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Comments on the Village Farms recirculated draft EIR

By Roberta Millstein

In an earlier article, I mentioned that there was a recirculated (and partial) Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Village Farms proposal, necessitated by “new information” related to the City’s overall Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) capacity.” I also noted that the City was taking public comment on the recirculated (partial) DEIR, with comments due by 5 PM, January 2. As that day is very soon upon us, I thought I would share my own comments here.

Anyone thinking of submitting their own comments should note the following:

“Pursuant to CEQA Guidelines Section 15088.5(f)(2), the City of Davis directs that public comments must be restricted to the newly circulated information contained in this document related to wastewater treatment capacity. The City is not obligated to respond to any new comments that are directed to the portions of the Draft EIR that were not revised and are not being recirculated in this document.”

Comments must be directed to:

Dara Dungworth, Principal Planner
City of Davis Department of Community Development
23 Russell Boulevard, Suite 2
Davis, CA 95616
ddungworth@cityofdavis.org

My public comments (submitted earlier today) are as follows:

There are procedural concerns with the recirculated DEIR. The Planning Commission has, astonishingly, already signaled its approval of the Village Farms EIR without having access to comments such as mine below and the responses from the City. This is poor process; I raised the issue with the Planning Commission at both of the meetings where this was considered, but to no avail. When the FEIR is fully complete, it should be returned to the Planning Commission for additional review, with comments and responses concerning the City’s overall Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) capacity. Otherwise this document itself is compromised, lacking a full analysis from the City’s side of things.

Other concerns:

The recirculated DEIR states, “In July 2024, staff engaged consultants Brown & Caldwell to study the City’s WWTP, evaluate the operational challenges experienced by the team, assess the overall constituent loads and capacity at the plant, and provide options for the City to consider to address these findings.” Obviously, there were already concerns about “operational challenges” then. What were those “operational challenges”, and why are we just hearing about them now? What is in the mentioned “contract between the City of Davis and Brown and Caldwell dated August 8, 2024?” All of this should be explained in the EIR to understand the background of the problem at hand and to understand whether appropriate steps are being taken to address it.

The recirculated DEIR describes some potential short-term and long-term engineering solutions to the wastewater capacity problem. These have environmental impacts. What are the impacts of each of the options? These should be described in the EIR so that the City and the citizens know that what kind of solution might be realistic going forward and what some of the challenges might be.

A recent article in the SF Chronicle (https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/salesforce-tower-wastewater-drought-electricity-21130030.php) states that a number of cities, such as San Francisco and Austin, are requiring on-site water reuse in new large real estate developments, with other states developing such programs. The EIR should answer the question: would we still need to expand wastewater capacity in Davis (or expand by the same amount or to the same degree) if Village Farms deployed on-site water reuse? On-site water reuse needs to be analyzed in the EIR. It is the forward-looking approach that California will need to conserve precious water resources.

There are copy-paste errors on p. 2-19 and 2-20 in reference to “Lower Number of Units – Same Footprint Alternative” when that is not the Alternative being discussed. How can the City and its citizens have confidence in what appears to be a very hastily put together document?

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Comments

2 responses to “Comments on the Village Farms recirculated draft EIR”

  1. Greg Rowe

    Roberta, as you are aware, the Planning Commission vote to recommend that the City Council certify the EIR was not unanimous. I just want it noted that I voted against that motion, and voted against the overall project. One of my main concerns is another procedural irregularity. That is, the manner in which the EIR alternatives were determined.

    The usual practice–the standard of practice in other words–is that project alternatives are not selected until the impact analysis has been completed. The reason for this is that the purpose of alternatives is to evaluate whether changes to the project could eliminate or at least reduce some of the impacts. The identification of alternatives is typically a collaborative process involving the project applicant, the lead agency staff (in this case, City planners) and the EIR consultant. But again, this is done only after the impact analysis has been completed.

    In this case, Council selected the alternatives well before the environmental impact analysis had even begun. They started discussing potential alternatives in October 2023, and made their final determination of alternatives in December 2023. They did this even though Community Development Director Sherri Metzker told the Council point blank that selecting the alternatives in this manner was the exact reverse of how the process is supposed to work, and that they were “…putting the cart before the horse.”

    It was obvious that the Council selected the alternatives because they had a preconceived notion of how they wanted the alternatives analysis to turn out. High importance was placed on a high density alternative, which increased the number of housing units by 50%, from 1800 to 2700, on the same acreage. The rationale for this is that the City ranks reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) per capita as its highest priority. Studies show that there is an inverse relationship between density and VMT per capita. So, it was intuitive to Council that boosting density by 50% would virtually guarantee that the alternative would emerge as the EIR “Environmentally Superior Alternative” because it was the alternative that achieved the greatest reduction in per capita VMT.

    During the December 2023 meeting, one Councilmember, Donna Neville, to her credit raised the question as to whether a smaller footprint and lower number of units should be studied as an alternative. Unfortunately, none of the other Councilmembers had any interest in this suggestion.

    In contrast, the smaller footprint alternative was overwhelmingly determined to be the Environmentally Superior Alternative in the December 2004 EIR for the Covell Village project on the same site. That project was in many ways almost identical to the current Village Farms project, 1864 units versus the currently proposed 1800 units.

    I strongly criticized this process at the Village Farms EIR workshop in February, and subsequently circulated a memo to the rest of the planning commissioners explaining why the Council’s process was not the correct way to do things. As I said at the December 17 public hearing, the Council’s actions were like a metaphor for a patient going to the doctor, and the doc proceeds to outline alternative treatment options before they even find out the reason for the patient’s visit.

    After the December 17 hearing ended in the early hours of the morning, I briefly spoke with the EIR consultant, who I have known for a number of years. He is highly experienced and has probably performed many dozens of EIRs. I asked him if he has ever worked on an EIR for another city in which the Council “preselected” the alternatives to be studied. The answer was “no,” as one would expect. I began working with EIRs in 1984 and have never seen the process handled in this manner. I hope the City of Davis never does this again, because I feel that it basically tainted the entire EIR process.

    Reply
  2. Roberta Millstein

    Greg, thank you for clarifying that the Planning Commission votes were not unanimous. I was expressing my frustration with the outcome, but it’s important to give credit where credit is due, and I thank you for your principled “no“ vote. I also appreciate you explaining the irregularities that you saw with the process. I think many people will benefit from hearing that explanation.

    Reply

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