A major long-term environmental plan that has been years in the making and is the nascent green shoot for key developmental decisions that will impact the future of new housing, commercial development and fire evacuation was approved by the Orinda City Council.
The council passed a revised version of the final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for what city leaders and planners call Plan Orinda. The revised EIR was approved by the council at their March 18 meeting.
The passage of the EIR resulted from the culmination of a comprehensive review process nearly five-years long aimed at addressing environmental concerns and ensuring compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
The revised final EIR incorporates updated findings, mitigation measures and a statement of overriding considerations to address contentious issues, such as wildfire evacuation constraints. This revision was result of a Contra Costa Superior Court ruling to decertify passage of an earlier version of the EIR and require city leaders to go back to the drawing board and provide a revamped version of the EIR, which required the city to enhance its analysis of emergency evacuation impacts.
The ruling resulted from litigation filed by a group of residents, Orindans for Safe Emergency Evacuation (OSEE). The group sued the city and won. In addition to rejecting the earlier version of the EIR, the ruling also impacted one of its elements – the Downtown Precise Plan (DPP), which called for additional housing well beyond the state mandated requirements.
OSEE argued that additional non-required housing would further stress an already vulnerable city evacuation plan, an assertion supported by evacuation studies.
The ratified revised final EIR is an historic milestone for Orinda. The plan encompasses key initiatives, such as the Housing Element (which is in its sixth iteration or “cycle” in bureaucratic parlance) and the Safety Element. These components are aimed at balancing the city’s growth with environmental preservation and community safety.
“The Council has taken the steps it has needed to take,”said City Manager Linda Smith, “complying with the judge’s order” by passing a revised EIR, What the revised final EIR does not include is the DPP, which is an element that was never required by the state’s environmental mandate, but one that city leaders felt compelled to include in the original EIR, said critic Nick Waranoff, an Orinda resident and retired real estate and development attorney.
The DPP called for an additional 920 new housing units beyond the 698 units required by the state, which were included in the recently approved Housing Element in the revised EIR. The Revised EIR found and reiterated that adding any housing will worsen (natural disaster and fire) evacuation, Waranoff points out.
While the DPP was left on the cutting room floor with the passage of the new-improved final EIR, the city council continues to keep the DPP plate spinning in the air with hopes of still passing the measure, which would approve the non-required new housing units and opens the door to other new downtown commercial development.
The question, Waranoff and other DPP critics ask, is why is the DPP even necessary if the city has already met most state and court-ordered mandates?
