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Chapter 3 describes the process of preparing and considering an EIR under California law. This is often called the CEQA process under the State law on which it is based. At the end of the Chapter are a couple of pages describing the organization of the EIR as a whole, and in particular, the organization of Chapter 4. Chapter 4 is the main chapter in the Draft EIR and includes the setting, impacts, and mitigation measures. The topics covered are those that are included in the California CEQA and run from A to P - "A" is "Aesthetics and Visual," and it goes down to "P" which is "Utilities and Services." Ms. Mundie noted that Chapter 4 contains detail for each topic and includes a framework for analysis as well as a description of the scoping comments made on this topic that were provided to them; a discussion of this setting as it relates to that individual topic, with the focus on the site. Ms. Mundie continued that the third category in this chapter is the key project characteristics, the impacts, and the mitigation measure. The focus here is on the project -what the project will do to the site -and is discussed under several different categories: (1) significance criteria, which mostly come from the California CEQA guidelines and provide a kind of bellwether indicator of whether a project has environmental impacts or not. This is the standard for determining whether impacts would exist and a way of making those determinations so that we are not reinventing significance criteria or going astray from what the State law intended. (2) impacts, which all have a topic letter and then an impact number; for example, "A" is the "Aesthetics" section, and "A1" would be the first impact under "Aesthetics." At the end of each topical section is a Summary Table that lists both the impacts and the mitigation measures for that topic. Ms. Mundie noted that "Aesthetics" has a map showing the views of the site under the existing conditions. Each one of the little dots there has an arrow associated with it. The dot is the point from which the photograph was taken, and the arrow shows the direction in which the photograph was taken. The maps show both close-in views the views that were taken from more distant locations. Ms. Mundie explained the process of doing visual simulations which involves a number of different steps. First of all, the selection was made of the viewpoint locations themselves by undertaking a general viewshed analysis. A viewshed analysis is a computer-based topography of all the lands between the viewpoint and the project and beyond, so what the computer is registering is all the geometry of all of those spaces that can be seen from any of the viewpoints. The viewpoints that were selected for both the photographs and the visual simulations are viewpoints that are accessible to the public. Five locations were chosen: three nearby locations, one representative distant location, and then one on-site location that, while not particularly relevant to views from off the site, was helpful in looking at the effect of possible loss of trees. Chairperson Arkin inquired if the selection of the view sites were reviewed with City staff to make sure those would be the appropriate locations. Ms. Mundie said yes. EXCERPTS: PLANNING COMMISSION MINUTES, July 12, 2006 Page 5 of 21