RES 09265 - Laserfiche WebLink

see also Public Res. Code § 21092.1 and CEQA Guidelines §15088.5.) Accordingly, "changes in the project or environmental setting as well as additional data or other information," are not, absent some additional finding, considered "significant new information" requiring recirculation. (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5(a).) Further, "recirculation is not required where the new information added to the EIR merely clarifies or amplifies or makes insignificant modifications to an adequate EIR." (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5(b).) The City's decision to require the full extension of Stoneridge Drive as part of the approved project (the "Concurrent Extension") does not require recirculation of the EIR. First, because it requires the approved project to conform to, rather than amend, the existing Specific Plan that has already been subject to CEQA review. As such, the potential environmental impacts of the Concurrent Extension are impacts of the specific plan, not the approved project. Second, the Concurrent Extension does not result in any new, or substantially more severe significant impacts beyond those already disclosed in the EIR and its supporting studies, nor would it require any new mitigation of significant impacts beyond those recommended in the EIR and the EIR's supporting studies (CEQA Guidelines § 15088.5). This is demonstrated by the EIR's analyses of cumulative impacts and the impacts of the Existing Specific Plan Alternative, as well as by the traffic study performed for the project, each of which assess the environmental impacts of construction of the full extension of Stoneridge Drive. Given that CEQA authorizes a lead agency to alter the project it approves to include characteristics of project alternatives, here the City may alter the adopted Ice Center Alternative to include characteristics of the Existing Specific Plan Alternative (i.e., the full extension of Stoneridge Drive) without those characteristics being considered significant new information. (CEQA Guidelines § 15002(a), (h).) In addition to the findings below for each of the significant environmental impacts of the approved project, this document also enumerates findings that separately explain why requiring the Concurrent Extension as part of the approved project does not constitute "significant new information" requiring recirculation of the EIR. In such findings, the term "Deferred Extension" means the Specific Plan amendment originally proposed for the proposed project and rejected by the City to (i) extend Stoneridge Drive only from its current easterly terminus at Trevor Parkway as a two- lane road over the Arroyo Mocho, providing access to the proposed senior continuing care community, neighborhood park, and the western entrance to the community park; (ii) provide access to the auto mall, commercial center, and the eastern entrance to the community park would by a new four-lane road off EI Charro Road, identified as Auto Mall Place in the conceptual site plans; and (iii) limit vehicular access between Auto Mall Place and Stoneridge Drive to emergency vehicles and possibly buses. Similarly, the term "Concurrent Extension" means the City's decision to reject the Deferred Extension and instead require the proposed project to provide a full, four-lane extension of Stoneridge Drive from its current terminus east of Trevor Parkway to EI Stoneridge Drive Specific Plan Amendment and Staples Ranch Project Environmental Impact Report Findings and Statement of Overriding Considerations Page 14 of 47