt these amendments by June 30, 2009.

Jurisdictions in Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tulare counties have until June 30, 2010 to comply.”] [Emphasis added.]

3. The City General Plan Has No Environmental
Justice Element, an Element Mandated by SB 1000.

Effective January 1, 2017, SB 1000, codified as Government Code section 65302, subdivision (h)(2), required the adoption into cities’ and counties’ general plans of an Environmental Justice Element, or adoption of the objectives and policies of an Environmental Justice Element in other General Plan Elements, such Element to be adopted on the first occasion after January 1, 2018, when the city or county adopts or revises two or more general plan Elements. Until it actually adopts an Environmental Justice Element that fully complies with SB 1000, the City does not have an adequate General Plan, and may not approve development projects, including SEDA.

4. The Project’s GHG Emissions Will Undercut the
Effectiveness of Fresno’s Sustainable Communities
Strategy.

Fresno's Regional Transportation Plan and Sustainable Communities Strategy (RTP/SCS), adopted in 2014 and updated in 2018 and 2022, was "intended to identify integrated land-use and transportation strategies that lower per capita GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions from cars and light-duty trucks, and foster communities that are more equitable, healthy, and 39 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

sustainable."11 As required by SB 375, the Fresno RTP/SCS is based on assumptions about future development "that are consistent with adopted local general plans."12 And the RTP/SCS specifically relies on the City of Fresno's 2014 General Plan as a basis for changes in land use and transportation that will help meet state-mandated GHG reduction targets:

Scenario B [the basis for the land use projections in the 2022 RTP/SCS] was built primarily from existing local general plans, regional growth projections and insights from the REMI economic forecasting model. . . . The City of Fresno’s updated general plan calls for 50 percent of new growth in designated infill development areas and proposes no sphere of influence expansion through 2035, which will help rein in fringe development in a traditionally sprawling region.13
Construction of thousands of acres of low-density development to the southeast of Fresno would vitiate these benefits, dramatically increase vehicle miles traveled, and make it impossible to meet state-mandated GHG reduction goals as contemplated in the RTP/SCS.

E. The EIR’s Water Supply Analysis Is Inadequate.

The water supply for SEDA is only shown to be adequate up to 2035, and only if groundwater conditions do not change due to climatic changes or regulatory changes due to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

The DEIR does not show that adequate water will be available to meet the anticipated demand from SEDA in addition to the demand from the rest of the City of Fresno past 2035, and not out to the purported build-out date 11 Fresno Council of Governments. 2022. Regional Transportation Plan & Sustainable Communities Strategy. Available
at https://www.planfresno.com/sustainable-communities-strategies-falloutreach/. 12 Fresno COG, 2022. 13 Fresno COG, 2022 (Emphasis added).
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(and the build-out date used in the Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas sections of the DEIR, as discussed earlier in these comments.)14 The City has long relied heavily on pumped groundwater to satisfy its water needs, as set out at DEIR, page 3-18-3. The DEIR states that prior to 2004, the City obtained 100 percent of its water from groundwater, but had reduced that by half in 2019 and 2020. (DEIR, p. 3.18-5.) However, the City is located over, and has been obtaining pumped groundwater from, the Kings River Subbasin, which has been designated as a critically overdrafted (i.e., over-pumped) basin. (DEIR, p. 3.18-4.) The Kings Subbasin is within the jurisdiction of the North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency (GSA), which is required under the Sustainable Groundwater Management (AB 1739 [Dickinson], SB 1168 [Pavley], and SB 1319 [Pavley]) to attain sustainability of groundwater basins by 2040. (DEIR, p. 3.18-3 to 4.) Accordingly, the City has increased its purchases of surface water, obtaining surface water from the US Bureau of Reclamation (USBR)’s Central Valley Project and the Fresno Irrigation District (FID). The City is now attempting to recharge the Kings Subbasin, but the amount of water it can devote to recharge is less in dry years. (DEIR, p. 3.18-4 to 5.) The DEIR acknowledges that the water from the Central Valley Project is not always available, stating that “there have been extremely dry years in which no water is [sic] supplied”; this previously occurred in 2014 and 2015. (EIR, p.

3.18-6.) In those years, Fresno received only somewhat more than half of its usual Central Valley Project water.

The addition of 45,000 people in the SEDA Project will, of course, increase demand for water in Fresno. (DEIR, p. 3.18-7 [“Water supply for the Specific Plan Area will be met with existing supplies initially but will require additional supplies to meet buildout demands.”]) The DEIR acknowledges that additional pipe infrastructure will need to be planned, sited, and laid (DEIR, p. 3.18-10). Plans for doing so are sketchy, at best, and it is not clear 14 The DEIR is riddled with analyses that focuses on 2035 at the expense of analyzing to the 2050 horizon year. For example, see pages 3.14-13 (Land Use), 3.15-8 (Public Services), 3.15-33 (also Public Services), p.3.17-32 (Transportation), and pages 2-5 and 406.
41 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

that the air quality and GHG impacts of that construction were included in the emissions totals in Tables 3.3-8 and 3.8-2. If they are not so included, those Tables are incomplete and misleading, and must be revised in a recirculated DEIR. The effects of supplying water in future years is it will impact other water users must also be analyzed.

However, there is another, fundamental, problem with the DEIR’s analysis of water supply for the Project. The DEIR appears to analyze only the impacts of the Project on water supply to Fresno up to 2035 and not to 2050, when the full expected buildout and population of SEDA is expected. (Appndx. F, Water Technical Study, p.1.) The Fresno General Plan’s Horizon” date is 2035, although full buildout is not expected until 2050 or beyond. (Id.).

The DEIR analyzes water demand for SEDA only out to 2035. (Water Technical Study, pp. 24-25.) The analysis makes clear that the DEIR is not exact; many “reasonable assumptions” about demand have been made. (Water Technical Study, p. 19.) Still the most favorable (to the City and future developers) conclusion that the Technical Study can reach is that “existing City of Fresno water supplies could be sufficient to supply the future development in SEDA in addition to the existing demands.” (Water Technical Study, p. 24, italics added.). However, the Technical Study’s estimate of water supply to Fresno, including SEDA, bears the disclaimer that the conclusion is valid only “assuming groundwater characteristics are not altered due to climatic events or regulatory influences from SGMA.” (Water Technical Study, p. 24.) That same disclaimer appears in many discussions of groundwater in the main text of the DEIR (see DEIR, pp. 3.18- 4, 5, 66, 67 and 68).

The DEIR appears to base much of its analysis of groundwater availability on the premise that climate conditions will not change, and the North Kings GSA will not impose conditions that change the current situation. Given both the DEIR’s Table 3.8-2 (at p.3.8-11) showing the alarmingly high expected temperature increases in the Fresno area, and given the over-drafted condition of the Kings Subbasin together with the North Kings GSA’s legal mandate to restore over-drafted basins by 2040, it seems more than likely that the Kings Subbasin will experience changes that would not be in the DEIR’s favor. The DEIR simply has not shown that water 42 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

supply will be adequate for the Project to the buildout date of 2050, or even to the date most discussed in the Water Technical Study, 2035. The DEIR is both procedurally and substantively deficient as to water supply, and it should be revised and recirculated.

F. The Final EIR Must Respond in Writing to Comments
Made on the NOP.

When the Notice of Preparation (NOP) was circulated for the SEDA project, you received various letter regarding the scope of the EIR. We request that you respond to each of these NOP comment letters as if they were a comment on the Draft EIR, especially the letters of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Conservation.

Additionally, we specifically incorporate by reference the letter of Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, CCEJN, Fresno Building Healthy Communities, and Fresno Barrios Unidos dated March 25, 2022. (https://www.fresno.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Appendix-A-EIRNoticing-and-Public-Involvement-COMBINED.pdf, p. 70.) This letter rightfully comments as follows; we request that you respond to each of these points and every other point made in this letter:

First, given the significance of the SEDA to the future development of Southeast Fresno communities, it is of the utmost importance that the City proactively and meaningfully engage residents within and around the planning area. This means that the City must incorporate residents' input into the SEDA and EIR by revising land use designations to include community-led development like higher density housing, green space, affordable commercial and residential spaces, and so on. It must also have policies and implementation measures for active investment into Southeast Fresno neighborhoods by businesses and the City alike in essential infrastructure, services, amenities, and community greening. To do less is to perpetuate the long-held City practice of denying Southeast Fresno residents their rights to shape the future of their neighborhoods and access to opportunity on the same terms as other Fresno residents.

Below you will find additional comments in response to the Notice of Preparation:
43 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

I. The Proposed Land Use Map is Inconsistent with Local and State Climate, Housing, and Transportation Goals and Policies to Build Equitable Climate Resilient Communities

As previously noted, it is unclear and of significant concern to what extent authentic public participation took place during this process from over a decade ago. The former process took place at the tail end of the housing bubble when building single-family homes in the outskirts of the city limits was the priority and norm. This type of “leapfrog” development remains reflected in the SEDA land use map as a large portion of the 9,000 acres is zoned for low-density single-family housing. This is inconsistent with the current climate, housing, and transportation goals that aim to build communities with a variety of development and density to make them accessible to various incomes and for communities to get around by alternative modes of transportation.

Further, the second-largest land use is zoned for flexible research and development, which leaves space for more light industrial use, further industrializing south Fresno BIPOC communities. This current process is in stark contrast with other specific plans prepared and adopted by the City in recent years, which have emphasized resident self-determination in shaping their built environment, planning for complete and healthy communities, smart growth-promoting land use compatibility, and investment strategies and implementation measures designed to bring those plans’ vision to life. The City must not proceed with its efforts to further cement unjust and exclusive land-use patterns in City planning practices.

Fourteen years later, we have learned that this growth pattern is economically and environmentally unsustainable as the City now struggles to balance the need to build out the infrastructure and maintain public services in these communities while attending to decades of deferred maintenance in established neighborhoods. This is reflected in the 2015 General Plan praised for limiting unsustainable sprawl growth and focusing on efficient infill development. (Letter of Groups, pp. 1-2, available at https://www.fresno.gov/wpcontent/uploads/2023/07/Appendix-A-EIR-Noticing-and-Public-InvolvementCOMBINED.pdf, pp. 70 et seq of PDF.) 44 City of Fresno
August 28, 2023

Conclusion.

The DEIR must be revised and circulated properly to the public and to public agencies.

Thank you for your consideration of these comments.

Sincerely,

Douglas P. Carstens
Michelle Black

C
45  125 + 9$1 1(66 $9(18(
)5(612 &$/ 251 $




30# 3$ ( 1 &(0 / 5 2 ' & 20
August 28, 2023
City of Fresno
c/o Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
2600 Fresno Street
Third Floor, Room 3065
Fresno, CA 93721
Sent by email: [email protected]
RE: Public Comment on Southeast Development Area Plan and draft Program Environmental Impact Report
Dear Ms. Asadoorian:

On behalf of the Fresno Madera Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council, the Central Valley IAF, and Regenerate California Innovation (RCI), please incorporate the following comments regarding the City’s Southeast Development Area Specific Plan and draft Program Environmental Impact Report into the record of this matter.

The Southeast Development Area Plan and draft Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) are not ready for public discussion, let alone Council action.

There are great gaps and fatal flaws in the Plan and the draft PEIR—missing information that will be essential to a fiscally, politically, and environmentally responsible decision about this project. These flaws and gaps are all correctible, but they will require additional time, attention, and analysis. It is far more appropriate that the SEDA plan be considered, and evaluated, in the context of the City’s next General Plan update.

Vital but unanswered questions at this point include:
• Who pays for infrastructure, and how?
SEDA infrastructure (at 2022 prices) has been estimated to cost somewhere between $1 and $2 billion. But either the SEDA infrastructure assessment has not been completed1, or has not been made public: it is definitely not in the Plan or in the draft PEIR. 1 This despite the fact its preparation was among the deliverables in FirstCarbon Solutions’ scope of work: see, Consultant Service Agreement between City of Fresno (City) and FirstCarbon Solutions (Consultant), Southeast Development Area Specific Plan, executed November 4, 2020, Exhibit A, Attachment A: Scope of Services, Subtask 1.1.2, and Task 2. 46 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 2
In fact, the Plan includes neither the infrastructure finance plan2, nor the fiscal nexus study3, nor the fiscal impact analysis4, needed to ensure adequate resources to cover this billion-ish infrastructure price tag.

The City itself has admitted as much: its 2020 application to the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) for a $625,000 SEDA planning grant acknowledged that “an infrastructure assessment, and a fiscal nexus study must be completed prior to adoption.”5 [emphasis added.] That was, and remains, true: approval of the Plan and PEIR without these crucial components would be foolhardy and premature.

Especially pertinent to the fiscal wisdom of City investment in SEDA infrastructure: the Consultant Service Agreement required a Qualitative Fiscal Review, but no such review has been made public. Such a review would clarify “whether or not the existing targeted tax sharing parameters will remain feasible with the development of the SEDA Specific Plan.”6 Given that the existing City/County 32%/68% tax-sharing agreement is extremely disadvantageous to the City, and that efforts to persuade the County to a more equitable division of revenues have reportedly been stalled for many, many months and show no promise of reviving, it is vital that the public and the City Council be fully apprised of the fiscal hole the City digs for itself when it dumps money into annexation-area investments such as SEDA. The Council must have this information before deciding whether to greenlight SEDA planning at this time.

The draft PEIR promises7 that the Plan will provide “self-financing for the development and ongoing maintenance of the SEDA that does not reduce City of Fresno resources dedicated to other areas of the City or burden Fresno residents outside of the SEDA.” This commitment to private financing is consistent with the City’s draft 6th Cycle Housing Element, which insists that any growth in low-priority development areas (including SEDA) “would require all infrastructure costs to be borne by the new development.”8 However, the draft PEIR then contradicts itself, asserting later in the document that infrastructure costs will be “funded through a combination of public and private funding.”9 If the idea is to commit any public funding to SEDA’s infrastructure, the City must calculate 2 Also a deliverable per the November 2020 Consultant Service Agreement, id. at Subtask 1.1.3 – 1.1.7. 3 Also a deliverable per the November 2020 Consultant Service Agreement, id. at Subtask 1.1.8 – 1.1.9. 4 The City Council in 2020 approved a budget of $215,000 for a Fiscal Impact Analysis and interactive modeling tool to analyze the various impacts on the City’s general fund of infill and greenfield projects in the context of its General Plan. (See, June 18, 2021, Agreement for Consultant Services between City of Fresno and Economic & Planning Systems, Proposed Work Program.) On information and belief, that analysis and tool were designed for large-scale projects such as SEDA, have been completed and are suitable for application to the SEDA project, and have already been usefully applied to at least one similarly large-scale Specific Plan. However, with respect to SEDA, the City has either not requested that analysis, or has not disclosed its conclusions.
5 Fresno City SB 2 Planning Grants Application, Section E, Project Description, p. 6. 6 November 2020 Consultant Service Agreement, id. at Task 1.2. 7 SEDA draft PEIR, p. ES-2.
8 Fresno Multi-Jurisdictional Housing Element | July 2023, p. 1E-3-81. 9 SEDA draft PEIR, p. 2-3.
47 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 3
those costs (including, for example, debt service on bonds), develop a plan to pay for them, and make those costs and payment structures public well before plan adoption.

The City admits that it has such documents, but refuses to make them public, claiming (without evidence) that they are “privileged,” and that the public interest in keeping them secret outweighs the public interest in disclosing them, because the studies are “ongoing,” and disclosure of cost estimates would provide “incomplete information.” We are informed and believe and on that basis assert that the City is in possession of its departments’ and consultants’ best and final estimates of projected infrastructure costs. Of necessity these costs will be estimates, since they involve projections into the future; this does not make them “incomplete” or otherwise disqualify them as a basis for considering the adequacy of the SEDA plan and its EIR.

Moreover, both the California Environmental Quality Act and the Public Records Act require maximum disclosure of information the government holds. In this case, the very fact that the studies are incomplete (if they are incomplete) is of public interest. Whether the available numbers are “final” or not, the public, and the City Council, are entitled to know what information is available at this time on this vital question, to what extent and in what way(s) it is claimed to be “incomplete,” what further studies or analyses still need to be conducted, and when that work will be completed.

These important questions of “how much?” and “who pays?”—to which the City itself offers conflicting answers right now—must be answered before the Plan can be approved.

With such inadequate information, the City cannot legitimately make findings of overriding consideration that effectively commit us all to writing a blank check for likely unneeded and massively expensive new infrastructure investments in the SEDA area. • Will there be enough new Fresnans to populate SEDA?
The draft PEIR relies on old and inaccurate population growth figures, and therefore grossly overstates the actual increase in numbers of new Fresnans over the next three decades. (See Keith Bergthold’s August 28, 2023 comment letter.) As a result, the Plan assumes a demand for housing, and associated infrastructure, that current, accurate population growth figures do not support.

Moreover, a recent study shows that, to the extent new residents are moving into Fresno from elsewhere, on average they are families with incomes below Fresno’s median income:
“The data show that the inflow of residents to Fresno County are in households with lower incomes than the City and County averages, suggesting that in-migrants may be seeking a more affordable cost of living that is available in the county; these households thus increase the demand for housing that is at and below the median price in the Fresno market.”10
Since new Fresnans will be competing for existing affordable housing, they will not be creating demand for SEDA housing. Instead, we can expect the historical pattern in Fresno to be also true for SEDA: new housing developments drive internal migration within the city rather than drawing new residents from other areas. That dynamic, in turn, lowers property values in existing neighborhoods, as homeowners relocate to a newer fringe 10 See, Fresno Urban Decay Analysis, Economic Decay: Migration (source: Internal Revenue Service). 48 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 4
development; blight and physical decay reliably follow.11 • Will SEDA meet the housing needs of Fresnans who already live here? The Plan itself does not commit to any particular number of homes at any particular price point; nor does it require as a mitigation measure that developers build so as to ensure any proportion of affordable-to-market-rate homes. But based on the SEDA proposed zoning map12, and on the City’s application for the SEDA planning grant13, the SEDA Plan anticipates at most 9,000 potentially affordable multifamily units14 and 35,200 single-family units.

As it happens, the City’s own One Fresno Housing Strategy acknowledges that the City’s pressing needs are not for the single-family market rate housing SEDA will supply, but for housing affordable to low-income residents: “Historic poor land use planning, inequitable fair housing practices and the basic imbalance of supply and demand have all led Fresno to its current state of needing approximately 15,000 new and converted affordable housing units between now and 2025 to meet our residents’ needs.” One Fresno Housing Strategy, April 2022, Mayor’s Message, p. 2.

The One Fresno Housing Strategy makes clear that “Fresno needs 21,001 units for households who can afford no more than $500 on monthly housing costs,” and “the City of Fresno has a glut of 28,310 single-family detached units over and above what Fresno households need based on household size.” Id. at p. 38. These are not housing needs that SEDA’s 35,200 additional single-family market rate homes will meet.

The City’s own quantified assessment of Fresno’s housing needs15 over most of the next decade shows more than adequate inventory for that new housing; not a single parcel from SEDA is needed to meet those goals.16
11 “The city has seen various changes to population density over the past 50 years, indicating a shift in residential patterns. Outmigration in established centers perpetuates economic decay through a decline in support for commercial services.” Id., Economic Decay: Population Density (source: Community Survey and Decennial US Census).
12 Southeast Development Area Specific Plan, Map 2.5—SEDA Proposed Land Use, p. 22. 13 Fresno City SB 2 Planning Grants Application, Section E, Project Description, p. 6. 14 Based on HCD’s zoning standard of at least 16 units per acre (see, HCD By-Right Program Minimum Densities Table). However, density standards are only a rough proxy for affordability; at this point— since the PEIR includes no enforceable mitigation measures imposed as conditions of entitlement—it is possible that not a single unit to be built in SEDA will be affordable to low-income families. 15 See, FRESNO MULTI-JURISDICTIONAL HOUSING ELEMENT, July 2023: Figure 1E-2.2 Sites Inventory, Fresno 2023, p. 1E-2-33; and Table 1E-1.1, Summary of Quantified Objectives, 2023-2031, p. 1E1-35. 16 The SEDA PEIR admits as much at p. 2-1: “While there is still ample residential capacity within the current city limits and in Growth Area I (which includes the Southwest Fresno and the West Area Neighborhoods Specific Plan areas), there is a sense of urgency about the current housing crisis and the City’s ability to provide housing for the existing population and its natural growth as well as the unanticipated in-migration occurring at this time.” The PEIR includes no evidence justifying this supposed “urgency,” and California Department of Finance population growth figures flatly contradict it.

Moreover, they do not reflect any “unanticipated in-migration occurring at this time,” and the EIR offers 49 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 5
The SEDA Specific Plan’s claim that “the acceleration of the current housing crisis has created a ‘substantial shortage’ of homes and therefore prioritized completion of the SEDA Plan”17 is demonstrably untrue. This claim cannot therefore be the basis for legitimate, evidence-based findings of overriding consideration.
• The PEIR fails to use reasonably available tools
In preparing the PEIR, the consultants have failed to use readily available analytic tools to assess SEDA’s air quality, transportation, human health impacts18, and fiscal impacts19, among others.

Certification of this draft PEIR’s many conclusory statements, unsupported by scientific or objective data, would constitute an abuse of discretion. • Impact numbers are just wrong, or missing
Internal trip capture is overstated
The PEIR must correct the counterfactual assumptions it makes about internal trip capture within SEDA. Professionally adequate analysis would recognize that only second-generation SEDA residents will be able to work, go to school, shop, and recreate within SEDA’s boundaries to the extent claimed, since commercial and employment centers will lag a decade or two behind housing development and occupancy. This serious analytic error in turn generates drastically underestimated traffic impacts, which in turn results in material undercounting of air quality impacts, which in turn would invalidate any human health impact analysis based on these data, if such an analysis had been done.

The draft PEIR must include ozone calculations
The draft PEIR’s Air Pollution Description and Health Effects discussion (at pp. 3.3-11 – 3.3- 31) lists criterion pollutants, generally describes their adverse effects on human health, and identifies the regulatory programs intended to curb air pollution, including (3.3-23 – 24) the ozone reduction/prevention plans for the San Joaquin Valley Air Basin nonattainment area.

There is no discussion of the human health impacts of the additional pollution load this project contributes to Fresno’s already-dirty air.

The PEIR does not calculate the anticipated parts per million (ppm) of ozone resulting from SEDA construction and operations; although NOx and ROG are estimated, the reader has no idea how much ozone will be produced (i.e., whether the amount of ozone resulting from the ROG and NOx pollution will bring the ozone ppm within the 0.10 to 0.40 range). Given that the measures for both exceed the thresholds of significance, this omission renders the draft PEIR’s air quality analysis inadequate. Sierra Club v. County of Fresno (2018) 6 Cal.5th 502, 520.

The ozone discussion must, of course do more than calculate the NOx + ROG figure but must also factor in the rising temperatures actually being experienced and expected to no evidence in support of this apparently fictitious phenomenon. 17 Draft SEDA Specific Plan, p. 9.
18 See, e.g., tools referenced at SJVAPCD’s 2015 Plan for the 1997 PM2.5 Standard, Chapter 3: Health Impacts and the Health Risk Reduction Strategy, p. 3-20. 19 See fn. 4, supra.
50 51
SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 7
exposure. Studies have linked rising hospital admissions and emergency room visits to higher ozone levels.” Appendix G: Health Impacts of Air Pollution, p. G-17.

Fresno State University’s Central Valley Health Policy Institute studied emergency room and hospital admissions in Fresno, Bakersfield, and Modesto on a daily basis for selected conditions, such as asthma and acute myocardial infarction (MI), that had been previously linked to air pollution in other studies. They determined that ozone was strongly linked to increased risk for asthma ER visits in children during the hottest summer months. Moreover, asthma ER admissions are also strongly linked to increasing PM2.5 across the Valley, with a higher risk in children. Further, risk for asthma hospitalizations increased dramatically with PM2.5 in children and adults across the region. A moderate increase in risk of acute MI (heart attack) was also linked to PM2.5 levels regionally, as were pneumonia ER visits in children and acute bronchitis ER visits in adults.21
Water impacts are egregiously underestimated
It appears the City has not factored drought conditions or climate change projections into its water supply sustainability calculations. Figure ES-2, Projected Water Supplies22, shows an increase of almost 21,000 AFY in available groundwater between 2025 and 2045, plus another 6,500 AFY increase in surface water over the same period.

However, the draft PEIR recognizes that across California, climate change will result in a “reduction in the quality and supply of water from the Sierra snowpack,”23 a source on which the City of Fresno is heavily reliant for both surface water and groundwater recharge.

The Draft PEIR reports that by 2050, such impacts in the Fresno area will reduce the average water supply from snowpack to two-thirds historical levels, and “If emissions reductions do not occur, water from snowpack could fall to less than one-third of historical levels by 2100.”24
Not only are these concerns not discussed in the Plan or the draft PEIR, but they are explicitly minimized in the discussion of hydrology and water quality. There, the PEIR proposes a cheerful water outlook, repeating in multiple places the phrases “during normal water years” and “assuming groundwater characteristics are not altered due to climatic events or regulatory influences from SGMA.” These are objectively unreasonable assumptions, but there is no discussion of a fallback position in the (likely) event the PEIR’s sunny projections are inaccurate.

Mitigations for hydrology impacts are ill-considered; City taxpayers will bear the cost Not only are the projections unreasonably optimistic, but this is yet another place where the City’s failure to do the program-level work of infrastructure planning, accurate environmental assessment, and imposition of mandatory, system-wide, coordinated 21 Capitman & Tyner, The Impacts of Short-Term Changes in Air Quality on Emergency Room and Hospital Use in California's San Joaquin Valley, California State University, Fresno, June 2011. 22 Draft PEIR, Appx. F, p. ES-7.
23 Draft PEIR, p. 3.8-9.
 Id., p. 3.8-10.
25 Id., p. 3.10-40.
52 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 8
mitigation measures predictably exacerbates environmental impacts.

Mitigation measures HYD-2b and HYD-2c require the City to refuse to approve proposed SEDA developments that would exceed “existing water supply capacity,” and to “secure additional water supplies by securing additional water sources” prior to any such development approvals. This post-facto proposed mitigation—the costs of which are scheduled to be borne by City taxpayers and not by SEDA’s developers or ultimate residents—is far inferior to plan-level mitigations prescribed in the Program EIR.

But to achieve plan-level efficiencies and effectiveness, the draft PEIR would have to include the information in the “pending” SEDA Public Facilities Financing Plan (no due date disclosed) and/or “EIR-related water infrastructure planning tasks” (whatever those may be)26. Apparently this vital information will be developed after SEDA approvals. • The PEIR is inconsistent with other public planning documents Air quality attainment status
The draft PEIR’s air quality impact analysis is inconsistent with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District’s “Proposed 2023 Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request for the Revoked 1-Hour Ozone Standard” (SJVAPCD Redesignation Request) adopted by the Air District Board on June 15, 2023.27 That document is intended to persuade the federal Environmental Protection Agency to terminate anti-backsliding provisions for the revoked 1-hour ozone standard, including Section 185 nonattainment fees. Toward that end, the document includes both proofs of compliance and a maintenance plan. It clearly does not factor in the ozone contributions SEDA would make to the Valley’s pollution load.

Specifically, SJVAPCD’s Redesignation Request, Appendix A: Emissions Inventory (pp. A-1 through A-4), projects annual anticipated pollution levels for NOx through 2036. A layperson—including a member of the public, the Planning Commission, or the City Council—must be confounded comparing the Air District’s all-Valley numbers in identified years to the numbers this project alone will generate.

NOx —summer average in tons/day
Year Entire San Joaquin
Valley, per SJVAPCD28 SEDA, per PEIR SEDA % increase
over total SJV
2026 119.50 180.529 151.07%
2031 97.49 170.8218 175.22%
2036 84.13 168.2333 199.97%
26 SEDA Specific Plan, pp. 100-109, passim.
27 See, SJVAPCD 2023 Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request for the Revoked 1-Hour Ozone Standard —see https://ww2.valleyair.org/rules-and-planning/air-quality-plans/ozone-plans/. 28 SJVAPCD Proposed 2023 Maintenance Plan and Redesignation Request for the Revoked 1-Hour Ozone Standard, Appendix A: Emissions Inventory, p. A-4. The document provides changes in VOC over time and does not sum up ROG separately; it will therefore be important for an adequate SEDA ozone analysis to determine, and to include as a point of comparison, how SEDA ROG emissions will compare to regionwide ROG production during the identified years, in order to report accurately the extent to which SEDA will impede achievement of regionwide air quality improvement goals. 53 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 9
This chart illustrates the huge impact of SEDA on Valley air quality: by 2036, SEDA alone is projected to produce double the amount of NOx being produced across the entire rest of the San Joaquin Valley.

The PEIR must acknowledge these data, explain them in the context of the SEDA proposal, and provide fact-based analysis of the proposal’s air quality impacts that take these data into account. The draft PEIR’s passing confession that “Emissions of VOC and NOX that exceed the Valley Air District regional threshold would cumulatively contribute to the ozone nonattainment designation of the SJVAB” (p. 3.3-56) is inadequate. Exceedances at this scale require some effort beyond falling back on General Plan mitigation measures that never anticipated impacts of this scale.
2035 General Plan
The Draft PEIR is inconsistent with the City’s 2035 General Plan. Although the draft PEIR claims that construction of the 45,000 new SEDA dwelling units by 2050 “would be considered planned growth” consistent with the vision of the 2035 General Plan (SEDA draft PEIR, p. 3.14-13), the Draft PEIR fails to acknowledge that the General Plan’s proposed growth trajectory puts SEDA development in third place, after Development Areas 1 and

2.29 To allow SEDA to jump the line into first place is not how the City has planned its growth; such reorganizing of development priorities is inconsistent with the General Plan, and creates significant adverse fiscal and environmental consequences for the City and its existing neighborhoods that the General Plan specifically strives to avoid by its new-growth priorities hierarchy.

Moreover, accurate population projections contradict the draft PEIR’s claim that “full buildout of the proposed project would…provide housing to meet the demand for new residential units.”
Housing element
The draft PEIR is inconsistent with the City’s draft Housing Element. The Draft PEIR uses outdated Regional Housing Needs numbers from the 2015-2023 cycle, rather than current 2023-2031 numbers already available and cited in the City’s own proposed 6th Cycle Housing Element.

More importantly, it undermines the Housing Element’s corrective approach to decades of poor planning. Fresno’s 6th cycle draft Housing Element acknowledges that “growth in the City of Fresno over the past few decades has traditionally been low density suburban development, which has resulted in conditions of sprawl in various areas of the city.” Fresno Multi-Jurisdictional Housing Element July 2023, Appendix 1E: City of Fresno, 1E-4-1.

The Housing Element therefore proposes to fill a perennial critical gap in the City’s capacity to provide and upgrade housing in legacy neighborhoods: “As part of the implementation of the Housing Element, programs are identified to upgrade the city’s infrastructure as needed in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods with the greatest needs. Priority for infrastructure projects will be given to serving established neighborhoods, including generally south of Herndon Avenue as shown in Figure 1E-3.36: Priority Areas for Development Incentives, along BRT and enhanced transit corridors, and in the Downtown Planning Area, consistent with General Plan policies.” Housing Element, 1E-3-81 [emphasis 29 Housing Element, Figure 1E-3.37, which shows Growth Area 2 to include SEDA, labeled “DA-3.” 54 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 10
added].

A City decision to invest $1 billion in SEDA infrastructure is inconsistent with the Housing Element’s commitment to correct the City’s history of neglecting older neighborhoods. In the zero-sum game of municipal finance, and especially in the absence of a SEDA infrastructure financing plan, there is no way to ensure adequate resources to fund “Priority Investments in Established Neighborhoods” as already identified in the General Plan30.

Committing now to massively expensive infrastructure not needed for new housing directly conflicts with the General Plan by privileging new growth over strengthening established neighborhoods. In addition, it foreseeably, substantially, contributes to physical blight and decay, with resulting economic decline, in all non-SEDA areas of the City31.

Again, consistently with the General Plan, the 6th Cycle Housing Element inventory does not identify parcels in SEDA as necessary to meet Regional Housing Needs between now and 2031. See, Figure 1E-3.39 at p. 1E-3-82. Instead, the Housing Element identifies SEDA as Development Area 3, as does the General Plan—the last in priority for development on the fringe areas. See, Housing Element, Figure 1E-3.37, which shows Growth Area 2 to include SEDA, labeled “DA-3” for Development Area 3. “Growth Area 2 has significantly less access to completed infrastructure. Any development in these areas would require all infrastructure costs to be borne by the new development.” 1E-3-81.

City of Fresno Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan
By 2035, SEDA’s own carbon dioxide emissions per year (510,000 tons) will almost equal the reduction to which the City committed in its 2021 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan (559,000 tons annually).

The draft PEIR fails to itemize or quantify the benefits of the theoretic mitigation measures it mentions. As with transportation impacts, the decision to urbanize 9,000 rural acres 10 miles from the nearest urban center makes it very difficult to achieve efficiencies in energy use and transportation emissions, requiring a higher level of effort and analysis to achieve measurable mitigations.

The fact that the task of mitigation is complicated does not relieve the City of its obligation to seriously consider feasible mitigation measures, and to make them mandatory conditions of entitlement for any development in the SEDA. This it has failed to do. • The PEIR piecemeals assessments of environmental impacts, and mitigations The City’s 2020 application to HCD for the SEDA planning grant committed to project streamlining as one of the SEDA plan’s deliverables by incorporating “environmental analyses that eliminate the need for project-specific review.”32 This makes sense, in light of the City’s claim that it needs SEDA in order to expedite thousands of urgently needed new homes.

If the City had conducted those environmental analyses it promised to do, it would have been able to keep another of the promises it made to HCD: a Program EIR under which “future development will also utilize an expanded exemption under Government Code 30 See summary in June 2023 draft Housing Element, p. 1E-3-80. 31 See, Fresno Urban Decay Analysis, ECONorthwest, 2023. 32 Fresno City SB 2 Planning Grants Application, Section D, Proposed Activities Checklist, item 3, p. 5. 55 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 11
Section 65457 that will apply to certain residential, commercial, and mixed-use projects that are consistent with a specific plan adopted pursuant to Government Code, Article 8, Chapter 3 and would be exempt from CEQA.”33
The Plan pays lip service to streamlining, promising “Fiscal Responsibility” by “holistically coordinat[ing] infrastructure to integrate efficiencies that piecemeal planning cannot,” and otherwise coordinating systems and networks for efficiency and economy.34 But the Plan and the draft PEIR fail so utterly to provide either plan-scale impact analysis or plan-scale mitigation measures that the draft PEIR itself repeatedly prescribes both environmental assessment and imposition of mitigation measures only during the City’s approval process for subsequent discretionary projects within the SEDA footprint—for air quality impacts, transportation impacts, water supply impacts, etc. That is, the City will need to subject every new project to environmental review in order to determine if its impacts are potentially significant, and what mitigation measures should be imposed— exactly the process streamlining is intended to avoid.

Statements by City officials in recent days make this only too clear, most explicitly from City spokesman Brandon Johansen, whose email to a reporter admitted “As individual projects are filed within the Southeast Development Area, they will be evaluated under CEQA to determine project impacts and mitigation measures.”35 Planning Director Jennifer Clark listed “some follow up things that will need to occur, including the impact fees, and the financing plan for the infrastructure.”36
Obviously, this approach makes streamlining impossible (unless the idea is to use the PEIR to evade environmental review and mitigation for follow-on projects, which has been known to happen in Fresno). Absent streamlining, the City cannot accomplish its claimed goal of expediting housing production.

As importantly, this approach renders impossible “holistic coordination of infrastructure to integrate efficiencies that piecemeal planning cannot,” much less creating systems and networks for efficiency and economy.

Finally, a project-by-project evaluation of air quality, water supply, and transportation impacts makes effective mitigation of SEDA’s large-scale environmental degradations illusory at best. A 9,000-acre project area, planted at such a remove from the city’s center, requires creative and transformative approaches to the environmental consequences of its placement and its population. Piecemealing precludes effective mitigation.

These are all good reasons to put SEDA on hold until adequate environmental analysis, and especially real mitigation measures, can be incorporated into the draft PEIR. ///
///
 SB 2 Planning Grants Application, Section E, Project Description.  Draft PEIR at p. ES-2.
 Greg Weaver, Another Clovis, but in southeast Fresno? City moves forward on mega-development plans, Fresnoland, August 25, 2023; https://fresnoland.org/2023/08/25/city-of-fresno-eyes-seda/; accessed August 27, 2023.
 Ibid

56 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 12
• Mitigation measures are inadequate at best
The draft PEIR fails to propose mitigation measures that will have any mitigating effect on air quality impacts, although many tools and other resources are available for this purpose.

The PEIR takes the position that plan-scale mitigations are infeasible, but this is inaccurate:
the City’s own 2020 VMT threshold guidelines document provides multiple mitigation options for community and general plans37. It is objectively unreasonable, and an invitation to piecemealing that will defeat the whole purpose of a mitigation program, to suggest that it is impossible to impose plan-scale mitigation measures as enforceable conditions of development in SEDA.

The draft PEIR falsely claims that it has adequately canvassed and incorporated available air quality mitigation measures, but that “due to the magnitude of emissions generated by the residential, office, and commercial land uses proposed as part of the proposed project, no mitigation measures are available that would reduce cumulative impacts below the Valley Air District’s thresholds.” That the PEIR cannot find measures to reduce (for example) 2026 NOx emissions from 180 tons per year to 10 does not mean there are no possible mitigations that would reduce NOx emissions to (for example) 50: “Mitigation measures need not include precise quantitative performance standards, but they must be at least partially effective, even if they cannot mitigate significant impacts to less than significant levels.” Laurel Heights Improvement Assn. v. Regents of University of California (1988) 47 Cal.3d 376, 404; §§ 21051, 21100; Guidelines, § 15370. It is not an option in 2023 to effectively abandon the effort, when air pollution from this project would so massively exceed the entire total NOx output for the rest of the San Joaquin Valley, creating avoidable illness and death, and torpedoing City efforts to reduce climate change impacts.

Moreover, the draft PEIR does not sufficiently account for its lack of specificity by assurances that a “Health Risk Assessment” (HRA) will be prepared later in the CEQA process, in connection with development-specific EIRs. (See, e.g., MM Air 3.1, 3.2.) Sierra Club v. County of Fresno, supra, 6 Cal.5th at p. 521. For one thing, an HRA is required by the California Health & Safety Code, § 44306, only to evaluate and predict the dispersion of hazardous substances. Secondly, a project-specific HRA is inadequate for assessing planscale impacts or for devising plan-scale mitigation measures—the very purpose of a Program Environmental Impact Report, but not remotely achieved by the SEDA draft PEIR.

The draft PEIR also fails to propose mitigation measures that will significantly reduce transportation impacts. Although the project triples vehicle miles traveled to almost 1 million per day, mitigation measures are inadequate. For the first two decades of the project’s operation, its transportation and consequent air quality impacts are huge, both as a result of the concept itself—a new city of 145,000 planted in rural Fresno, 10 miles from the city’s urban center—and of an apparent determination to impose no mitigation that might inconvenience or cost SEDA developers and builders.
• There is plenty of time to fill in the missing information and analysis There is no emergency requiring immediate approval of this development plan. The City’s own draft Housing Element establishes that there is more than adequate site inventory in the City to accommodate anticipated housing demand for at least eight years. More 37 CEQA Guidelines for Vehicle Miles Traveled Thresholds, adopted June 25, 2020, City of Fresno; see, Appendix C, Vehicle Miles Traveled Mitigation Measures for Community Plans and General Plans. See also, SJVAPCD Emission Reduction Clean Air Measures—among many others. 57 SEDA comment letter August 28, 2023 13
importantly, adoption of this plan at this time will utterly defeat its claimed principal purpose, to facilitate streamlined housing production by anticipating and mitigating at a program scale the environmental impacts of such development.

Certainly within the next year, the City will be able to correct erroneous population projections and otherwise gather corrected data, use the correct tools to assess impacts, identify effective and enforceable plan-scale mitigations, and fully disclose those facts and analyses. Given the size and scale of the SEDA proposal, it may make most sense to roll its environmental assessment into the next General Plan update, which appears to be due in 2024.

Either way, as the situation now stands, it will be impossible for the City Council to make evidence-based findings that “specific overriding economic, legal, social, technological, or other benefits of the project outweigh the significant effects on the environment” (Public Resources Code, § 21081 (b)), or that the “unmitigated effects are outweighed by the project’s benefits.” (Laurel Heights, supra, 47 Cal.3d at p. 391.) Please include my clients (see cc’s, below) and me on the notification list for next steps in this process. Thanking you for your attention to these matters, I remain, Very truly yours,

PATIENCE MILROD
Attorney for Central Valley IAF, Fresno Madera
Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council,
and Regenerate California Innovation
cc: Dillon Savory, Fresno Madera Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council, by email to [email protected]
Keith Ford, Central Valley IAF, by email to [email protected] Keith Bergthold, Regenerate California Innovation (RCI), by email to [email protected]
Jennifer Clark, Development Director, by email to [email protected] Sophia Pagoulatos, Manager of Long-Range Planning, by email to [email protected]
Andrew Janz, City Attorney, by email to [email protected] Very truly yours,

PATIENCE MILROD
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RE: Notice of Availability of a Draft Program Environmental Impact Report (PEIR) for the Proposed Southeast Development Area (SEDA) Specific Plan Project 
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To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: District1; District2; District3; District4; District5; District6; District7; [email protected]; [email protected]; Sophia Pagoulatos; "Dale Reitz" Subject: Comments on Draft Program EIR for Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project - Comments by Mark Reitz and Dale Reitz
Date: Saturday, August 19, 2023 6:48:24 PM
Attachments: SEDA Comments on Program EIR Reitz 8-19-2023.pdf ([WHUQDO(PDLO
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We would like to congratulate and thank the city of Fresno for their work in preparing this significant document and moving towards adoption of a Specific Plan for the Southeast Development Area that has been discussed and anticipated since 2007. As long-time property owners of a family home and farm within this area for over 100 years at 1080 S.

Temperance (east of Temperance between the Railroad and Church Avenues), we and our neighbors welcome the opportunity to provide input to this Plan, and hopefully provide local perspective to responsible growth and for the benefit of the city of Fresno for years to come.

The attached letter provides our comments and recommended changes to the Draft Program EIR related to adoption of the Land Use Plan for this Specific Plan.

We request that the Consolidated Business Park Alternative (Alternative 2), be adopted as the preferred land use plan and the Specific Plan be adopted as such.

If you have any questions, you may contact us at the address and contact information below.

Please provide acknowledgement that you received our letter.

Mark Reitz PE
Dale T. Reitz
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Gavin Newsom, Governor
David Shabazian, Director
State of California Natural Resources Agency | Department of Conservation 715 P Street, MS 1904, Sacramento, CA 95814
conservation.ca.gov | T: (916) 324-0850 | F: (916) 327-3430 AUGUST 25, 2023
VIA EMAIL: [email protected]

PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT

ADRIENNE ASADOORIAN, PLANNER III
2600 FRESNO STREET, ROOM 3065
FRESNO, CA 93721
Dear Adrienne Asadoorian:

DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT FOR THE FRESNO SOUTHEAST DEVELOPMENT AREA SPECIFIC PLAN PROJECT, SCH# 2022020486
The Department of Conservation’s (Department) Division of Land Resource Protection (Division) has reviewed the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project (Project).

The Division monitors and maps farmland conversion on a statewide basis, provides technical assistance regarding the Williamson Act, and administers various agricultural land conservation programs. Public Resources Code, section 614, subdivision (b) authorizes the Department to provide soil conservation advisory services to local governments, including review of CEQA documents.

Protection of the state’s agricultural land resources is part of the Department’s mission and central to many of its programs. The CEQA process gives the Department an opportunity to acknowledge the value of the resource, identify areas of Department interest, and offer information on how to assess potential impacts or mitigation opportunities.

The Department respects local decision-making by informing the CEQA process, and is not taking a position or providing legal or policy interpretation.

We offer the following comments for consideration with respect to the project’s potential impacts on agricultural land and resources within the Department’s purview.

PROJECT ATTRIBUTES
The proposed project is a Specific Plan that would provide for increased density and accelerate housing production throughout the Plan Area. The proposed project would offer flexibility in meeting the evolving needs of households in the region through a multimodal transportation network and diverse housing types and affordability levels. It has the potential to accommodate approximately 45,000 homes and 37,000 jobs within the nearly 9,000-acre planning area by the year 2050. The proposed project is framed 88

with three interrelated goals: fiscal responsibility, social equity, and environmental sustainability. The proposed project would link a series of complete communities and mixed-use centers with a multimodal transportation network. Additionally, the proposed project would include major transit lines, mixed-use centers, diverse residential districts, employment districts, open space, agriculture, and green infrastructure. The project site contains Prime Farmland, Farmland of Statewide Importance, and Unique Farmland as designated by DOC’s Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program. The project site may also contain lands subject to Williamson Act contracts.

PROJECT CONSIDERATIONS
The conversion of agricultural land represents a permanent reduction and impact to California’s agricultural land resources. The Department generally advises discussion of the following in any environmental review for the loss or conversion of agricultural land:
x Type, amount, and location of farmland conversion resulting directly and indirectly from implementation of the proposed project. x Impacts on any current and future agricultural operations in the vicinity; e.g., land-use conflicts, increases in land values and taxes, loss of agricultural support infrastructure such as processing facilities, etc.
x Incremental impacts leading to cumulative impacts on agricultural land. This would include impacts from the proposed project, as well as impacts from past, current, and likely future projects.
x Proposed mitigation measures for impacted agricultural lands within the proposed project area.
x The project’s compatibility with lands within an agricultural preserve and/or enrolled in a Williamson Act contract.

WILLIAMSON ACT
Where the project site is located on land subject to a Williamson Act contract, the Department advises that the environmental review discuss the compatibility of the project with the contract and local Williamson Act program requirements.

MITIGATING AGRICULTURAL LAND LOSS OR CONVERSION
Consistent with CEQA Guidelines, the Department advises that the environmental review address mitigation for the loss or conversion of agricultural land. An agricultural conservation easement is one potential method for mitigating loss or conversion of agricultural land. (See Cal. Code Regs., tit. 14, § 15370 [mitigation includes “compensating for the impact by replacing or providing substitute resources or environments, including through permanent protection of such resources in the form of conservation easements.”]; see also King and Gardiner Farms, LLC v. County of Kern (2020) 45 Cal.App.5th 814.)
89

Mitigation through agricultural conservation easements can take at least two forms: the outright purchase of easements or the donation of mitigation fees to a local, regional, or statewide organization or agency whose purpose includes the acquisition and stewardship of agricultural easements. The conversion of agricultural land may be viewed as an impact of at least regional significance. Hence, the search for replacement lands may not need to be limited strictly to lands within the project’s surrounding area.

A helpful source for regional and statewide agricultural mitigation banks is the California Council of Land Trusts. They provide helpful insight into farmland mitigation policies and implementation strategies, including a guidebook with model policies and a model local ordinance. The guidebook can be found at:

California Council of Land Trusts
Of course, the use of conservation easements is only one form of mitigation, and the Department urges consideration of any other feasible measures necessary to mitigate project impacts.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report for the Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project. Please provide the Department with notices of any future hearing dates as well as any staff reports pertaining to this project. If you have any questions regarding our comments, please contact Farl Grundy, Associate Environmental Planner via email at [email protected].

Sincerely,
Keali’i Bright
Division Director
90 From:

To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Annalisa Perea; Mike Karbassi; Miguel Arias; Tyler Maxwell; Luis Chavez; Garry Bredefeld; Nelson Esparza; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Mayor Subject: Comment on the EIR Report of the SEDA (South East Development Area) Plan Comments Date: Monday, August 28, 2023 3:18:55 PM
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As a resident in the proposed SEDA area outlined for City annexation and development, I have many uncertainties and reservations regarding the initial plans as laid out in the recently released EIR report that precedes this planned residential/agricultural seizure.

1. Groundwater Supplies
The majority of residents of the defined 9,000+ acres have their own sufficient water access via personal pumps: both residential and agricultural
--The EIR suggests that it will not approve any development plans until additional water capacity is provided through “…improvements…” in accordance with the City. I need to know who is going to pay for these improvements, what they may entail, if present residents can maintain their current water access and if not, who will subsidize the ENTIRE costs of upgrading or changing to city requirements.

2. Light, Glare, Noise, Fire
Presently, the proposed areas enjoy a less blatant exposure to the negative city atmosphere of street lights that permeate homes, glare that obliterates the evening skies, and incredible noise from hundreds and hundreds of homes, vehicles and properties that inevitably create excessive incursion into others private properties that will create disputes, hostilities and eventually complaints to law enforcement. Increased police and fire requirements will be vital for any area expecting this huge increase of population. Regulations and laws will have to be strictly enforced or it may be “handled” by established residents who find their lifestyles invaded and violated.

3. Agriculture requirements of crop fertilizers/pesticides/soil enhancements Will there be new restrictions on presently used and accepted crop airborne soil and crop solutions? Will there be controls/limitations tomorrow what is perfectly fine today?

4. Large and small animal ownership
Will there be new restrictions on the animals that many residents typically own but are not customary or approved to city residences, such as cows, sheep, goats, horses, chickens, pigs, etc.

5. Increase on present residential costs, such as sewer and water hook up? Agricultural pumps for water access? Any fencing changes for utility access? The present access to FID (Fresno Irrigation District) water canals? Fireplace usage for properties without access to natural gas hookup? a. Who will cover the costs for these immense changes in utilities? 91 b. Will there be property tax increases for the changes forced on the residents? c. Will there be increased costs for the access for police, fire, and emergency services? d. What about the insurance cost increases created by companies who see fire dangers with so many homes so close together that can cause immediate need of emergency services? e. Will the city still provide ditch tenderers, canal management and repair, weed abatement?
It seems like the City of Fresno already has a lot on it’s plate without this land grab. Who is this for… developers and political donors?
Property owners and residents in this area don’t want to be annexed into the City of Fresno.

We don’t want Fresno to become another LA with this urban sprawl. If you care about the people who live here now, put it to a vote and let their voices be heard! Elizabeth J Grossmayer
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Jeffrey M. Reid
Partner
(Admitted in California, Virginia
and District of Columbia)
(559) 433-2310
[email protected]

FRESNO, CA OFFICE
7647 North Fresno Street
Fresno, California 93720
P.O. Box 28912
Fresno, CA 93729-8912
Telephone (559) 433-1300
Fax (559) 433-2300
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Project Description Draft Program EIR
2-14 FirstCarbon Solutions https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec02-00 Project Description.docx the proposed project. This Draft PEIR will provide environmental information to these agencies and other public agencies, which may be coordinated with other agencies, as part of project implementation. These agencies may include, but are not limited to, the following:
x California Department of Transportation
x California State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) x California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW)
x Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board (Central Valley RWQCB) x Fresno Local Agency Formation Commission
x San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District (Valley Air District) x Fresno Municipal Flood Control District
x Fresno Irrigation District
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Draft Program EIR Agricultural Resources and Forestry Resources FirstCarbon Solutions 3.2-19 https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-02 Ag Resources.docx Level of Significance After Mitigation
Significant and unavoidable impact.

Conflict with Existing Zoning or Williamson Act Contract Impact AG-2: The proposed project would not conflict with existing zoning for agricultural use, or a Williamson Act Contract.

According to the General Plan, the City and its SOI includes lands under Williamson Act Contract, and the majority of these lands are located within the Plan Area. Exhibit 3.2-2 shows the locations of the Williamson Act Contract parcels within the Plan Area. Comparing these parcels to Exhibit 2-2, the majority of land within the Plan Area that is under Williamson Act Contract would be designated for non-agricultural land uses (such as various types of residential, regional and community center land uses) with implementation of the Specific Plan. The General Plan PEIR identifies that implementation of the approved General Plan would conflict with land under Williamson Act Contracts, which would result in a significant and unavoidable impact.

Therefore, the continued implementation of the approved General Plan as well as implementation of the proposed Specific Plan could conflict with existing Williamson Act Contracts because nonagricultural uses would be allowed on lands under a Williamson Act Contract. As a result, the continued implementation proposed Specific Plan could result in a significant impact on existing Williamson Act Contract land.

Therefore, project impacts would remain significant and unavoidable. No feasible mitigation measures are available.

Level of Significance Before Mitigation
Potentially significant impact.

Fresno General Plan PEIR Mitigation Measures
None.

Project Specific Mitigation Measures
No feasible mitigation measures are available.

Level of Significance After Mitigation
Significant and unavoidable impact.

Forest Land and Timberland
Impact AG-3: The proposed project would not conflict with existing zoning for, or cause rezoning of, forest land (as defined in Public Resources Code Section 12220(g)), timberland (as defined by Public Resources Code Section 4526), or timberland zoned Timberland Production (as defined by Government Code Section 51104(g)).

As identified in the General Plan, no land within the City or SOI is used for forestry purposes and no land within the City or SOI is designated or zoned for forestry resources. Therefore, the Plan Area 130
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Draft Program EIR Hydrology and Water Quality
FirstCarbon Solutions 3.10-11
https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-10 Hydrology.docx the Storm Drainage and Flood Control Master Plan (Storm Drain Master Plan), which is developed and updated by FMFCD. FMFCD’s Storm Drain Master Plan divides the service area into many local drainage areas of 1–2 square miles throughout Fresno. Drainage area boundaries are determined by geographic and topographic features and the economics of providing storm drainage service to the watershed. Storm drainage facilities within a drainage area typically consist of storm drain inlets, pipelines, retention basins, urban detention (water quality) basins, and stormwater pump stations.

Surface grading improvements such as streets, curbs, gutters, and valley gutters are part of the City of Fresno infrastructure, but the general grading of these features is governed by the Storm Drain Master Plan to provide a coherent implementation of drainage within Fresno.

All inlets, pipes, and pump stations within each drainage area are maintained by the FMFCD. The gutters, along with public streets and sidewalks, are maintained by the City’s Street Maintenance Division. It is assumed that this maintenance agreement will remain in place for the foreseeable future. The FMFCD’s Storm Drain Master Plan includes 164 adopted or proposed drainage areas, most served by a retention or detention facility.30 FMFCD basins have been sized for capacities of 2- year storms and for at least 60 percent of average rainfall;31 FMFCD allows a 20 percent change in volume before basins need to be resized or relocated.

Stormwater collection in the City begins with street gutters that collect and convey stormwater runoff to storm drain inlets. The runoff is collected in these inlets and delivered to FMFCD’s pipe networks, pump stations, and infiltration basins for groundwater recharge. Most runoff is discharged into recharge basins, but during heavy rainfall events, excess runoff overflows into a system of relief channels and canals that discharge to the San Joaquin River, its tributary streams, local agricultural canals, and FID facilities.

Storm drain inlets are located at low points in the topography as determined by the Storm Drain Master Plan. Pipeline alignments and sizes are also shown on the Storm Drain Master Plan. Pipeline alignments are subject to change as development proposals are put forward by development projects. Retention basin and urban detention basin locations and sizes are part of the Storm Drain Master Plan as well. Basins are sited in the topographic low point of the drainage area. All of the storm drainage pipelines within the drainage area are directed to the basin for that area. Retention basins store and percolate stormwater from the drainage area if time between storms permits; otherwise, the water is pumped to designated irrigation canals. Urban detention basins provide quiescent (still) conditions for the removal or settling out of suspended solids prior to discharge of the stormwater to the San Joaquin River.

The Fresno-Clovis Metropolitan area consists of drainage areas that are completed (e.g., all Master Planned facilities are constructed and functional) or in the process of being completed (e.g., portions of the retention basin, pipelines, and inlets are constructed and other portions are not). For the drainage areas that are in the planning stage, the planning area may be planned and documented and the retention basin land may be purchased, but no construction has occurred; other areas may not have the land purchased for the basins yet. Implementation of the Storm Drain Master Plan 30 Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District (FMFCD). 2016. 2016 District Services Plan. 31 Ibid. 132
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Hydrology and Water Quality Draft Program EIR

3.10-34 FirstCarbon Solutions
https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-10 Hydrology.docx Fresno Municipal Flood Control District Post-Development Standards Technical Manual The FMFCD published a Post-Development Standards Technical Manual37 in 2014 to provide development and redevelopment standards to address stormwater quality requirements for projects in areas that do not drain to the Regional Stormwater Management Basin System. Per the manual, five drainage areas in the FMFCD service area do not drain into a stormwater management basin and two areas outside the service area do not drain into a regional stormwater management basin.

These post-development requirements were developed to comply with the MS4 Permit maintained for stormwater and non-stormwater discharges from MS4 to waters of the United States. The manual provides guidance and recommendations for implementing stormwater quality BMPs with the intention of improving water quality and mitigating potential water quality impacts from stormwater and non-stormwater discharges.

Fresno Municipal Flood Control District Standard Plans and Specifications The FMFCD maintains a set of standard specifications and plans intended to serve as requirements for FMFCD improvements and projects. The specifications and plans are maintained and published by FMFCD for use by designers and contractors.

3.10.4 - Methodology
The potential project-related impacts related to hydrology and water quality were evaluated on a qualitative basis due to the programmatic nature of this Draft PEIR. Qualitative impacts were assessed by evaluating the project’s potential for impacting hydrology and water quality within the Plan Area based on information regarding the current service commitments and capacities of public service providers within the Plan Area.

Technical studies were developed to analyze the impacts of development under the proposed Specific Plan versus the approved General Plan; the Storm Drain and Water Technical Studies are applicable to this section. General Plan land use classifications and Specific Plan land use classifications were provided by the City of Fresno Planning and Development Department in the form of Geographic Information System (GIS) and Shape files. GIS and Shape files were also obtained from the City of Fresno Department of Public Utilities for the existing facilities in Fresno, including the Plan Area.

The Water Technical Study (Appendix F) focused on the analysis of water demand in the Plan Area and how it may change based on Specific Plan development. For the General Plan land use case, the technical memorandum prepared by West Yost Associates for the City of Fresno General Plan Update Master EIR38 was used in obtaining projected water demand data for SEDA. For the Specific Plan analysis, the water demand factors used were prepared by Akel Engineering as part of the Metro Plan Update.39 The GIS files for the General and Specific Plan land uses were used to determine the total areas of each land use classification. The water demand factors were then used with the area of the corresponding land use classification to determine a total water demand for the Plan Area based 37 Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District (FMFCD). Post-Development Standards Technical Manual. June 2014. 38 West Yost Associates. Hydraulic Evaluation of the Proposed 2035 General Plan Land Use Update for the Master Environmental Impact Report. Table 2. Water Demand Comparison for General Land Use Plan Land Changes. January 21, 2013. 39 Akel Engineering Group Inc. Water and Wastewater Unit Factor Update for Metropolitan Water Resources Management Plan Update. October 2020.
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Draft Program EIR Hydrology and Water Quality
FirstCarbon Solutions 3.10-37
https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-10 Hydrology.docx waters or groundwater. Additionally, construction materials such as fuels, solvents, and paints may result in contamination of stormwater and present a risk to surface water quality.

New projects that are 1 acre or larger in size will be required to comply with the General Construction Permit, Order No. 2012-0006-DWQ, issued by the State Water Board, and will need to develop and implement a SWPPP to estimate sediment risk from construction activities to receiving waters, and specify BMPs that would be used by the project to minimize pollution of stormwater.

Future development would be required to prepare, implement, and be consistent with the Construction General Permit, including the SWPPP and BMPs, which would reduce project construction impacts on water quality to less than significant. Therefore, construction impacts associated with water quality standards and WDRs would be less than significant.

Operation
The Plan Area will eventually be under the jurisdiction of the FMFCD for stormwater and flood control management. (Portions of the Plan Area are currently within FMFCD boundaries, with the rest actively being developed and annexed.) Stormwater runoff is collected by FMFCD facilities and will typically end up in retention basins. These basins will sometimes be forced to discharge water to surface waters during periods of heavy or consistent rain. These discharges may increase the concentration of sediment and pollution found in stormwater.

Typically, stormwater runoff from urban development contains an array of constituents, such as automotive fluids (e.g., fuels, oils, antifreeze), combustion and exhaust byproducts (e.g., lead, cadmium, nickel), sediments, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and nutrients and bacteria pollutants from domestic and agricultural animal waste. These constituents are expelled into the environment throughout the year, where they settle onto the ground surface. During the wet season, stormwater runoff conveys these pollutants downstream, resulting in polluted stormwater runoff, especially during the first storm events of the season.

Water quality treatment for post-construction discharges to stormwater in the FMFCD urban flood control system area is provided by retention basins. Development in the FMFCD Master Plan area is exempt from further water quality requirements as long as the FMFCD’s Storm Water Quality Management Plan is implemented. Storm drainage improvements are funded by local drainage fees paid by developments and constructed by either FMFCD, developers, or both. Basins are effective at reducing average concentrations of a broad range of contaminants via filtration through soil and are built to design criteria exceeding Statewide Standard Urban Stormwater Mitigation Plan standards.

There are seven existing basins contributing to stormwater collection for the Plan Area and six proposed basins within the Plan Area. FMFCD basins are designed for a capacity of a 2-year storm and for at least 60 percent of average rainfall.

The City is a co-permittee with the FMFCD, the County of Fresno, the City of Clovis, and California State University Fresno in the Phase 1 NPDES Permit for Stormwater Discharges from MS4s. This Phase 1 MS4 Permit requires that the City and its co-permittees implement water quality and watershed protection measures for all development projects. The WDRs contained in the NPDES Permit have been designed to be consistent with the water quality standards and goals established 136
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City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development Area Specific Plan Project Draft Program EIR Utilities and Service Systems
FirstCarbon Solutions 3.18-19 https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-18 Utilities.docx rural streams management, local stormwater drainage, stormwater quality management, water conservation, recreation, and related wildlife management. The FMFCD coordinates with cities and the County of Fresno via a framework provided in the Storm Drainage and Flood Control Master Plan (Storm Drain Master Plan), which is prepared by the FMFCD as a specific element within the general plan of each agency. The Storm Drain Master Plan identifies urban and rural drainage area boundaries, computes runoff flows based on planned land use, identifies facility size and location, establishes street grades necessary to accomplish drainage of the runoff from the point of origin to the nearest collector facility, and identifies natural channels requiring preservation.

Stormwater collection in the City is typically completed via FMFCD facilities. It begins with street gutters that collect and convey stormwater runoff to storm drain inlets. The runoff is collected in these inlets and delivered to FMFCD’s pipe networks, pump stations, and infiltration basins for groundwater recharge. Most runoff is discharged into recharge basins, but during heavy rainfall events, excess runoff overflows into a system of relief channels and canals that discharge to the San Joaquin River, its tributary streams, local agricultural canals, and FID facilities.

The Storm Drain Master Plan divides FMFCD’s service area into many local drainage areas of one to two square miles throughout the City. All inlets, pipes, and pump stations within each drainage area are maintained by the FMFCD. The gutters, along with public streets and sidewalks, are maintained by the City’s Street Maintenance Division. It is assumed that this maintenance agreement will remain in place for the foreseeable future. The FMFCD’s Storm Drain Master Plan includes 164 adopted or proposed drainage areas, with all but five areas served by a retention or detention facility. FMFCD basins have been sized for capacities of two-year storms and for at least 60 percent of average rainfall;45 FMFCD allows a 20 percent change in volume before basins need to be resized or relocated.46 Retention basins are designed to provide storage for up to 6 inches of rainfall on the drainage area watershed given typical runoff to rainfall ratios used for urban drainage design.

FMFCD pipes range in size from 15 to 108 inches, and basins range in size from 5 to 25 acres. The drainage areas are delineated along topographic boundaries and are limited in size from 200 to 600 acres. This size limitation helps reduce the size requirements of the collection and disposal facilities.

FMFCD utilizes three means to implement drainage systems for the Metropolitan Area. One method is the use of Community Block Grants and low interest infrastructure loans from the State of California to construct drainage facilities in the older, previously developed areas of the City. A second method is to form assessment districts under the provisions of the 1915 Bond Act; assessment districts were formed based on drainage area boundaries, the parcels within the assessment districts were assessed a proportional share of the cost of the collection and disposal system, and the drainage system for the drainage area was constructed. The third and currently employed method is to collect drainage fees from parcels as they develop based on their prorated share of the cost of the drainage area collection and disposal systems. The implementing ordinance for the drainage fee structure is adopted by the City, and the drainage fees are collected by the City when entitlements are granted or building permits are issued. 45 Fresno Metropolitan Flood Control District. 2016. District Services Plan. 46 Placeworks. 2017. Southwest Fresno Specific Plan Environmental Impact Report. August. 138
City of Fresno—Fresno Southeast Development AreaSpecific Plan Project Utilities and Service Systems Draft Program EIR

3.18-20 FirstCarbon Solutions https //adecinnovations.sharepoint.com/sites/PublicationsSite/Shared Documents/Publications/Client (PN-JN)/3168/31680033/EIR/3 - Draft PEIR/31680033 Sec03-18 Utilities.docx FMFCD is also a primary participant in groundwater recharge for the City. Unlined retention basins provide recharge of both stormwater runoff and imported water from the San Joaquin River and Kings River. Through a cooperative agreement, the City uses FID canals to deliver allocated water from the San Joaquin and Kings Rivers to these basins for groundwater recharge.

Flood Control
FMFCD provides flood control measures on major creeks and waterways that drain to the City; these waterways include Big Dry Creek, Alluvial Drain, Pup Creek, Dog Creek, Redbank Creek, Mud Creek, and Fancher Creek. The flood control measures maintained are designed for the 0.5 percent exceedance interval (i.e., 200-year-return frequency) flood flow event, which include a series of dams and detention basins. These include the Big Dry Creek Dam, Fancher Creek Dam, Redbank Dam, Friant Dam, Alluvial Drainage Detention Basin, Pup Creek Detention Basin, Redbank Creek Detention Basin, Fancher Creek Detention Basin, and Big Dry Creek Detention Basin.

Project Site
In accordance with the Storm Drain Master Plan and other planning documents, the FMFCD is developing improvements for the Specific Plan Area for storm drain facilities. The Specific Plan Area encompasses all or part of the following existing drainage areas: BG, BL, BM, BS, CS, DS and, DV.

Proposed drainage areas for SEDA include DT, DU, DW, DX, DY, and DZ. Most of the existing drainage areas include existing storm drain collection facilities, while the proposed drainage areas generally have no existing storm drain facilities. Areas DS and DV are the exceptions in that they are existing drainage areas with basins but have not yet been built out to Master Plan conditions.

FMFCD improvements include storm drain inlets and piping, which are being analyzed and developed in conjunction with the proposed land uses within the Plan Area. Those portions of the Plan Area encompassed in existing drainage areas include master planned utilities designed by FMFCD.

There are seven existing basins contributing to stormwater collection for the Plan Area, and six proposed basins within the Plan Area. There are also two existing basins outside of the Plan Area that are not part of existing drainage areas, including the Redbank Basin and the Fancher Creek Basin, that may contribute to additional drainage capacity; however, these two basins were not considered in the analyses completed as part of the Storm Drain Technical Study (Appendix I).

FMFCD basins are designed for a capacity of a 2-year storm and for at least 60 percent of average rainfall. Per the FMFCD, the proposed drainage areas for SEDA have not been adopted yet and the basin locations have not been finalized; those presented here have been placed by FMFCD staff.47 The Specific Plan must be analyzed and evaluated for impacts on the aggregate area and each planned basin area.

An area’s runoff rate and volume are heavily affected by the amount of impervious surfaces within the area. Imperviousness is directly related to the type of land use and can either positively or negatively affect an area’s drainage capabilities with a change in impervious surfaces. A common characteristic that can define an area’s imperviousness, i.e., its ability to handle drainage during 47 Wade, Denise. FMFCD Master Plan Special Projects Manager, FMFCD. Personal communication: email. February 22, 2022. 139
www.vtpi.org
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From: Arakel Arisian
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: k @gmail.com; Mel Kazarian; d @att.net; Menas Arisian Subject: SEDA Comments on EIR and Specific Plan
Date: Friday, August 25, 2023 6:17:00 PM
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8VHFDXWLRQZLWKOLQNVDQGDWWDFKPHQWV
Hello Adrienne –
I wanted to share comments on the SEDA EIR and Specific Plan on behalf of my clients, Harrison Farms. These comments were submitted through the Survey Monkey link, but I also wanted to provide them to you via email in case there was a technical issue with the online submittal. Below are their comments. Have a nice weekend!
“To Whom It May Concern,
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Southeast Growth Development Area Program Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Harrison Farms owns approximately 159 acres within the SEDA Specific Plan area (APN: 310-063-05 & 310-143-27), located just south of McKinley Avenue to the Fancher Creek, between Temperance and DeWolf Avenues. Given the opportunity afforded to us collectively with size of these properties, our intention is to master plan the parcels for future development. We are eager to begin that process in conjunction with the City’s planning efforts.

With that in mind, we want to provide the following comments:

1. Potential Phasing Plan – the current SEDA Policy Draft does not explicitly provide a development phasing plan, although previous versions of the plan and correspondence referred to four distinct phases. We are in support of having no phasing for the SEDA area. If the City decides to phase the project, we request that the Harrison Farms properties be included in phase 1 and that the EIR sufficiently analyzes an alternative that allows for that option. Related to phasing, we would like to provide the following comments:
a. Infrastructure – major facilities for SEDA (e.g. sewer and water) will be installed in Temperance Avenue and the properties are between one-half mile and one-quarter mile from where that infrastructure will be available. In the past, several public meeting attendees have suggested a west-to-east phasing in order to leverage the significant infrastructure investment that is being made to allow development in SEDA. b. Proximity to the Bradley Center – our property is less than a mile from the future Clovis Unified Bradley Center, which expected to be a major hub for SEDA. Allowing our property to develop with other properties in the first phase, to which we are immediately adjacent, will bring needed housing and other land uses within close proximity to the Bradley Center. Related to 1a, it is recommended that the infrastructure needed for the school is coordinated and installed with the needed infrastructure for development.
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c. Circulation within SEDA – one of the major challenges to developing SEDA is traffic and circulation. Currently De Wolf Avenue, which is planned to be an important north-south roadway does not connect between Olive and Belmont Avenues, along the east side of our property. Developing this area as part of phase 1 would allow the planning and potentially earlier construction of that needed connection. Completing DeWolf Avenue would alleviate traffic congestion on Temperance Avenue and other roadways in SEDA, particularly when infrastructure is being constructed in Temperance. It is recommended that the EIR traffic study examine the timing of the DeWolf Avenue connection as a part of the traffic mitigation timing.

2. Land Use Density – the proposed residential land use densities do not include an important range from .5 dwelling units per acre to 6 dwelling units per acre. We are requesting the City either to include that missing density range and/or allow for it through plan policies, as doing so would provide for a wider range and variety of housing types. It would also allow for a transitional increase in density for any project adjacent to existing rural residential. It is recommended that the EIR analyze and contemplate a scenario where future projects are developed at less than 6 units per acre. There are also other land use requirements that should be discussed further prior to the adoption of the plan.

We look forward to continuing to participate in the public engagement process and thank you for this opportunity to comment.”
Thanks,
Arakel
Arakel A. Arisian

AICP, LEED AP
Arisian Group
389 Clovis Avenue, Ste. 100
Clovis CA 93612
Office: 559-797-4359
Mobile: 559-260-2070
http://www.arisiangroup.com
This message contains information that may be confidential and privileged. Unless you are the addressee (or authorized to receive messages for the addressee), you may not use, copy, or disclose to anyone the message or any information contained in the message. If you have received the message in error, please advise the sender by reply e-mail and delete the message. Nothing in this message should be interpreted as a digital or electronic signature that can be used to authenticate a contract or any other legal document.
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Karen Musson
August 26, 2023
Ms. Jennifer Clark, Director
Ms. Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
City of Fresno Planning & Development
2600 Fresno Street, Ste. 3065
Fresno, California 93721
Dear Ms. Clark and Ms. Asadoorian,
RE: FRESNO SOUTH EAST DEVELOPMENT AREA SPECIFIC PLAN AND EIR - COMMENT This letter of comment on the City of Fresno's EIR and proposed South East annexation plan (SEDA) of 8,700 acres is to voice my opposition to the unnecessary taking of more Prime Farmland to promote urban sprawl.

SEDA’s proposed plan for consideration will consume 7,700 acres of currently productive agricultural land in Fresno County. Prime Farmland is limited and cannot be mitigated/ replaced by preservation trusts, conservation easements or fees/policies. Ag farmland is in serious jeopardy - not from drought or climate change - but from indifference, urban sprawl, burdensome regulations, and a lack of understanding on the critical role of food production to our freedom, jobs, and health. Agriculture is essential and its destruction should be avoided at all risk.

Urban sprawl fuels flight and blight – and redirects city financial investments to focus on additional costly infrastructure and provide public services for fire and police protection.

Extending the sphere and encompassing more land is not the solution. The Greenfield Coalition report on Urban Decay points to inefficient utilization of land, decay, deferred maintenance, outdated infrastructure, revenue loss and negative neighborhood effects. https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/eb1233cfb60048df8a02ba8b83998da7 In 2019, the City of Fresno used GIS to calculate more than 8,200 acres (or 14%) of vacant land within its existing city boundaries and identified the current zoning of these parcels to determine that this undeveloped land has the capacity to hold over 134,000 housing units. More than enough land and housing for the next 40 years! Further, the State predicts continued slow to no growth in the Valley over the next 40 years. The City has not grown and population figures show continuing decline, lower birth rates and relocations north and out-of-state locales. It’s time for a new vision and investments to revitalize older parts of Fresno and in-fill parcels. https://thesungazette.com/article/news/2023/08/08/state-predicts-population-plateaufor-valleyfuture/#:~:text=California%20now%20stands%20at%20about,to%208.3%20million%20by%202 060.
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Again, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the City's Draft EIR. It is my hope that LAFCo will vote to deny the SEDA Specific Plan, rescind the 2006 Sphere of Influence and allow Fresno County to preserve Prime Farmland and avoid the sizeable impacts and costs outlined in the project's EIR.

Respectfully,
Karen Musson
cc: Mayor Jerry Dyer
Fresno County Board of Supervisors
Councilmembers Bredefeld, Karbassi and Chavez
LAFCo
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From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 7:48:41 PM
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Section 3.1 Aesthetics, Light and Glare
Impact AES-3 and 4 Project will degrade existing character of public views…. (Significant and unavoidable impact)
Concern: This proposes too much – more than necessary - light for the area. Current residents moved to the country to avoid such things as light and glare.
171
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 7:50:25 PM
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Section 3.1 Aesthetics, Light and Glare
Impact AG-1 Project will convert Prime and unique Farmland and Farmland of Statewide Importance. (Significant and unavoidable impact)
Concern: The proposed Farmland Preservation Program reads like a riddle.
“Restrictive Covenants or Deeds, In Lieu Fees, Mitigation Banks, Fee Title Acquisition, Conservation Easements, Land Use Regulation.”
Deeds, Fees, Regulations are not going to help lost Farmland. So they’ll analyze on a project-by- project basis – the land will still be used for Non-Farm purposes. It is destruction and a waste of Prime Farmland! Current residents strongly object to this. 172
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 7:56:52 PM
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Section 3.7 Geology and soils
Impact Geo-2 (N/A Significance after Mitigation.) The proposed project would not result in substantial soil erosion or the loss of topsoil. (N/A - level of significance…)
Comment: Top soil certainly will be lost when project builds on top of it! Unless they scrape the top soil off before building on it – with a plan to sell it back to us later.
173
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 7:58:56 PM
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Section 3.9 Hazard and Hazardous Materials Impact Haz-2 MM HAZ-2b ….(3)_ Geographic surveys to ascertain the
presence or absence of subsurface features of concern such as underground storage tanks, drywells. drain, plumbing, and septic systems.

Concern: While people representing the City of Fresno
verbally tell us, on one hand, that property owners can stay in their homes as long as they want to stay, here is the threat of disrupting our septic systems. A good
septic system can serve homeowners 50 years or longer
without problems. Disruption or removal would cause
residents to not be able to stay in their homes another minute!
Connecting to the city’s sewer would be an expense many property owners could not afford. We don’t want to be
forced to pay these expenses when our current conditions are serving us well.
174
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 8:01:27 PM
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Section 3.9 Hazard and hazardous Materials Impact Haz-2 MM HAZ-2c …. If findings and conclusions of the Phase II Environmental Site Assessment…demonstrates the presence of concentrations of hazardous materials exceeding regulatory threshold level,…property owners and/or developers of properties shall complete site remediation….. Potential remediation could include the removal or treatment of water and or soil.

Concern: While people representing the City of Fresno verbally tell us, on one hand, that property owners can stay in their homes as long as they want to stay. While, on the other hand, here is the threat of disrupting our wells. That disruption would cause residents to not be able to stay in their homes another minute! Connecting to the city’s water systems would be an expenses many property owners can not afford. We don’t want to be forced to pay those expenses when our current conditions are serving us well.
175
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 8:02:41 PM
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Section 3.9 Hazard and Hazardous Materials Impact Haz 3 - Project could emit hazardous emissions or acutely hazardous materials, substances or waste within one quarter mile of an existing or proposed school
Concern: It irresponsible to consider exposing students in an existing school to hazardous emissions or materials.

It’s important for students to have outdoor activities and critical for their air to be clean at all times. A quarter of a mile is only about 1300 feet. During outdoor activities students could be exposed to the project’s hazardous air.

It’s wreckless to propose situations where their clean air would be compromised.
176
From: Nancy Nelson
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Cc: Nancy Nelson
Subject: SEDA EIR COMMENTS
Date: Sunday, August 27, 2023 8:25:47 PM
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Section 3.1 Aesthetics, Light and Glare
Impact AG-2. The proposed project will not conflict with existing zoning for agricultural use or a Williamson Act Contract. (Significant and unavoidable impact.)
Question: Using SEDA’s “suggested” project map – and using the intersection of Butler and DeWolf as one example - how can the City build their planned ‘Regional Center’ with all of the planned residential and commercial projects in that area when most of the land is protected under the Williamson Act? (Reference: attached most current map available – Fresno County Williamson Act map - 2015).
https://databasin.org/datasets/6871c77c876d421b985b1b70ee1640f5/ 177
August 24, 2023
Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
City of Fresno, City Clerk
Fresno City Council, Chairman and Council Members
2600 Fresno Street, Third Floor
Fresno, CA 93721
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
OPPOSE LETTER – EIR AND EDA/PROPOSED LAND USE/ANNEXATION/ BY THE CITY OF FRESNO Dear Chairman, Council Members, City Clerk, and Ms. Asadoorian:

Please accept this letter as our opposition to the City of Fresno’s EIR report and the SEDA development, annexation, proposed land use and the map thereto, which is an item that is expected to go before the City Council in or about October 2023.

Our specific property/land sits next to what is known as the Briggs Canal. It is our understanding that water in the Briggs comes from the Kings River. This water is what irrigates properties for the food that you and I to eat and serves a greater purpose. It is serviced and maintained by Fresno Irrigation District (FID). The District’s web page, under About Us, states as follows: The FID is a leader in California water, serving over 200,000 acres of prime agricultural farmland … Farmland sitting next to or that abuts a water structure such as ours is rare in Fresno County and not easily attainable. With our property adjacent to Briggs, it is irrecoverable and we would suffer a great loss. Therefore, we oppose the redevelopment and conversion of prime farmland to serve a purpose as Flexible Research and Development, which by the City’s definition means no residential uses will not be allowed. That would therefore leave eminent domain which the City has stated would not be used however if I do not sell and my neighbor does not sell then there is no other recourse but for the city to use eminent domain.

We have all seen what has occurred with the Reedley lab and as stated by many of you councilmembers the public is placed at risk and so many other factors such as disease, groundwater contamination were common concerns. If we in this area “Flexible Research and Development” please explain with specificity what occurs to the property/land/farm owners the process and procedures and confirm if our property will be taken from us through eminent domain?
The City’s project and plan area consists of Prime Farmland. We own 2.49 acres of farmland in the proposed SEDA plan area. We house two tractors, chickens, apricot trees, as well as house pets on our land. We are current fosters for the county animal shelter and we are able to assist with fostering of 178
more than one animal primarily due to the land we have. We work our land like most, if not all of the residents in this project area. Removing farmers who grow their own food; and/or who commercially feed this Community, County and State is reckless and negligent so that the City can expand. The City’s proposed land use map reflects for our parcel “Flexible Research & Development.” You want to take irrecoverable prime farmland for Flexible Research & Development when you can place Flexible Research & Development in the vacant Orchard Supply building (vacant for more than 5 years). Does that mean a lab such as that most recently found in Reedley, CA will go here. What does “Mixed Residential” mean on the City’s map? I specifically asked if that meant low income housing, please explain. Again, there are so many other vacant buildings within the City of Fresno that would allow you to do this that we do not need to remove, redevelop and destroy Prime Farmland or Farmland in general.

We have been told on numerous occasions that we would not be required to hook up to City services (water, sewage). We believe that to be incorrect. We were told that the City would not require us to; if not the City then who? If I am the only house that does not hook up, will I be forced to hook up? What will the cost be? Is there the potential for placement of a lien on my home due to the cost of these services? Please also confirm with past projects in this area or within the City (i.e. the area in and around north Jensen and Fowler to Kings Canyon etc.) how that land development was handled and if the landowners that were pre-existing were required to hook up to City of Fresno services (water/sewage).

If so, what were the services, what was the process, the cost, who was responsible to pay those charges or for those services; how many complaints did you receive from the landowners verbal and in writing, what was the remedy of said complaints; and if any of these homes resulted in liens being placed on landowners property/homes. Please also provide on current and past projects when property owners choose to stay and not sell, the city is therefore developed around their property, how many wells have gone dry due to the new development? Does this map become the zoning map for this area? Property owners were also told by the City representatives that eminent domain is not allowed or can or will not be used on property owners and their land located on the Land Use Map for this project, please confirm if this is an accurate statement? When I spoke to Jennifer Clark at the last in-person Drop In meeting she stated that should one homeowner decide not to sell or annex, they (property owner) will not be forced to annex; however, later she stated that they (City) cannot have one house one way while the rest of the area is annexed. Please clarify this statement by Ms. Clark. How will her stated change occur if one home cannot be different from the rest? Please explain who will impose and force the annexation of the land/property owners unwilling and opposing to said annexation? Please explain the process and the impacts to the landowners as well as the changes to zoning affecting the homeowner who did not willingly annex their land. Will I still be able to farm with all these houses around me? As you know, there is vacant land and buildings in or around Kings Canyon and Clovis Avenue; you have the Orchard Supply building that currently sits empty littered with homeless people. You have vacant land and buildings all throughout the City of Fresno and other cities within Fresno County and your plan is to destroy the Prime farmland of the SEPO (Fresno Southeast Property Owners). Destroy our farmland to build more homes, which thus creates more traffic, more congestion, more land and air pollution, more crime, and homelessness. With the Briggs Canal, if that waterway remains, with the increase in population and homelessness, our canals will turn into bathing facilities and used as restrooms. Please ask your homeless task force if that is a possibility that the homeless population uses waterways as bathing facilities and toilets? If this water is intended to feed the community, is it possible 179
for fecal matter, urine and other forms of illness to be in said water. Furthermore, take a drive around the City of Fresno, look at their canals and waterways, you currently have homelessness on your canal banks, tents, littered with trash (e.g. McKinley and Chestnut; in front of the Social Services building Phillip and Kings Canyon, the canal located east of Clovis Avenue--north of Kings Canyon by Orchard Supply). The City is unable to handle the demands of the current crisis and you want to spread it out.

Your intent is to make a 15 minute city. We have seen the destruction of Paradise, Maui, when you began to impact the rural areas which are not intended to be within the city limits. We have water issues, we were just in a drought and there is no guarantee that we will be blessed with rain in the future. How will you control air pollution? Where will you get water from? How will you get the needed money to build the infrastructure for this plan?
The City of Fresno needs a boundary, do not grow it out here destroying the aesthetic rural southeast farmland.

The EIR REPORT:

Paragraph 1.2.1 lists the potential significant environmental issues that require further analysis.

Therefore, this is incomplete. In light of this statement, we oppose this EIR and request that you vote to deny/oppose/reject.

Paragraph located on PDF page number 762 titled (Wild-2) … Pollutant Concentrations from Wildfire impacts under this topic would be less than significant and there is no substantial change. However, we disagree and oppose that statement in that the City has a wide-ranging homeless population. What factors were considered as it relates to the ongoing homeless population within city limits when addressing this issue? We see many fires started due to homelessness. City streets are littered with trash, drugs and/or paraphernalia, and the homeless population utilizing fire in order to cook or stay warm during the winter months. Therefore, we disagree with this report and believe further studies should be done. As a reminder and as stated in paragraph 3.19.7, you would be converting prime ag land to residential and mixed-use land uses. Significant and unavoidable.

Chapter 4 Other CEQA Considerations – Bulletpoint AG-1 (… Conversion of Farmland to Non-ag Uses) states 2,475 acres of land designated as Prime Farmland, 1,352 acres of Farmland of Statewide Importance, approximately 1,189 acres of land designated as Farmland of Local Importance, and 1,725 acres of land designated as Unique Farmland “scattered” throughout the plan area. The impact is significant. Based on this information contained in the EIR, we oppose and request that you vote to reject/deny/oppose and that this plan does not move forward. We further request that all maps be amended to identify the land properly in full transparency. Significant and unavoidable.

Bullet Ag-2 (… Conflict with Existing Zoning or Williamson Act Contract) – This paragraph states in part that according to the Williamson Act Property map, the majority of the Williamson Act properties within the SOI and City are located within the Plan Area. It further states that there is a significant impact on existing Williamson Act Contract land. Ultimately, you are still converting Williamson Act land to non-ag land. For this reason, we strongly oppose and request that you vote to oppose and/or deny on this basis. We further request that all maps be amended to identify the land properly in full transparency.

Significant and unavoidable.
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Bullet Cumulative Ag Resources and Forestry Resources Impacts states and acknowledges that there is a loss of Prime Farmland within the plan area. Under your plan, you destroy existing Prime Farmland, Unique Farmland and small farms to build or develop community farming and small farms. The EIR states that it will be a significant impact on Ag zoning and the Williams Act Contracts and there would be land use changes resulting in the conversion of farmland to non-ag uses and is unavoidable. We were told by the City at Drop-In meeting #1 on July 24, 2023 that we would not be rezoned should property owners choose not to sell. However, Jennifer Clark at the last in person drop-in meeting stated that we cannot have just one home not similarly zoned or annexed; therefore, please confirm what occurs based on Clark’s statement. Rezoning would only occur if a neighbor complained, which thus alters my land use. The City’s statement clearly is misleading and misrepresents what is occurring. I believe the impacts would be more than significant in that you are displacing property owners who are generational farmers, and farmers of their own land; how many of us current property owners would be physically displaced, and harmed financially. Based on this information we request that you strongly oppose and/or deny based on this statement.

Impact Air-1 paragraph states this projects exceeds the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District another significant and unavoidable impact. Based on this paragraph we request you vote to oppose and/or deny based on this paragraph. Please note that we asked at the drop-in meetings why the Air Pollution District was not a part of these meetings to share in on the added pollution due to this development.

Air-3 states that since it cannot be foreseen the amount of construction occurring nor the exact location it cannot be determined if the emissions could be adequately controlled or reduced. Based on this statement, we believe the study is not complete as it must be looked at, precise and discussed. We are opposed based on this statement and request that you vote to oppose/deny.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions cumulative impacts are significant and unavoidable. Based on this statement we oppose and request that you vote to oppose/deny.

Impact NOI-1 – This statement states that impacts are significant and unavoidable. It also states that they are unable to quantify therefore there is no true, accurate impact identified and said report is incomplete. Based on this statement we oppose and request that you vote to oppose/deny. The Cumulative Noise impact is again noted as significant and unavoidable.

Exhibit 5-2 of the EIR shows just under 2,500 acres of Prime Farmland, and Farmland of Statewide and Local Importance, Unique Farmland of Importance, etc.

The EIR Table 5-1 under paragraph 5.7 states there is no location in the City where 45,000 homes (yes the Plan calls for 45,000) could be constructed while avoiding environmental impacts to ag land. Ag land would be impacted regardless. However, the land is not your basic ag land, it is Prime Farmland, it is land that sits next to the Briggs Irrigation Ditch which is rare, it’s farmland with statewide and local importance, it’s my backyard, small farming, however, we the property owners choose to define it, its our land that you want to dismantle, convert, and take so that you can build 45,000 homes, parks, and research and development.

The Orchard Supply Building on Clovis and Kings Canyon has sat empty for a number of years, that can be your research and development. You want to take our farmland, our livelihood, what feeds our 181
families, our communities, for a bike trail, a park, a residential development to teach people to have a garden (who will teach them there is no guarantee that they will use it for such) all the while destroying the Prime Farmland we landowners have created destroying our way of life and country life. You will add 45,000 homes during a recession, a time when most cannot afford, thereby creating more empty houses. You want to disrupt our way of life and destroy the farmland that we have just to build more homes that most cannot afford. You want to help this community have your builders or developers lower the prices of their homes to sell those existing homes already built. Convert some of these developments/homes already in progress into mixed residential. Ag land should be the last thing we convert, land that currently feeds us. That salad you had for lunch, fruit, etc. came from one of us most likely.

We oppose the alternatives set forth in the EIR due to the type of land we are looking at as referred to in this report: Prime Farmland, Farmland of Statewide and Local Importance, Unique Farmland. Based on the impacts as listed above and based on viable alternatives, we request that you deny/oppose the EIR.

Furthermore, we oppose as this EIR shows that the plan is fiscally irresponsible and environmentally irresponsible. Finally, we request that the SEDA Plan be opposed and denied. If you review the Level of Significance as outlined in the EIR, we have listed below just a few that are classified as Significant and Unavoidable; therefore, for these reasons request you oppose and deny the City’s Plan and find another area or location in the City of Fresno for said projects. The impacts are significant and unavoidable.

Finally, we were informed and received in the mail, on July 21, 2023, the City’s flyer for the “Drop-In” meeting; the first meeting set for July 24, 2023, hosted by the City of Fresno. As you can see from the dates, this was three days before the first scheduled meeting. As I verbally stated and inquired about with the City during the July 24th meeting, what is a the meaning of a Drop-in meeting? Who decided to title this meeting as a Drop-In? To title it as such, is misleading and misrepresenting the intent of the City and purposes of said meeting. This title lacks transparency and is intended to misstate and mislead the purpose of an extremely important topic of discussion. It does little to ensure community/public attendance, involvement, participation and is a sure way to prevent and limit public input. This is an extremely important meeting that impacts the community of southeast Fresno, specifically the Fresno Southeast Property Owners (SEPO) and therefore, I believe was titled as such to limit the number of attendees and silence the opposition. Furthermore, Sontaya Rose from the Mayor’s office was in attendance and can confirm as well as other City representatives, the location picked for the first important meeting on July 24th lacked the capacity to hold the number of attendees, safely and comfortably, and posed a safety hazard in that it was about 105 degrees outside and there was no working AC inside said building thereby making it 110 degrees most likely inside with all the people in the building. As I stated on that date, I believe that was a safety hazard and put citizens at risk and compromised their health and well-being. Not one representative spoke to that and acknowledged that the first meeting should be rescheduled or some other remedy. The temperature inside the building added to the frustration felt by most of the members of the community. As I stated, this meeting labeled by the City is misleading, and a calculated manner in which to misrepresent, misstate, and divert the public’s attention to what it is in actuality and that is to take and change or convert land from the property owners. Should the meeting have been labeled annexation, eminent domain, town hall, any one of those trigger words the public at large would have a true understanding of what is occurring in the southeast area of Fresno and would understand the true discussions and importance of what is happening thereby enhancing attendance and opposition. Furthermore, I see no link for those to participate virtually due to a disability, medical necessity or some other personal reason. It was stated that the City would have one day assigned to a webinar. As you know, the topics of discussion can be 182
convoluted and we the community would need time to research the Q&A dialogue that is provided to us therefore one day for those unable to physically attend is not enough. The public should not be limited to one day; we should all be afforded the same the ability to attend all meetings. Quite frankly, the information changes so frequently it would be in the best interest of the public to attend all meetings.

As such, in this regard, we strongly oppose. Furthermore, the meeting by the City on 7/24/23 was very unorganized and lacked structure and foundation as to the discussions and topics and the City ran out of comment cards in English—the space allowed for comments was minimal on such an important topic of discussion.

I would also like to know why no representative of the County was in attendance at these meetings? A representative of the City was asked about annexing property and the City representative responded with the City would not annex. Please confirm the process for annexation and if not the City of Fresno, then please confirm the responsible agency. Please provide details on what grounds for annexation, the criteria or guidelines that must be met to annex property/land? If this response requires information from the County, I would ask that you direct City representatives to coordinate their response and work with the County of Fresno or any other agencies involved to get said information. I believe the City of Fresno when asked these types of questions it is their responsibility to answer in detail and they are required to be fully transparent and should be able to intelligently communicate if not their agency the appropriate agency involved and that would handle. To leave the response as simple as it’s not the City, is vague and intended to mislead the public. The City knows the answer to the question and to not provide a full response is intentional. It may not be the City’s responsibility to annex but if they know that it is the responsibility of another agency they should state as such.

I believe the SEDA homeowners/property owners have a right to know the following information. If there are costs associated with any of these requests, please confirm the amount or charges, in writing, prior to providing said information.
x Please provide the number of EIR’s that are submitted to the City of Fresno per calendar year; and how many are rejected or voted as unapproved; how many are submitted to LAFCo per calendar year, voted as unapproved or rejected and the bases/reason for said vote. x On April 25, 2023, an item went to the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, Agenda Item #8 regarding a variance application that falls within SEDA. During Mr. Assemi’s comments to the Board, he referred to having received a timeline from the Mayor on the project. Please confirm what that timeline was and if a copy can be provided electronically to the property owners should they wish to received; and please explain why a developer would have that information but not the property owners who would be negatively impacted by SEDA? When was the timeline (Assemi refers to in his comments) provided to him by the Mayor? When was this timeline provide to the property owners (SEPO) who will be impacted? If it has not been provided to the property owners, why? My household has not received a timeline from the Mayor nor was one provided to property owners at any drop-in meeting and to my knowledge a timeline has not been provided to property owners in any meeting thus far by the City of Fresno. Please confirm how many variances in the SEDA project area have gone through the process, what that process is, including how many have gone to the County of Fresno Board of Supervisors for vote and the vote result from the start of the project(s)/plan to present? x Please identify the land parcels, land and farmland in the SEDA project area that have been purchased by developers, date of purchase, names of builders, corporations, school district, water districts, and any other business organization, corporation or entity from the start of SEDA 183
to present that have purchased. Please include the names, cross-streets, parcel numbers and any other identify factors of the land pending a sale, owned, purchased or sold. x Please provide the information on when the property sold or was purchased and include land, property that is pending sale/purchase.
x Please provide the members of our community, SEPO (Southeast Property Owners), with information on how much farmland/land is currently owned in Fresno County, CA by Darrius Assemi and/or Granville Homes and any other developers, builders or business organizations.

If this type of development continues, the lack of farmland to our community as well as the substantial loss of prime farmland is irrecoverable and factor in good farmland with irrigation resources such as ours, it is irrecoverable. Therefore, we strongly oppose the EIR and the SEDA development and ask that you deny and reject both in order to protect and preserve our homes and land.

The City of Fresno needs a boundary, do not grow it out here destroying the aesthetic rural southeast farmland.

Thank you.

Respectfully,
Natalie Ortiz & Family
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From: Joshua
To: Adrienne Asadoorian
Subject: SEDA
Date: Monday, July 31, 2023 2:39:31 PM
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July 23, 2023
City of Fresno Council
2600 Fresno Street
Fresno, CA 93721
Mayor Jerry Dyer
Council President Tyler Maxwell, District 4
Council Member Annalisa Perea, District 1
Council Member Mike Karbassi, District 2
Council Member Miguel Arias, District 3
Council Member Luis Chavez, District 5
Council Member Garry Bredefeld, District 6
Council Member Nelson Esparza, District 7
City of Fresno Clerk Todd SterPer
City of Fresno Planner Adrienne Asadoorian
City of Fresno Planning Manager Sophia Pagoulatos
Fresno County Board of Supervisors
2281 Tulare, Room 301
Fresno, CA 93721
Chairman Sal Quintero, District 3
Brian Pacheco, District 1
Steve Brandau, District 2
Buddy Mendes, District 4
Nathan Magsig, District 5
Clerk of the Board of Supervisors
Dear Ms. Asadoorian
I am rather disappointed that The City of Fresno continues to spend money to coerce its residents to believe that annexation of the surrounding rural landscape is responsible land management. I feel that I must speak out against the proposed SEDA project. Its impacts that affect today are relatively small FRPSDUHGWRWKHORQJWHUPHIIHFWVWR)UHVQR·VWRPRUURZ I am a lifetime Fresnan. I have chosen to be educated in Fresno (Class of 1981 CSUFresno). I chose to stay in Fresno and to establish my career. I chose to raise my family in Fresno; I believe my children are “Fresno Proud.” I have always thought that I am a part of the fabric that makes Fresno special. However, ODVWZHHN,UHFHLYHGLQP\PDLOER[WKH6('$PHHWLQJQRWLFHÁ\HU,WZDVDGGUHVVHGWR´2FFXSDQWµ,KDYH lived at this address for over 35 years, and considering I pay property taxes, one would think the City PLJKWKDYHP\QDPHRQUHFRUG,VWKLVWKH&LW\·VZD\RILQIRUPLQJPHWKDW,DPQRQHVVHQWLDO" The purpose of this letter is to reference a few of my many concerns. I would prefer to voice these concerns in person. Unfortunately, I am attending personal, family business the week of July 24, and I am XQDEOHWRDWWHQGWKHÀUVWWZRRIWKHIRXU6('$PHHWLQJV 1) Why have other growth plans been disregarded? Please address why the City of Fresno chooses QRWWRLQÀOOZLWKLQWKHFLW\·VERXQGDULHVZKHUHLQIUDVWUXFWXUHDOUHDG\H[LVWV%DVHGRQWKHKRXVHVFXUUHQWO\ being approved and built near the proposed annexation area, it is apparent that residents have no SUREOHPOLYLQJLQPXOWLOHYHOKRPHVZLWKRQO\DSDWLRIRU\DUGVSDFH7KHVHVDPHKRXVHVFRXOGEH FRQVWUXFWHGZLWKLQ)UHVQR·VFLW\OLPLW
2) Why is the soil in Fresno County not agriculturally valuable enough to be protected? Populations FRQWLQXHWRJURZ1RUWKHUQDQGVRXWKHUQ&DOLIRUQLDUHVLGHQWVDUHÁHHLQJWKHLURYHUSULFHGDQGFURZGHG continued on page 2
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Project Related Emissions
The DPEIR specifically states on page 2-13 that “The proposed project is a policylevel document and does not include any specific development proposals and may not fully evaluate the impacts of other future specific, individual development that may be approved under implementation of the proposed project”.

The District recommends that the DPEIR require that future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project identify, assess and characterize project-level air emissions and require mitigation of air quality impacts at the individual project-specific level.

Environmental reviews of potential impacts on air quality should incorporate the following items:

Construction Emissions
Future development projects should utilize the cleanest available off-road construction equipment.

Operational Emissions
Operational (ongoing) air emissions from mobile sources and stationary sources should be analyzed separately. For reference, the District’s significance thresholds are identified in the District’s Guidance for Assessing and Mitigating Air Quality Impacts:
https://www.valleyair.org/transportation/GAMAQI.pdf.

Recommended Mitigation Measure: At a minimum, project related impacts on air quality should be reduced to levels below the District’s significance thresholds through incorporation of design elements such as the use of cleaner Heavy Heavy-Duty (HHD) trucks and vehicles. More information on transportation mitigation measures can be found at:
https://ww2.valleyair.org/media/ob0pweru/clean-air-measures.pdf.

Project Trip Length for HHD Truck Travel
The DPEIR page 3.3-65 states, “The proposed project would permit residential, office, commercial and industrial land uses. Development of land uses that are allowed under the proposed project may result in stationary sources of TAC emissions, including light industrial facilities, warehouses…etc.” As a result, the City should include policies that require environmental review for future development projects (e.g. light industrial facilities/warehouses, commercial, etc.). Since the DPEIR acknowledges these types of development as part of the Project, these development projects have the potential to generate a high volume of HHD truck trips traveling further distances. As such, future 210
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environmental review should adequately characterize and justify an appropriate trip length distance for off-site HHD truck travel to and from the project site as well as the estimated number of trips supported by project-specific factors.

Recommended Model for Quantifying Air Emissions
Project-related criteria pollutant emissions from construction and operational sources should be identified and quantified. Emissions analysis should be performed using the California Emission Estimator Model (CalEEMod), which uses the most recent CARB-approved version of relevant emissions models and emission factors. CalEEMod is available to the public and can be downloaded from the CalEEMod website at: www.caleemod.com.

Allowed Uses Not Requiring Project-Specific Discretionary Approval In the event that the City determines that a project be approved as an allowed use not requiring a project-specific discretionary approval, the District recommends the DPEIR include language requiring such projects to prepare a technical assessment, in consultation with the District, to determine if additional analysis and/or mitigation is required.

Health Risk Screening/Assessment
The City should incorporate a requirement for all future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project to evaluate the risk on sensitive receptors (residences, businesses, hospitals, day-care facilities, health care facilities, etc.) in the area and mitigate any potentially significant risk to help limit exposure of sensitive receptors to emissions.

To determine potential health impacts on surrounding receptors (residences, businesses, hospitals, day-care facilities, health care facilities, etc.) a Prioritization and/or a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) should be performed for future development projects. These health risk determinations should quantify and characterize potential TACs identified by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment/California Air Resources Board (OEHHA/CARB) that pose a present or potential hazard to human health.

Health risk analyses should include all potential air emissions from the project, which include emissions from construction of the project, including multi-year construction, as well as ongoing operational activities of the project. Note, two common sources of TACs can be attributed to diesel exhaust emitted from heavy-duty off-road earth moving equipment during construction, and from ongoing operation of heavy-duty on-road trucks.

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Prioritization (Screening Health Risk Assessment):

A “Prioritization” is the recommended method for a conservative screening-level health risk assessment. The Prioritization should be performed using the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association’s (CAPCOA) methodology. Please contact the District for assistance with performing a Prioritization analysis.

The District recommends that a more refined analysis, in the form of an HRA, be performed for any project resulting in a Prioritization score of 10 or greater. This is because the prioritization results are a conservative health risk representation, while the detailed HRA provides a more accurate health risk evaluation.

Health Risk Assessment:

Prior to performing an HRA, it is strongly recommended that land use agencies/ project proponents develop and submit for District review a health risk modeling protocol that outlines the sources and methodologies that will be used to perform the HRA.

A development project would be considered to have a potentially significant health risk if the HRA demonstrates that the health impacts would exceed the District’s established risk thresholds, which can be found here:
http://www.valleyair.org/transportation/ceqa idx.htm.

A project with a significant health risk would trigger all feasible mitigation measures.

The District strongly recommends that development projects that result in a significant health risk not be approved by the land use agency.

The District is available to review HRA protocols and analyses. For HRA submittals please provide the following information electronically to the District for review:
x HRA (AERMOD) modeling files
x HARP2 files
x Summary of emissions source locations, emissions rates, and emission factor calculations and methodologies.

For assistance, please contact the District’s Technical Services Department:
x E-mail: [email protected]
x Phone: (559) 230-5900
Recommended Measure: Development projects resulting in TAC emissions should be located an adequate distance from residential areas and other sensitive receptors to prevent the creation of a significant health risk in accordance to CARB's Air Quality and Land Use Handbook: A Community Health Perspective located at https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/resource-center/strategydevelopment/land-use-resources. 212
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Ambient Air Quality Analysis
The District recommends an Ambient Air Quality Analysis (AAQA) be performed for any future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project with emissions that exceed 100 pounds per day of any pollutant.

An AAQA uses air dispersion modeling to determine if emissions increases from a project will cause or contribute to a violation of State or National Ambient Air Quality Standards. An acceptable analysis would include emissions from both projectspecific permitted and non-permitted equipment and activities. The District recommends consultation with District staff to determine the appropriate model and input data to use in the analysis.

Specific information for assessing significance, including screening tools and modeling guidance, is available online at the District’s website:
www.valleyair.org/ceqa.

Voluntary Emission Reduction Agreement
The District recommends the DPEIR include a feasibility discussion on implementing a Voluntary Emission Reduction Agreement (VERA) as a mitigation measure for all future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project that are determined to exceed the District’s CEQA significance thresholds.

A VERA is a mitigation measure by which the project proponent provides pound-forpound mitigation of emissions increases through a process that develops, funds, and implements emission reduction projects, with the District serving a role of administrator of the emissions reduction projects and verifier of the successful mitigation effort. To implement a VERA, the project proponent and the District enter into a contractual agreement in which the project proponent agrees to mitigate project specific emissions by providing funds for the District’s incentives programs.

The funds are disbursed by the District in the form of grants for projects that achieve emission reductions. Thus, project-related impacts on air quality can be mitigated.

Types of emission reduction projects that have been funded in the past include electrification of stationary internal combustion engines (such as agricultural irrigation pumps), replacing old heavy-duty trucks with new, cleaner, more efficient heavy-duty trucks, and replacement of agricultural equipment with the latest generation technologies.

In implementing a VERA, the District verifies the actual emission reductions that have been achieved as a result of completed grant contracts, monitors the emission reduction projects, and ensures the enforceability of achieved reductions. After the project is mitigated, the District certifies to the Lead Agency that the mitigation is completed, providing the Lead Agency with an enforceable mitigation measure demonstrating that project-related emissions have been mitigated. To assist the Lead Agency and project proponent in ensuring that the environmental document is 213
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compliant with CEQA, the District recommends the environmental document includes an assessment of the feasibility of implementing a VERA.

Industrial/Warehouse Emission Reduction Strategies
The Project is expected to result in the development of industrial uses. Additionally, the DPEIR specifically page 3.3-65 states “The proposed project would permit residential, office, commercial and industrial land uses. Development of land uses that are allowed under the proposed project may result in stationary sources of TAC emissions, including light industrial facilities, warehouses…etc.” Since the DPEIR acknowledges the potential development of industrial uses, the District recommends the City incorporate emission reduction strategies that can reduce potential harmful health impacts from industrial and warehouse developments, such as those listed below:
x Require cleanest available heavy-duty trucks and off-road equipment (see comment 9)
x Require HHD truck routing patterns that limit exposure of residential communities and sensitive receptors to emissions (see comment 8) x Require the minimization of heavy-duty truck idling (see comment 10) x Require loading docks be oriented away from sensitive receptors x Require loading docks be located a minimum of 300 feet away from the property line of sensitive receptor unless dock is exclusively used for electric trucks
x Require truck entries be located on streets of a higher commercial classification
x Require projects be designed to provide the necessary infrastructure to support use of zero-emissions on-road vehicles and off-road equipment (see comment 11)
x Ensure all building roofs are solar-ready
x Ensure all portions of roof tops that are not covered with solar panels are constructed to have light colored roofing material with a solar reflective index of greater than 78
x Ensure rooftop solar panels are installed and operated to supply 100% of the power needed to operate all non-refrigerated portions of the development project
x Incorporate bicycle racks and electric bike plug-ins
x Require the use of low volatile organic compounds (VOC) architectural and industrial maintenance coatings
x Designate an area during construction to charge electric powered construction vehicles and equipment, if temporary power is available x Prohibit the use of non-emergency diesel-powered generators during construction
x Ensure all landscaping be drought tolerant
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x Inform the project proponent of the incentive programs (e.g., Carl Moyer Program and Voucher Incentive Program) offered to reduce air emissions from the Project
Truck Routing
The DPEIR, specifically pages 2-6 through 2-9, provides the various land-use development types that will be included into the Project. For example, light industrial, manufacturing, commercial, and mixed-use just to name a few. These land-use development types have the potential to generate HHD truck trips. As such, the District recommends the City evaluate HHD truck routing patterns, with the aim of limiting exposure of residential communities and sensitive receptors to emissions.

Truck routing involves the assessment of which roads HHD trucks take to and from their destination, and the emissions impact that the HHD trucks may have on sensitive receptors (e.g. residential communities).

This evaluation would consider the current truck routes, the quantity and type of each truck (e.g., Medium Heavy-Duty, HHD, etc.), the destination and origin of each trip, traffic volume correlation with the time of day or the day of the week, overall Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), and associated exhaust emissions. The truck routing evaluation would also identify alternative truck routes and their impacts on VMT and air quality.

Cleanest Available Heavy-Duty Trucks
The San Joaquin Valley will not be able to attain stringent health-based federal air quality standards without significant reductions in emissions from HHD trucks, the single largest source of NOx emissions in the San Joaquin Valley. Accordingly, to meet federal air quality attainment standards, the District’s ozone and particulate matter attainment plans rely on a significant and rapid transition of HHD fleets to zero or near-zero emissions technologies.

The DPEIR, specifically pages 2-6 through 2-9, provides the various development types that will be included into the Project. For example, light industrial, manufacturing, commercial, and mixed-use just to name a few. These types of development have the potential to generate HHD truck trips. As such, the District recommends that the following measures be considered by the City to reduce Project-related operational emissions:
x Recommended Measure: Fleets associated with operational activities utilize the cleanest available HHD trucks, including zero and near-zero technologies. x Recommended Measure: All on-site service equipment (cargo handling, yard hostlers, forklifts, pallet jacks, etc.) utilize zero-emissions technologies. 215
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Reduce Idling of Heavy-Duty Trucks
The goal of this strategy is to limit the potential for localized PM2.5 and toxic air contaminant impacts associated with the idling of Heavy-Duty trucks. The diesel exhaust from idling has the potential to impose significant adverse health and environmental impacts.

The Project is expected to result in future development (e.g. commercial, industrial, etc.), that have the ability to result in HHD truck trips. The District recommends the DPEIR be revised to include a more stringent 3-minute idling restriction and requiring appropriate signage and enforcement of idling restrictions.

Electric Infrastructure For Future Development Projects The DPEIR specifically MM AIR 1C states “All nonresidential buildings shall be designed to provide infrastructure to support use of electric-powered forklifts and/or other interior vehicles…. and all nonresidential buildings shall be designed to provide electric infrastructure to support use of exterior yard trucks and on-site vehicles.” The District recommends that the DPEIR be revised to expand MM AIR 1C to also require all nonresidential buildings be designed to provide electric infrastructure to support use of on-road zero-emissions vehicles, such as HHD trucks associated with a warehouse or commercial project.

To support and accelerate the installation of electric vehicle charging equipment and development of required infrastructure, the District offers incentives to public agencies, businesses, and property owners to install electric charging infrastructure (Level 2 and 3 chargers). The purpose of the District’s Charge Up! Incentive program is to promote clean air alternative-fuel technologies and the use of low or zero-emission vehicles. The District recommends that the City and project proponents install electric vehicle chargers at project sites, and at strategic locations.

Please visit www.valleyair.org/grants/chargeup.htm for more information.

Under-fired Charbroilers
Future development projects (e.g. commercial) have the potential to include restaurants with under-fired charbroilers. Such charbroilers may pose the potential for immediate health risk, particularly when located in densely populated areas or near sensitive receptors.

Since the cooking of meat can release carcinogenic PM2.5 species, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, controlling emissions from new under-fired charbroilers will have a substantial positive impact on public health. The air quality impacts on neighborhoods near restaurants with under-fired charbroilers can be significant on days when meteorological conditions are stable, when dispersion is 216
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limited and emissions are trapped near the surface within the surrounding neighborhoods. This potential for neighborhood-level concentration of emissions during evening or multi-day stagnation events raises air quality concerns.

Furthermore, reducing commercial charbroiling emissions is essential to achieving attainment of multiple federal PM2.5 standards. Therefore, the District recommends that the DPEIR include a measure requiring the assessment and potential installation, as technologically feasible, of particulate matter emission control systems for new large restaurants operating under-fired charbroilers.

The District is available to assist the City and project proponents with this assessment. Additionally, the District is currently offering substantial incentive funding that covers the full cost of purchasing, installing, and maintaining the system during a demonstration period covering two years of operation. Please contact the District at (559) 230-5800 or [email protected] for more information, or visit:
http://valleyair.org/grants/rctp.htm
Vegetative Barriers and Urban Greening
The Project is expected to result in future development (e.g. commercial, industrial, etc.). As such, the District suggests the City consider incorporating vegetative barriers and urban greening as a measure to further reduce air pollution exposure on sensitive receptors (e.g., residences, schools, healthcare facilities).

While various emission control techniques and programs exist to reduce air quality emissions from mobile and stationary sources, vegetative barriers have been shown to be an additional measure to potentially reduce a population’s exposure to air pollution through the interception of airborne particles and the update of gaseous pollutants. Examples of vegetative barriers include, but are not limited to the following: trees, bushes, shrubs, or a mix of these. Generally, a higher and thicker vegetative barrier with full coverage will result in greater reductions in downwind pollutant concentrations. In the same manner, urban greening is also a way to help improve air quality and public health in addition to enhancing the overall beautification of a community with drought tolerant, low-maintenance greenery.

Clean Lawn and Garden Equipment in the Community
Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment have the potential to result in an increase of NOx and PM2.5 emissions. Utilizing electric lawn care equipment can provide residents with immediate economic, environmental, and health benefits. The District recommends future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project consider the District’s Zero-Emission Landscaping Equipment program, which provides incentive funding for replacement of existing gas powered lawn and garden equipment. More information on the District CGYM program and funding can be found at: http://valleyair.org/grants/cgymcommercial.htm. 217
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On-Site Solar Deployment
It is the policy of the State of California that renewable energy resources and zerocarbon resources supply 100% of retail sales of electricity to California end-use customers by December 31, 2045. While various emission control techniques and programs exist to reduce air quality emissions from mobile and stationary sources, the production of solar energy is contributing to improving air quality and public health. The District suggests that the City consider incorporating solar power systems as an emission reduction strategy for future development projects that may be approved under implementation of the Project .

District’s Bikeway Incentive Program
Incorporating design elements (e.g., installing bikeways) within the Project area that enhance walkability and connectivity can result in an overall reduction of vehicles miles traveled (VMT) and improve air quality within the area. The Project includes new bikeways and bikeways improvements, and may be eligible for funding through the District’s Bikeway Incentive Program. The Bikeway Incentive Program provides funding for eligible Class 1 (Bicycle Path Construction), Class II (Bicycle Lane Striping), or Class III (Bicycle Route) projects. These incentives are designed to support the construction of new bikeway projects to promote clean air through the development of a widespread, interconnected network of bike paths, lanes, or routes and improving the general safety conditions for commuter bicyclists. Only municipalities, government agencies, or public educational institutions are eligible to apply. More information on the grant program can be found at:
http://valleyair.org/grants/bikepaths.htm
Guidelines and Project Eligibility for the grant program can be found at:
http://valleyair.org/grants/documents/bikepaths/2015 Bikeway Guidelines.pdf District Rules and Regulations
The District issues permits for many types of air pollution sources, and regulates some activities that do not require permits. A project subject to District rules and regulations would reduce its impacts on air quality through compliance with the District’s regulatory framework. In general, a regulation is a collection of individual rules, each of which deals with a specific topic. As an example, Regulation II (Permits) includes District Rule 2010 (Permits Required), Rule 2201 (New and Modified Stationary Source Review), Rule 2520 (Federally Mandated Operating Permits), and several other rules pertaining to District permitting requirements and processes.

The list of rules below is neither exhaustive nor exclusive. Current District rules can be found online at: www.valleyair.org/rules/1ruleslist.htm. To identify other District rules or regulations that apply to future projects, or to obtain information about District permit requirements, the project proponents are strongly encouraged to 218
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contact the District’s Small Business Assistance (SBA) Office at (559) 230-5888.

District Rules 2010 and 2201 - Air Quality Permitting for Stationary Sources
Stationary Source emissions include any building, structure, facility, or installation, which emits or may emit any affected pollutant directly or as a fugitive emission. District Rule 2010 (Permits Required) requires operators of emission sources to obtain an Authority to Construct (ATC) and Permit to Operate (PTO) from the District. District Rule 2201 (New and Modified Stationary Source Review) requires that new and modified stationary sources of emissions mitigate their emissions using Best Available Control Technology (BACT).

Future development projects may be subject to District Rule 2010 (Permits Required) and Rule 2201 (New and Modified Stationary Source Review) and may require District permits. Prior to construction, project proponents shall obtain an ATC permit from the District for equipment/activities subject to District permitting requirements.

Recommended Mitigation Measure: For projects subject to permitting by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, demonstration of compliance with District Rule 2201 (obtain ATC permit from the District) shall be provided to the City before issuance of the first building permit.

For further information or assistance, project proponents may contact the District’s SBA Office at (559) 230-5888.

District Rule 9510 - Indirect Source Review (ISR)
The purpose of District Rule 9510 is to reduce the growth in both NOx and PM emissions associated with development and transportation projects from mobile and area sources; specifically, the emissions associated with the construction and subsequent operation of development projects. The ISR Rule requires developers to mitigate their NOx and PM emissions by incorporating clean air design elements into their projects. Should the proposed development project clean air design elements be insufficient to meet the required emission reductions, developers must pay a fee that ultimately funds incentive projects to achieve off-site emissions reductions.

Accordingly, future development projects within the Project may be subject to District Rule 9510 if upon full buildout, the project would equal or exceed any of the following applicability thresholds, depending on the type of development and public agency approval mechanism:

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District Rule 9410 (Employer Based Trip Reduction)
Future development projects may be subject to District Rule 9410 (Employer Based Trip Reduction) if the project would result in employment of 100 or more “eligible” employees. District Rule 9410 requires employers with 100 or more “eligible” employees at a worksite to establish an Employer Trip Reduction Implementation Plan (eTRIP) that encourages employees to reduce singleoccupancy vehicle trips, thus reducing pollutant emissions associated with work commutes. Under an eTRIP plan, employers have the flexibility to select the options that work best for their worksites and their employees.

Information about District Rule 9410 can be found online at:
www.valleyair.org/tripreduction.htm.

For additional information, you can contact the District by phone at 559-230- 6000 or by e-mail at [email protected]
District Rule 4002 (National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants)
In the event an existing building will be renovated, partially demolished or removed, future development projects may be subject to District Rule 4002.

This rule requires a thorough inspection for asbestos to be conducted before any regulated facility is demolished or renovated. Information on how to comply with District Rule 4002 can be found online at:
http://www.valleyair.org/busind/comply/asbestosbultn.htm.

District Rule 4601 (Architectural Coatings)
Future development projects may be subject to District Rule 4601 since they may utilize architectural coatings. Architectural coatings are paints, varnishes, sealers, or stains that are applied to structures, portable buildings, pavements or curbs. The purpose of this rule is to limit VOC emissions from architectural coatings. In addition, this rule specifies architectural coatings storage, cleanup and labeling requirements. Additional information on how to comply with District Rule 4601 requirements can be found online at:
http://www.valleyair.org/rules/currntrules/r4601.pdf
District Regulation VIII (Fugitive PM10 Prohibitions)
The project proponent may be required to submit a Construction Notification Form or submit and receive approval of a Dust Control Plan prior to commencing any earthmoving activities as described in Regulation VIII, specifically Rule 8021 - Construction, Demolition, Excavation, Extraction, and Other Earthmoving Activities.
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Should the project result in at least 1-acre in size, the project proponent shall provide written notification to the District at least 48 hours prior to the project proponents intent to commence any earthmoving activities pursuant to District Rule 8021 (Construction, Demolition, Excavation, Extraction, and Other Earthmoving Activities). Also, should the project result in the disturbance of 5- acres or more, or will include moving, depositing, or relocating more than 2,500 cubic yards per day of bulk materials, the project proponent shall submit to the District a Dust Control Plan pursuant to District Rule 8021 (Construction, Demolition, Excavation, Extraction, and Other Earthmoving Activities). For additional information regarding the written notification or Dust Control Plan requirements, please contact District Compliance staff at (559) 230-5950.

The application for both the Construction Notification and Dust Control Plan can be found online at:
https://www.valleyair.org/busind/comply/PM10/forms/DCP-Form.docx Information about District Regulation VIII can be found online at:
http://www.valleyair.org/busind/comply/pm10/compliance pm10.htm District Rule 4901 - Wood Burning Fireplaces and Heaters The purpose of this rule is to limit emissions of carbon monoxide and particulate matter from wood burning fireplaces, wood burning heaters, and outdoor wood burning devices. This rule establishes limitations on the installation of new wood burning fireplaces and wood burning heaters.

Specifically, at elevations below 3,000 feet in areas with natural gas service, no person shall install a wood burning fireplace, low mass fireplace, masonry heater, or wood burning heater.

Information about District Rule 4901 can be found online at:
http://valleyair.org/rule4901/
Other District Rules and Regulations
Future development projects may also be subject to the following District rules:

Rule 4102 (Nuisance) and Rule 4641 (Cutback, Slow Cure, and Emulsified Asphalt, Paving and Maintenance Operations).

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Future Projects / Land Use Agency Referral Documents
Future development projects may require an environmental review and air emissions mitigation. A project’s referral documents and environmental review documents provided to the District for review should include a project summary, the land use designation, project size, air emissions quantifications and impacts, and proximity to sensitive receptors and existing emission sources, and air emissions mitigation measures. For reference and guidance, more information can be found in the District’s Guidance for Assessing and Mitigating Air Quality Impacts at:
https://www.valleyair.org/transportation/GAMAQI.pdf
If you have any questions or require further information, please contact Cherie Reed by e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at (559) 230-5940.

Sincerely,
Brian Clements
Director of Permit Services
Mark Montelongo
Program Manager
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implemented. For without a concerted effort to improve what we have, we will only perpetuate further decay in the neighborhoods left behind.

We would offer the following comments on the PEIR:

Conversion of Prime Farmland: There are 6,741 acres of land in the plan area designated as Prime Farmland, Farmland of Statewide Importance, Farmland of Local Importance and Unique Farmland. The Southeast Development Area contains roughly fifty percent of the existing farming within the Planning Area of the General Plan, with approximately 5,000 acres currently farmed. While the proposed plan highlights compact and efficient development, most of the planned land use featuring intense development is proposed for the area around Kings Canyon Road and south of Jensen, where the majority of prime farmland and parcels covered under the Williamson Act are located. GP Policy RC-9-c requires the City of Fresno to adopt a Farmland Preservation Program when Prime, Unique and Farmland of Statewide Importance is converted to urban uses outside of city limits. GP MM AG-1.1 requires a program be established that would offset potential impacts from loss of farmland. We would suggest that the Policy requirements of GP RC-9-c be implemented and include:
• Placing an equivalent amount of high quality farmland in an agricultural conservation easement.
• Restrictive Covenants or Deeds
• In Lieu Fees
• Mitigation Banks
• Fee Title Acquisition
• Land Use Regulations
This policy should be in place prior to any annexations within the SEDA Fresno City Sphere of Influence. The City of Fresno should require all developments abide by the Farmland Preservation Program and strongly consider purchasing the equivalent amount and designation of farmland within the newly annexed area for placement as a conservation easement or restrictive covenant. In addition, the City should consider adding the Agriculture Land Use Districts to the Development Code, consistent with existing County of Fresno zoned parcels.

We would also recommend that the area south of Jensen from Minnewawa to Temperance be excluded from the SEDA Specific Plan as this is the area that has the most intense farming use.

Hydrology and Water Quality: The City of Fresno Metropolitan Plan was being updated when the Draft PEIR was being prepared to revise and update recommendations for water supplied in the Plan Area. Among the improvements are new municipal groundwater wells, recharge inter-ties to FMFCD basins to facilitate groundwater recharge in the Plan Area, expansion of SWTFs, new water storage and booster pump sites, and new water mains. The drilling of a new well can potentially impact the groundwater and flow patterns in the surrounding area which can affect nearby wells. Although there are no existing municipal wells in the study area, residents of rural residential and agricultural parcels depend on the groundwater for their water supplies. Domestic and small water system wells are typically drilled shallower than larger agricultural and municipal wells and are often the first to experience effects of declining water levels resulting in increased operating costs, changes in water quality, or inadequate water supply. We would ask that a policy reflecting the requirements in the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act related to considerations for identifying and addressing 225
drinking water well impacts be added to General Plan Policies under the Resource Conservation and Resilience Element. And any hook-ups to water or sewer for existing property owners in the Plan Area be subsidized and evaluated in the Pending Infrastructure Plan.

Transportation and Traffic: Unfortunately the Level of Service system of identifying traffic impacts has been replaced by Vehicle Mile Trips (SB 743). The project generated trips are divided by the total population at project year horizon: if the Vehicle Miles Traveled/per population is lower than the base year, then the project impact is less than significant.The traffic trips calculated for this plan area do not include:
• Projects that are within 0.5 of an existing major transit stop with service frequencies of 15- minutes or less during morning and evening peak hours, if the project has a floor ratio (FAR) greater than 0.75, does not include more parking than required by the jurisdiction (AB 2097 eliminated all parking requirements for mixed use development within 0.5 miles of a transit stop), and does not replace affordable units with moderate or high income units. • Projects generating less than 110 trips per day.
• Projects involving local serving retail space of less than 50,000 square feet. • Projects with a high level of affordable housing units. • Projects generating less than 500 Average Daily Trips. • Projects that develop institutional/government and public service uses that support community, health, safety and welfare.
• In addition, parking supply for retail uses can be reduced by 12.5 percent at project level.

Existing vehicle miles traveled in the SEDA plan are 330,350 and the SEDA VMT per Service Population is 57.79. The project is expected to generate an additional 866,452 daily vehicle trips. The Year 2035 with Project Conditions is 974,369 and a SEDA VMT per service population is 5.07. Even though the Vehicle Miles Traveled will triple, there is no mitigation required for this project.

The Traffic Impact Analysis evaluated traffic conditions at 20 study segments, and assumes all residents will work, live and play within the plan boundaries. It discusses connections to downtown but does not address those road segments. The California Department of Transportation requested peak hour ramp queue analysis be completed at the Highway 180 interchanges of Clovis Avenue, Fowler Avenue Temperance Avenue, DeWolf, Highland and McCall Avenues. The Fancher Creek Town Center will feature retail, restaurants and a movie theater and it is unreasonable and shortsighted not to consider the traffic impacts on Clovis Avenue from this plan area. We would request all California Department of Transportation recommendations regarding queue analysis be completed.

There are numerous references in the Draft Program Environmental Impact Report for the SEDA that reference additional studies when discretionary projects come up for review.

Because many of the City’s programs, policies and plans have either not been adopted or do not include the SEDA, it is essential that all projects remain discretionary providing a thorough assessment of the development’s impact and public notification.

Respectfully submitted,
Sue Williams, Corresponding Secretary
Cc: Fresno County Supervisors Brian Pacheco, Steve Brandau, Sal Quintero, Buddy Mendes, Nathan Magsig, LAFCO Executive Officer Brian Spaunhurst and LAFCO Clerk Amanda Olives 226

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November 6, 2023
City of Fresno
c/o Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
2600 Fresno Street
Third Floor, Room 3065
Fresno, CA 93721
Sent by email: [email protected]
RE: Supplemental Public Comment on Southeast Development Area Plan and Partial Recirculated Draft Program Environmental Impact Report
Clearinghouse Number 2022020486 dated July 14, 2023 and October 3, 2023 Dear Ms. Asadoorian:

On behalf of the Fresno Madera Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council, the Central Valley IAF, and Regenerate California Innovation (RCI), please incorporate the following comments regarding the City’s Southeast Development Area Specific Plan and draft Program Environmental Impact Report into the record of this matter.

Joinder in other public comment
As a preliminary matter, my clients join in the comments submitted to date, as well as any additional comments made through the end of the public comment period at the close of the City Council’s final hearing on the Project. Of the 358 pages of comments available for review, only one was made after August 28, and that by previous arrangement with City staff. Because comments made after August 28, 2023 have not been made available to the public, this inclusion by reference cannot be specific as to commenter or comment.

Of the comments available for review, my clients do not join the following: BIA letter dated August 25, 2023; emails from Mark and Dale Reitz, dated August 19, 2023; Granville Homes letter dated August 22, 2023; email submitted on behalf of Harrison Farms by Arakel Arisian, dated August 25, 2023.

Partial Recirculated Draft Program EIR
My clients have no comments on the Geology, Soils, and Seismicity chapter included in the recirculated draft.

As to the amended Transportation and Traffic chapter, the only identifiable difference between the original and the recirculated Draft PEIR was the queuing analysis added at the behest of 362
Supplemental SEDA comment letter November 6, 2023 2
California Department of Transportation (CalTrans). However, the recommendation to perform a queuing analysis was only the first of many issues CalTrans raised in its comment letter.

CalTrans’ other recommendations generated no corrective action: for better planning (the SEDA plan should require multimodal methods), better mitigation (the City needs to develop and apply policies for EV charging stations), and better data:

The preparer of the VMT Analysis concluded that the VMT per Service Population in the SEDA project region will fall from 45.72 to 5.07 when the project is completed in 2035. The move from a primarily rural location (as the SEDA project area is now) to a developed urbanized mixed-use site results in a significant drop in VMT. Additionally, the VMT Analysis preparer claims that this is attributable to residents and employees being better connected to jobs and services within the SEDA project area, reducing travel times on both the production (residential) and attraction (commercial) sides. Conversely, the Year 2035 No Project Conditions VMT for the SEDA Project Area is 371,397 per Table 7. Table 10 presents the Year 2035 With Project Conditions VMT for the SEDA Project Area is 974,369.

This translates to a net VMT increase of 162.35%.

In theory, the relationship between production (residential) and attraction (commercial) may minimize VMT at full buildout; nevertheless, a typical land-use plan buildout begins with the production (residential), followed by the attraction (commercial). The concern is that the attraction (commercial) will develop slowly over time, causing a VMT impact in the SEDA region.1
Based on its review of the PEIR’s VMT Analysis, CalTrans recommends the City do the queue analysis it has now actually performed. Thus, although the Recirculated Draft PEIR does not correct its indefensible VMT numbers, it effectively acknowledges the accuracy of CalTrans’ VMT analysis over its own.

A 162% increase in VMT produces its own massive air quality impacts, in the form of pollutants, and consequent human health impacts. To reduce those environmental impacts, the PEIR is required to impose feasible mitigation, which it does not even attempt to do. CalTrans’ letter, at page 3, goes on to identify eight separate VMT mitigation strategies—none of which has been explored, discussed, or included as an enforceable condition of SEDA project entitlements in the Recirculated Draft Program Environmental Impact Report.

The Draft PEIR must be still further revised, and recirculated to the public and public agencies for additional comment. Please include my clients (see cc’s, below) and me on the notification list for next steps in this process. Thanking you for your attention to these matters, I remain, Very truly yours,

PATIENCE MILROD
Attorney for Central Valley IAF, Fresno Madera
Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council,
and Regenerate California Innovation

CalTrans’ August 25, 2023 comment letter, pp. 2-3 [emphasis added]. yy
Very truly yours,

PATIENCE MILROD
363
Supplemental SEDA comment letter November 6, 2023 3
cc: Dillon Savory, Fresno Madera Tulare and Kings Counties Central Labor Council, by email to [email protected]
Keith Ford, Central Valley IAF, by email to [email protected] Keith Bergthold, Regenerate California Innovation (RCI), by email to [email protected]
Jennifer Clark, Development Director, by email to [email protected] Sophia Pagoulatos, Manager of Long-Range Planning, by email to [email protected]
Andrew Janz, City Attorney, by email to [email protected] 364
365
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367
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369
“Provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment” DISTRICT 6 OFFICE
1352 WEST OLIVE AVENUE |P.O. BOX 12616 |FRESNO, CA 93778-2616 (559) 981-7284 | FAX (559) 488-4195 | TTY 711
www.dot.ca.gov
November 17, 2023
FRE-180-64.104
Southeast Development Area
Re-circulated Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR)
SCH #2022020486
GTS #: https://ld-igr-gts.dot.ca.gov/district/6/report/28801

SENT VIA EMAIL
Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian, Planner
City of Fresno
2600 Fresno Street
Fresno, CA 93721
[email protected]
Dear Mx. Asadoorian:

Caltrans has completed our review of the Re-circulated Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Southeast Development Area (SEDA) in the City of Fresno.

The proposed development area covers nearly 9,000 acres. It is bounded on the north by the Gould Canal, on the east by McCall and Highland Avenues, on the south by Jensen and North Avenues, and on the West by Locan, Temperance, and Minnewawa Avenues.

The mission of Caltrans is to provide a safe and reliable transportation network that serves all people and respects the environment. The Local Development Review (LDR) process reviews land use projects and plans through the lenses of our mission and state planning priorities of infill, conservation, and travel-efficient development. To ensure a safe and efficient transportation system, we encourage early consultation and coordination with local jurisdictions and project proponents on all development projects that utilize the multimodal transportation network.

Caltrans provides the following comments consistent with the State’s smart mobility goals that support a vibrant economy and sustainable communities:

All comments from our previous letter dated August 25th, 2023, regarding the VMT Analysis Comments, still apply.

SR 180 Interchange Queuing Analysis

1. This document provided a peak hour ramp queue analysis at the following State Route 180 interchanges: Clovis Avenue, Fowler Avenue, and Temperance Avenue. It also provided a peak hour queue analysis at the De Wolf Avenue, Highland Avenue, and McCall Avenue intersections along State Route (SR) 180. 370
Mx. Adrienne Asadoorian – SEDA Re-circulated Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) November 17, 2023