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Why is a Portion of the Village Farms DEIR being Recirculated and has the Proper Process been Followed in Doing So?

by Alan Pryor

A portion of the Village Farms DEIR (contained in the Utilities and Services chapter) is being recirculated because the City, as the “lead agency” in the EIR process, has received a last-minute report from Brown and Caldwell dated November 7. This report indicates that the City’s existing Wastewater Treatment Plant (“WWTP”) is perilously close to exceeding its maximum flow capacity and needs to be upgraded to meet the City’s wastewater treatment permit issued by the Regional Water Quality Control Board. This information was not known by the City when they prepared and circulated the current Village Farms DEIR for comment.

However, since the new information impacts the analysis of the Village Farms project’s impact on the City’s WWTP, the City determined that the portion of the Village Farms DEIR addressing Utilities and Services needs to be recirculated with the updated information for public comment prior to consideration of the revised FEIR for certification by the City.

Unfortunately, the City has done a poor job explaining this need to the public when they recirculated the portion of the DEIR needing additional comment. Two questions immediately come to mind that should have been answered by the City in more detail and explained better when the DEIR was recirculated.

1) What Information Came to Light that Necessitated the Recirculation of the Portion of the Village Farms Davis DEIR?, and

2) Is this Process Proper and Legally Compliant with CEQA and State Regulations Regarding Public Noticing and Subsequent Consideration by the Planning Commission and the City Council?

The following discussion addresses these questions.

1) What Necessitated the Recirculation of a Portion of the Village farms Davis DEIR?

The City (as the lead agency in the Village Farms DEIR) has determined that recent information has come to their attention about the current capacity of the City’s Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) that necessitates recirculation of that portion of the DEIR (in the Utilities and Services chapter) concerning the impact of the Village farms project on the WWTP.

From my reading of the Brown and Caldwell report, it appears they have determined that that one of the 3 primary components of the the WWTP no longer has sufficient excess capacity to meet the regulatory requirements imposed by the Regional Water Quality Control Board (“RWQCB”) for the City’s WWTP.

The City’s WWTP has 3 primary components –

1) A primary treatment system for filtration and removal of the bulk of the solids from the flow into the WWTP –  This is typically accomplished by bar screens to remove bulk physical contaminants and subsequent chemical treatment to increase flocculation and sedimentation of the largest portion of the incoming suspended organic solids, 

2) A secondary treatment system that removes smaller suspended solids and dissolved organics that can present a biological or chemical oxygen demand in downstream water – This is typically an aerobic biological digestion system in which the waste stream is aerated and endemic bacteria substantially consume the organics in the waste stream as a food source breaking down the organics so they are not discharged downstream. , and

3) A tertiary treatment system that provides final disinfection of the waste flow stream before it is released back in the environment – in this case, the Davis wetlands. Chlorine, UV light, and/or other disinfecting agents are used in this process dependent on the final degree of treatment required.

All of the processes must meet rigidly regulated standards established by the Regional Water Quality Control Board under Davis’ existing wastewater treatment permit

My understanding is that the Brown and Caldwell report indicates that the primary and tertiary treatment components of the City’s WWTP have sufficient capacity to handle not only the City’s current waste water flow but can also accommodate the newly proposed additional Willowgrove and Village Farms Davis waste flows as well as other new development projects being built or proposed in town.

It is the secondary treatment system that apparently is the problem. Although the system can seemingly marginally handle the City’s existing and anticipated wastewater flow rates, it is perilously close to the upper limit of this capacity. RWQCB  regulations mandate that each permitted WWTP maintain a certain level of additional excess treatment capacity to prevent incoming wastewater surges from overcoming the system resulting in incompletely treated wastewater being discharged by the WWTP that does not fully comply with the water quality standards mandated in the WWTP’s permit.

This insufficient excess capacity of the secondary treatment system in the WWTP necessitates upgrading the current secondary component of the WWTP  to provide this mandated additional excess capacity as required by the Regional Water Quality Control Board to meet these objective permit requirements. It appears that this secondary treatment system upgrade is required independent of whether or not any additional waster water flows generated by the proposed Willowgrove and Village Farms Davis and/or any other development projects in Davis.

The City is claiming this change is necessitated because the incoming flow rates into the WWTP are reduced in volume due to water conservation efforts by the City’s citizens including installing more water-efficient toilets and clothes and dish washers. These reduce the amount of water flowing into the WWTP  but the reduced water flow still contains the same amount of organics as before. This results in wastewater flow that now has a higher concentration of organic solids that were not anticipated nor designed for in the existing WWTP’s secondary treatment component – hence the need for the upgrade to the secondary waste treatment component to provide the additional capacity to treat this wastewater stream.

So it is appears that the City has a problem that they have to address whether or not the Willowgrove or Village Farms projects are ever approved and built. Now the City does not yet know the scope of the upgrades required nor the final costs associated with these upgrades and they promise additional information will be forthcoming in the next few months..

Fortunately, however, the City imposes substantial “sewer connection” fees on the developers that can only be used by the City for legitimate operational or capital improvement wastewater treatment cost purposes. I do not know the exact sewage system fees to be imposed on the Village Farms and Willowgrove developers as these are still being negotiated between the City and the developers. But, for example, if the combined Capacity Impact and Connections fees  are $10,000 per unit, Village Farms and Willowgrove would generate $30 million in new sewer related impact fees (1,800 units +1,200 units times $10,000 per unit) that can be used by the City for these upgrades.

This will likely cover all costs for the upgrade to the secondary treatment component of the WWTP and would reduce or eliminate the costs that would have to otherwise be borne by existing ratepayers. In the absence of these new impact fees, these costs would almost certainly otherwise result in increased sewer rates to existing residents in the future.

The 2nd question to be addressed concerns the process under which this partial DEIR recirculation is being rolled out, as follows;

2) Is this Process Proper and Legally Compliant with CEQA and State Regulations Regarding Public Noticing and Subsequent Consideration by the Planning Commission and the City Council?
Last minute changes to an FEIR by a “lead agency” (the City of Davis in the case of the Village Farms’ FEIR) prior to certification are not uncommon. Indeed, changes are often made on the fly by the governing entity of the lead agency (the Davis City Council in the present case) right up to the point where a vote is made to certify the FEIR. I have seen this most often when last-minute changes to proposed mitigations are demanded prior to certification – sometimes even minutes before a formal vote for certification is made by the lead agency.

Additionally, it is clearly the responsibility of the lead agency to give proper notice to the public when such FEIRs are to be considered – either by the Planning Commission as an advisory body or by the City Council as the certifying lead agency entity. The minimum allowable lead times for noticing under California law is typically 10 days and it appears this standard has been met (albeit with a few gyrations) in the case of the Planning Commission’s upcoming meetings on Village Farms.

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Comments

10 responses to “Why is a Portion of the Village Farms DEIR being Recirculated and has the Proper Process been Followed in Doing So?”

  1. Ron O

    Alan: You’re claiming that the city is being required to address a current problem, that the development will “fix” by providing more than its share of money – which sounds like an illegal solution. By law, mitigation fees are not supposed to be used for impacts that aren’t created by the development itself. What is the source of belief that an “exception” would be made in this case? Also, what is your source for your claim that the city is being “required” to fix a problem that you claim exists (using its own money, with no help from a regulatory agency), in the absence of these proposed developments? Is Davis somehow unique compared to every other city in the region, regarding an inaccurate calculation regarding the amount of water used per household? And if so, what might the impact be if Davis reduced its water rates (thereby resulting in more water usage – thereby “fixing” the problem that you describe)? Presumably, the total amount of funds collected might remain the same, if water rates were reduced (resulting in the original predictions being correct).

    Reply
  2. Roberta Millstein

    Alan writes, “Last minute changes to an FEIR by a “lead agency” (the City of Davis in the case of the Village Farms’ FEIR) prior to certification are not uncommon. Indeed, changes are often made on the fly by the governing entity of the lead agency (the Davis City Council in the present case) right up to the point where a vote is made to certify the FEIR. I have seen this most often when last-minute changes to proposed mitigations are demanded prior to certification – sometimes even minutes before a formal vote for certification is made by the lead agency.”

    Yes, and that has always seemed to be a highly questionable practice to me. In fact, I have objected to the Davis City Council doing this in the past. Does it violate the law? I’m not a lawyer and so I can’t weigh in on that, but I suspect that it depends both on the changes (which are not limited to mitigations) and on what a given judge might rule, should anyone bring a lawsuit.

    In any case, both what is being done here and what Alan describes are examples of bad process and poor environmental analysis. Citing one example of bad process does not make the other example any better.

    I will also say again, as I did in a comment of another post of mine, that allowing the Planning Commission to weigh in on an incomplete FEIR sets a very bad precedent.

    Reply
    1. Alan Pryor

      Roberta – Your statement that it is bad practice for the lead agency to make changes in an FEIR before they certify it is inconsistent with their statutorily-defined regulatory role. It is the lead agencies responsibility to make such changes in an FEIR before their approval if they believe these changes improve a project by lessening the environmental impact of a project. Would you have them instead either not accept the FEIR at all or just rubber-stamp an FEIR that they otherwise deem to be unaccepatble without changes.

      Plus, these proposed changes (e.g. the incomplete portion of the FEIR) account for well less than 1% (by page count) of the completed portion of the FEIR. The PlanningCommission will be fully informed as to what is the proposed amended language of the FEIR. Thus, I also do not believe there is any reason why the Planning Commission could not also consider the currently proposed new amended language of the FEIR pertaining to the Utilities and Services section in their deliberations.

      Reply
      1. Roberta Millstein

        As I said in my previous postings, one of my objections is that the Planning Commission made the decision to go forward with an incomplete FEIR without any discussion whatever. The whole point of having a DEIR is to allow comments so that they can be responded to. Saying that oh, well this is addressed in a DEIR subverts the whole process. If this is a legitimate situation for doing so, then they could have articulated that. Then policy can be clearer going forward. As it stands now, it makes it seem as though any incomplete FEIR would be just fine.

        As for the city, it is my opinion that this is why we have a DEIR. If the city has concerns, then those should be addressed in the draft stage so that they can be fixed in the FEIR. Making changes at the last minute means that these are unanalyzed changes. What is the point of even having a DEIR prepared by an outside environmental agency if changes can be made at the last minute? I get that this is done elsewhere. And what I am saying is that in my opinion, it is poor process.

  3. Eileen Samitz

    First, Alan claimed that the vernal pools were not vernal polls and just “alkaline soils”. But he was wrong, particularly after the City Biologist and many environmentalists disagreed with him, on top of the rare native plants and endangered species of Vernal Pool Tadpole Shrimp were found at the vernal pools on Village Farms.

    Second, Alan claimed that there were no toxics to be concerned about at Village Farms, and he was wrong, since carcinogenic PFAS’s and other chemical contaminants were found leaking from the adjacent unlined Old City Landfill to Village Farms. Further, ultra-high levels of carcinogenic and neurotoxic toxaphene were found ii the soil coils where the Heritage Oak Park is t be locates where kids would play.

    Now he is trying to claim that this abhorrent Village Farms “process” is “ok” even though we have no Final EIR, due to re-circulation of one of the many flawed Draft EIR sections had incorrect information on the wastewater treatment capacity. Plus, there is no finalized Development Agreement nor Measure J/R/D Baseline Project features finalized for the ballot for review. But the push to place this seriously flawed Village Farms project continues for a premature ballot.

    Reply
    1. Alan Pryor

      Eileen Samitz once again is making demonstrably false and alarmist statements from her soapbox about what I have said in the past and the actual conditions prevailing at the Village Farms site.

      1) Regarding Ms Samitz’s claim that claimed I have claimed “the vernal pools were not vernal polls and just ‘alkaline soils’” –

      Actually what I explicitly said (and have repeated to Samitz innumerable times in the past) was that these “wetlands” (and I have never denied that these were “wetlands”) were not the “last remnants of a once vast alkaline vernal pool habitat extending from Colusa County down through North Davis” as others (such as the City’s Wildlife Specialist) have claimed – without, I note, any evidence to support their claims.

      While such a vast “alkaline wetland playa habitat” did once exist, the Village Farms wetlands can hardly be considered a “last remnant” of this habitat because the land has been leveled in the past and then substantial soils were removed from that area for the construction of the railroad track bed to the west and Channel A to the north. So, in fact, the wetlands at Village Farms were actually artificially produced as a “soil borrow site” for these two activities which lowered the elevation of that land.

      Now because the land was lowered and became susceptible to annual runoff from the rest of the Village Farms property, it is not surprising that a number of wetland-habitat species are now found there. And this is exactly what the EIR found in their biological surveys in which the land designation is characterized as “alkaline playa habitat” – which designation I do not disagree with. And I fully support the protection of these wetlands as sensitive habitat. But just because Eileen Samitz or other opponents of Village Farms stand up on soapboxes and claim these wetlands are “vernal pools” because it is politically expedient to do so even without any evidence to support the claim, this does not make it true.

      Further, not one single listed species found there is considered to be “endemic” to vernal pools and found nowhere else – which could otherwise support Samit’z claim. In fact, if you look at all of the listed species found in the wetlands as noted in the Village Farms DEIR and then cross-referenced them in either the Jepson or CalWild databases, every single one of those species is also listed as found in “wetland” habitat. None are characterized as found only in “vernal pools”.

      As a result, I fully support my actual earlier statements that the Village Farm wetlands are not a “last remnant of a vast vernal pool habitat”. Instead I believe that past use activities of the land in question lowered the ground level such that it has been transformed into “wetlands” that now contain listed species that should be protected – AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS OCCURRING! So I do not understand Samitz’s continually disparaging me and misrepresenting my earlier statements on the actual nature of the wetlands in Village Farms – particularly since she continues to make these false statements without any supporting objective evidence.

      2) Regarding Samitz’s false statements that I claimed “there were no toxics to be concerned about at Village Farms”

      Actually what I have previously extensively disclosed in the Vanguard is the fact that there were once many volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) previously found in the soils under the landfill and, to a lesser extent, in the monitoring wells on the Village Farms property. But the evidence has since shown that all of these chemicals were rapidly dissipating because the underlying groundwater plume was moving toward the east and northeast – AWAY FROM VILLAGE FARMS. In fact, in the most recent test well monitoring results from 2024, all of these former VOCs previously found were gone – including vinyl chloride which Samitz previously claimed, “never goes away”. Well, in fact, it has completely “gone away” which fact Samitz refuses to acknowledge.

      There were some PFAS found in only one monitoring well on the Village Farms property in 2024 that are a very small fraction of PFAS found under the former landfill site itself. But there were never any previous tests for PFAS so we do not know if they were there previously and in what concentrations and are now dissipating like all of the other contaminants previously identified in the soil which are now objectively simply gone.

      As to the question of whether or not the presence of these small quantities of soil contaminants are of concern to the health and safety of future residents of Village Farms, I note that Ms. Samitz previously wrote a letter to the Regional Water Quality Control Board (“RWQCB”) alleging widespread contamination of the Village Farms site that would lead to serious risks to residents in the future and demanding their investigation to confirm her allegations.

      After due deliberation, the RWQCB responded in a letter to the City of Davis stating the following “Water Board staff reviewed available records for the Old Davis Landfill Disposal Site…based on concerns expressed by a City of Davis resident to the Water Board. The resident expressed concerns regarding the “leaking of toxics” to groundwater from the closed landfill, and the potential risks leakage from the landfill may pose to properties south of the landfill…Staff does not believe a risk is posed to the residential and commercial properties proposed for development if the development is connected to the existing City municipal water system and the City water system is the sole means of water used by the development”

      Since the Village Farms project will rely entirely on City supplied water for all potable water and landscape uses and no groundwater fwill be extracted from beneath the site, the Water Board believes that there is no risk of harm to future residents of Village Farm or the immediate environment. This information from the foremost agents of groundwater regulation in the state has been conveniently ignored by Samitz in her ongoing campaign of disparagement.

      3) Finally Samitz has yet once again claimed that “ultra-high levels of carcinogenic and neurotoxic toxaphene were found ii the soil coils where the Heritage Oak Park is t be locates where kids would play.” (sic)

      In this context Samitz is inferring that I deny the presence of this soil contaminant. I do not! Toxaphene was an insecticide used primarily for cotton in the southern United States during the late 1960s and the 1970s. Toxaphene was banned in the United States in 1990. Toxaphene was also extensively used as a termiticide and it is believed that this was the source of the contaminantion found in a few isolated patches in the former homestead site on Village farms. It was used so widely that it is probably found in the soil or wood of many Davis residences built before it was banned.

      However, what Samitz is again not telling you is that in the mitigation section of the DEIR it explicitly specifies that all of the soil contaminated with Toxaphene must be completely removed from these few locations where it is found and the soil must be disposed of at a licensed hazardous material landfill. Toxaphene must be reduced to undetectable levels before any construction of the new Park can proceed.

      Reply
  4. Roberta Millstein

    These last couple of comments are starting to depart away from the issues toward the personal. As these things have a way of drifting further and further toward the personal, I will not post any further comments that address the person instead of the issues. I already had to refuse one such comment today.

    Reply
    1. Alan Pryor

      I agree that my hot-head got the better of me and my post was too personal in this back and forth. For that I apologize. Please feel free to kick back any future posts by me that cross this line and ask for revisions. Thank you.

      Reply
      1. Roberta Millstein

        Will do, and thanks.

  5. Eileen Samitz

    Alan,
    1) Your public testimony and writings which have consistently tried to insist that the vernal pools were not vernal pools speaks for themself. The bottom line is that the endangered species of Vernal Pool Tadpole Shrimp was found and that ended any of your attempts to allow the vernal pools to be paved over. At one point you even argued we just need housing. Even the City Biologist was clear stating that these were vernal pools on Village Farms site that needed to be protected, yet you did not want to believe him, despite the fact that he is professional on this subject, but you are not. A few of your writings include:

    From your Village Farms NOP comment letter:

    “Secondly I do not believe it is even a vernal pool but simply a low-lying depressional wetland in an agricultural field.”

    From another letter you wrote to an environmental group:

    “I am also preparing another presentation on whether or not these wetlands are, in fact, even a viable remnant of vernal pool habitat as otherwise claimed. I believe the evidence does NOT support the claim that the site is a remnant vernal pool there but rather that the area is simply a wetland depression in an agricultural field. I will forward that information when available”

    2) Regarding toxics on Village Farms, you keep dismissing the Village Farms toxics issues including leakage from the immediately adjacent unlined Old City Landfill and Sewage Treatment Plant which has been documented to be leaking high levels carcinogenic PFAS’s (forever chemicals) and manganese to the Village Farms site. The PFAS’s were found in elevated levels in 4 of the 7 monitoring wells. Elevated PFAS levels were found in 1 of the 3 wells on the Village Farms in the north-east area of the project where housing would be located. The other 3 wells were on the landfill or City property to track the movement of the toxic plume.

    Since the direction of the plume has changed over the years the status of the direction of the plume is currently “undetermined” per the Draft DEIR, and still needs to be determined. These PFAS results were revealed after the letter you keep quoting from the California Water Board was sent. As a result, the California Water Board is requiring more and deeper wells dug to see if these toxics are contaminating our deep-water aquifers. So, there is more information coming.

    On vinyl chloride, is a toxic breakdown product from breakdown of chlorinated hydrocarbons which are commonly found in old landfills. Vinyl chloride commonly continues to be made for years if there is a chlorinated hydrocarbon source like many solvents which were dumped in landfills. So, they appear for years as they continue to be made in the breakdown process. Vinyl chloride was found in high levels 25 years after the Old Landfill was closed.

    On the toxaphene issue, there needs to be a Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) plan which is approved by DTSC, for the complex process of how, when, and where the carcinogenic the carcinogenic and neurotoxic and carcinogenic toxaphene soil (where the Heritage Oak Park is to be located) is to be removed. This plan was not done for the Draft EIR and still has not been done. So, this is yet another deficiency and inadequacy of the Draft EIR.

    The other issue you keep side- stepping is that even the Draft EIR acknowledges that the monitoring wells have been tested at very shallow levels (due to elevated groundwater levels) which can communicate with Channel A because the project plans to re-route the channel and make very deep trenches. This would potentially mix the PFAS and other chemical contaminants in high levels with Channel A runoff which would flow east through Wildhorse exposing that neighborhood. It then would continue east through Willow Slough Bypass to the wetlands inducing the wildlife areas and Yolo Basin and to waterways beyond.

    3) You have repeatedly come to public meetings defending Village Farms and advocating for it despite all its environmental impacts, but then back-pedaled recently to pause saying that you will need to see the Final EIR before endorsing it. No one has endorsed it more times than you publicly with your defense of, and advocacy for Village Farms despite its many problems and serious environmental impacts and grossly inadequate Draft EIR.

    In addition to this is you trying to excuse the unprecedented and abhorrent “process” that the Village Farms project is trying to get away with by not even having a Final EIR, no final development agreement nor finalized Measure J/R/D baseline features for the ballot, yet the project being fast-tracked to a premature vote accommodation the developers wishes, rather than prioritizing our community’s right to a proper process.

    Reply

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