This is a summary of our longer Petition that can be found and signed at https://chng.it/fJWfym9Gx6
We are Yolo residents concerned about the potential adverse impacts of the Teichert Shifler Mining and Reclamation Project. On Tuesday, 11 January at 1:00 pm the Yolo Board of Supervisors will discuss and vote on the application. We urge the Supervisors to vote NO.
Here we emphasize Risk of Water Contamination, Loss of Prime Farmland, and Liability.
By Charles B. Salocks, PhD
Teichert Construction is applying for a Yolo County permit to mine gravel on more than 250 acres of land in lower Cache Creek west of Woodland that is now being used for agriculture.
This proposal is problematic because the Cache Creek watershed naturally contains substantial deposits of mercury ore. It includes a US EPA Superfund site, Sulphur Bank Mercury Mine, located at the east end of Clear Lake.
According to the Environmental Impact Report (EIR), at the end of 30 years the mined property will be reclaimed: approximately two-thirds of the land area will be converted back to agricultural use and one-third will become a permanent water impoundment (or ‘pond’) and turned over to the County. The property will not be restored to its original state, at least not in the foreseeable future.
A toxic compound called methylmercury is produced by certain types of bacteria that live in water and sediment where the concentration of dissolved oxygen is very low. This condition can occur at the bottom of ponds or lakes, such as the reclaimed water impoundments in lower Cache Creek where open pit mining has already occurred.
By Nancy Price and Don Price
Recently the Yolo County Planning Commission held two public hearings on the proposal submitted by Teichert Materials to carve a new open-pit gravel mine on the 319-acre Shifler farm, three miles west of Woodland along lower Cache Creek. If approved, the proposed gravel mine would operate six days per week for 30 years.
Climate advocates, the Yolo County Farm Bureau, neighboring residents of the Wild Wings community and others concerned about the project’s many environmental impacts spoke and submitted letters to the Planning Commissioners. After more than ten hours of discussion, the Commission voted 4-2 this month to recommend dramatically scaling back the project to protect prime farmland.
Citizens raised concerns about formation of toxic methylmercury sediment in the wet pits already lining lower Cache Creek, risk of contaminated fish, and the potential that such deep mining could puncture holes in the groundwater table and contaminate the water supply.
“This decision signals we are in a new era of planning for resilience and cannot ignore irreversible impacts to land, water and public health. Land that can be used to grow tomatoes and wheat to feed people should be used as if our lives depended on it – because they do,” observed Alessa Johns, a concerned citizen and retired UC Davis professor.
Many readers may not realize that gravel mining in Yolo Country goes way back to the 1870s. By the 1970s, concerns arose over the impact of open-pit mining in the main Cache Creek channel. It took until the mid-1990s for the county, the mining industry including Teichert, and a group of concerned citizens to restrict mining to outside of the main channel, create the Cache Creek Conservancy, and begin a program of remediation and restoration.
A statement from the Old East Davis Neighborhood Association (OEDNA)
Residents concerned about the unique feel of Davis should be troubled by this ruling. By overturning the trial court, the appeals court implies that the City does not have to keep its own commitments as implemented in the ordinances and planning documents. The appeals court grants the City license to take any provisions agreed upon by the community to protect neighborhoods or specific resources and then interpret them in a way that best serves the interests of developers or other special interests.
When the City decided not to create a historical district for the 2001 General Plan, they opted instead for a conservation overlay district, having protections codified in the Design Guidelines and enforced in the zoning codes. Many community members and businesses, including OEDNA, worked to complete these documents, trusting that future City Councils would honor their intent.
A Mixed-Use Mass and Scale guideline states: "A building shall appear to be in scale with traditional single-family houses along the street front." And a zoning code states: "Wherever the guidelines for the DTRN conflict with the existing zoning standards including planned development, the more restrictive standard shall prevail." The Trackside Project as approved by the City clearly does not follow this directive. However, the appeals court decision ruled that the City has almost complete discretion in how it interprets and/or reinterprets its planning documents.
By Matt Williams
What follows are the public comments that I submitted to the Finance and Budget Commission (FBC) this morning regarding the Economic & Planning Systems, Inc. (EPS) Fiscal Analysis of DiSC 2022. The Technical Memorandum prepared by EPS can be found here. The 27 items included are not exhaustive.
I would like to alert you to the rapidly growing opposition to a 30-year deep pit gravel mining project proposed by Teichert, Inc. alongside lower Cache Creek in Yolo County, just three miles west of the City of Woodland.
The Yolo County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on this project as Item #12: consider a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors regarding certification of the Environmental Impact Report and approval of the Teichert Shifler Mining and Reclamation Project on a site west of Woodland, CA, including certification of the General Plan Amendment, Rezone, and other associated approvals. The public hearing, via zoom or telephone, will take place on December 9, beginning at 8:30 AM.
Nearby homeowners of the WildWings community, defenders of a unique Patwin-Wintun Tending and Gathering Garden, toxicologists, climate advocates and an Episcopal minister are among a diverse group urging the Yolo County Planning Commission to reject the Final EIR and oppose the rezoning of prime farmland to allow the gravel to be mined.
Attached is a Comment Letter submitted on December 8, 2021 to the Planning Commission and signed by over 100 opponents of this ecologically destructive mining project.
Please contact the following individuals for further information and interviews:
Charles Salocks, Toxicologist, Retired, California Environmental Protection Agency, cbsalocks@gmail.com
Ann Liu, Retired CTA, UCCE Master Gardener, skip2mylew@gmail.com
Alessa Johns, Professor Emerita, University of California, Davis, alessajohns@gmail.com
Thank you,
Nancy Price
Download Memo to Commissioners and Supervisors on Teichert Shifler Issues Final
Does imagination require or at least benefit by transparency and a truly robust public process?
For a year or so the City of Davis, UC Davis and Yolo County have been working with the private consultancy Toole Design and the public to "Reimagine Russell Boulevard". City of Davis staff plan to update the City Council at this Tuesday's Council meeting.
Following are comments I made on the survey which was planned to close on November 12th but is open as of this moment…
My comments are split into two parts: First I focus on the process, next on the design. Process, today. Design, tomorrow (or Tuesday morning).
*****
1 – The project inexplicably has two websites, one for "administrative" reasons. There's never been an explanation for this.
2 – On the admin. website there is a list of representatives of some sort from the city, the Community Steering Committee. Two of them told me that they were not happy that it was only a sounding board and not really official – and there's no way specific way indicated to reach them. Additionally I was informed by a Committee member that they were not provided access to raw data from the first survey earlier this year. My impression is that the City learnt its lesson from the Downtown Plan process and decided to formally reduce democracy in the project. If no one visits the admin. website they won't even know about these people. At the very least the budget of nearly half a million dollars (!) didn't allow the consultants and so on to do more than a few public sessions over a year's time.
By Nancy Price
On Wednesday, November 10, the Yolo County Planning Commission holds a public hearing on the Teichert Shifler Mining and Reclamation Project to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors on the proposed 30-year Off-Channel Surface Mining Permit for industrial mining on the agricultural Shifler property. On December 14, the Board of Supervisors meets to consider final approval of the Permit.
At the time the Draft EIR was being prepared, on September 29, 2020, the Yolo County Supervisors passed Resolution 20-114 – A Resolution Declaring a Climate Crisis Requiring an Urgent and Inclusive Mobilization in Yolo County (“2030 Climate Emergency Mobilization Resolution”). This goal is stated in Yolo County’s 2011 Climate Action Plan and elements of the County’s General Plan.
A 6/31/2021 Press Release elaborates, the Supervisors “passed a resolution declaring a climate crisis requiring an urgent and inclusive mobilization of countrywide resources to initiate a just transition to an inclusive, equitable, sustainable and resilient local economy while also supporting and advocating for regional, national and international efforts necessary to reverse the climate, social justice, and economic crises. As an immediate goal, the Board voted to create a new Climate Action Plan for the County with the intent of reaching a carbon negative status by 2030.”
Given the magnitude of Teichert’s 277 acre industrial mining and reclamation project, the Supervisor’s must direct the new Yolo County Climate Action Commission to report on Teichert’s application and EIR documents, and that the ecological assessment called for in the “Climate Emergency Mobilization Resolution” be adopted and implemented.
Teichert must prioritize and commit to how they will achieve the county’s 2030 reduction goals such as solar-power generation at the Woodland Plant, conversion of vehicle fleets and other measures. The proposed carbon absorption capacity of reclaimed agricultural land on the Shifler property needs further study before this mitigation measure is considered viable. The proposed purchase of carbon credits to mitigate or offset Teichert’s GHG emissions is fraught with challenges in monitoring, reporting, and guaranteeing actual, quantifiable carbon reduction.
To conclude, the magnitude and scale of industrial mining for 30 years to 2052 runs counter to the County’s publicly stated climate actions goals and the process they have established to attain those goals by 2030.
Myths and Facts about Impacts of Freeway Lane Expansions on Traffic Congestion and Adoption Rates of Electric Vehicles
Executive Summary
Proponents of the proposed DISC project claim that the projected traffic congestion associated with the project will be solved soon in the future by the hoped-for I-80 freeway HOV lane expansion easing roadway congestion. The proposed freeway expansion project envisions the addition of one HOV lane on each side of the I-80 freeway freeway from from Hwy 113 on the west to the I-5/I-50 interchange in Scaramento and the I-80/Reed Ave interchange to the east.
Proponents also claim that the associated vehicular greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from the increased traffic to and from the DISC site will be substantially eliminated by the mass adoption of electric vehicles reducing tailpipe GHG emissions
Unfortunately, science shows us that the proposed addition of the two HOV lanes on the 20.8 mile stretch of the I-80 freeway expansion (one HOV lane on each side of the freeway) will actually induce further traffic and Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) on this stretch of the freeway. Methodology developed by the UC Davis National Institute of Sustainable Transportation (NIST) shows this phenomena is due to both short and long-term driver behavioral changes including taking longer and more frequent automobile trips, route shifts, and transportation mode shifts away from public transportation. The cumulative impacts will result in no relief from the current plague of I-80 freeway congestion.
Further, mass adoption of electric vehicles will take decades to substantially replace existing aging fossil fuel-powered vehicles resulting in no near term decreases of the additional GHG emissions resulting from new traffic associated with the DISC project. These emissions directly threaten the Davis goal of carbon neutrality by 2040 and Yolo County's goal of net negative carbon emissions by 2030.
Myth #1 – The Proposed I-80 Expansion will Greatly Reduce Freeway Congestion for DISC Commuters Leading to Decreased Congestion for Local Drivers on Mace and Covell Blvd.
The following comments were shared with the Natural Resources Commission at its meeting last night and are reposted here with permission of the author.
This is Alan Pryor speaking as a former 12-year NRC Commissioner. I think it's telling to review a comment made by a Planning Commissioner at a hearing on this project last year.
"You want this to be the most sustainable, innovative tech campus in the United States. But you have come to us with a car-dominated, auto-centric proposal on the edge of town, far from the capitol corridor station, not linked to good transit, with huge parking lots and parking structures. Widening Mace to accommodate more traffic is not the answer. It's going to induce more traffic."
Nothing has functionally changed with this project since then except its size is been reduced by less than half but the applicant is now proposing transportation features that are even less conducive to non- automotive forms of transportation.
For instance the applicant is now refusing to construct the previously agreed upon off-grade crossing to allow arriving pedestrians and bicyclists to safely cross six lanes of Mace Boulevard during rush-hour traffic. How is that possibly welcoming to bicyclists and pedestrian employees arriving on the west side of the street or to school kids living at the project trying to get to school and back each day without a parent driving them.
Also, the original proposal was an environmental nightmare in that it projected over 83,000,000 lbs of CO2 equivalent emitted each year. The new estimate is about 45,000,000 lbs of CO2 equivalent per year – or about 4.5% of the City's current carbon footprint for this one project alone. All of these emissions would have to be later eliminated for the City to reach carbon neutrality by 2040 but the developer has not proposed how they will do this.
Davisite 