The discussion of Nishi 2.0 at the February 6 City Council meeting had my head spinning. Here are just a few of the things that happened that I was stunned by:
- Robb Davis rightly limiting the developers' time to present their case, only to have Rochelle undo that by asking the developer for a repeat of the Planning Commission fiasco, even though she or any other citizen could have watched that video had they cared to see the developers' well-over-an-hour presentation. Rochelle in effect completely undid Robb's directive.
- Salocks stated that "diesel was the primary concern" in that study. That's false. Ultra fine particulate matter generated from braking cars was the primary concern. Quoting Barnes: a "peak in ultra-fine [0.09 to 0.0 μm] elements extends from Friday afternoon to late Saturday. This is the time most likely to be affected by weekend traffic. This is the only time during the study the site was exposed to the weekend traffic and it shows up clearly as the largest concentrations in the ultra-fine signal" (Barnes 2015, p. 9).
- Salocks limited his discussion of health risks to cancer risk, completely ignoring the risk of heart disease, asthma, and risks to developing fetuses.
- Salocks denied that the air at Nishi was worse than anywhere else. That conclusion is false, as shown by the data from the Barnes study:
The data show that the PM 2.5 measurements at Olive Drive are consistently higher than measured by UCD & generally higher than measured by YSAQMD. The City should have called for more studies, at Nishi itself, to determine the levels of pollutants in the worse case scenario: weekend traffic combined with a bad air quality day in the region.
These issues and more should be discussed at length before next June's vote on Nishi 2.0.
Davisite 
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