Over 50 years ago, California adopted the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to protect our environment, wildlife, and citizens against the rapacious effects of relentless, ill-considered development. As the Legislature recognized, the unchecked zeal of developers and local governments to cut deals to exploit our natural bounty not only poses grievous risk to a fragile and dwindling ecosystem, but also threatens our quality of life, future safety, and prosperity. That is why CEQA was adopted: to protect our environment and our citizens by requiring local governments as well as private developers to candidly assess and fully disclose the specific and cumulative impacts that their proposed development policies and plans will have on our existing environment and future safety.
Unfortunately, three members of the new Town Council voted to adopt a grossly deficient IS/MND (Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration) which will deprive residents of the very protections that CEQA was enacted to provide. Two members of the new Town Council abstained, requesting a better understanding of the letter from the Woodside Fire Protection District (WFPD) CEQA Attorney that they received only minutes before the March 29, 2023 Town Council meeting began.
Why it matters: CEQA serves to protect our environment and our families against the adverse impacts that increased development can cause. The Town’s erroneous and unsubstantiated conclusion that its new Housing Element will have no adverse impact on our environment, or our public safety, not only contradicts the WFPD advice and request for important mitigation measures, but needlessly strips our community of the critical protections CEQA is designed to provide all of us.
Unless the Town Council is persuaded to amend its CEQA assessment to adopt the WFPD mitigations, Town residents will have no recourse but to ask a judge to order it to do so.
Shouldn’t the new Town Council wisely avoid such needless brouhaha by amending the IS/MND to include the Fire District’s requested mitigations?
Mindful of the CEQA’s critical importance, the Woodside Town Council and other neighboring towns are performing comprehensive Environmental Impact Reviews (EIR) of the effects their proposed Housing Elements will have on their local ecosystems and public safety.
But not Portola Valley. Portola Valley’s previous Town Council chose to circumvent CEQA’s requirement for a comprehensive EIR to assess the environmental and safety impacts of this (253 units) and future RHNA housing cycles. Instead, the previous Town Council hired consultants to prepare a far less rigorous IS/MND on the erroneous and unsubstantiated assumption that any possible impacts were already mitigated by existing town policies.
The big picture: Adoption of this IS/MND will reduce the ability of future town government to review and shape almost all aspects of individual projects going forward. Further, it will limit the ability to require developers to enhance infrastructure (ie: roads, sewers, parks etc.) going forward, passing this cost burden onto the residents of Portola Valley.
For more than two years, residents have pleaded with the Town Council to identify and assess the impacts that its proposed housing plans would have on our environment, quality of life and public safety.
- What impact will a dramatic increase in population have on our aging and highly vulnerable infrastructure?
- What impact will the development of dense, 2-, 3- and 4-story housing amidst our Very High and High fire hazard severity areas have on wildfire risk?
- What impact will it have on our existing capacity to contain and suppress fires when they occur?
- How will it impact our evacuation routes and capacity, our traffic, our schools, our animal habitat, and recreational facilities?
- How will the improvements needed in all these areas be funded and who will pay for them?
Last fall, over 80 Town residents submitted detailed comments challenging the Town’s superficial and incompetent assessment that its proposed development plans will have little or no adverse impact on any of these vital interests, and therefore require little or no mitigation.
In early January 2023, the WFPD informed the Town that it disagreed with the Town’s assessment of no significant impacts on wildfire risk, and detailed 7 specific mitigation measures it wanted the Town to adopt under CEQA for approval of the proposed Housing element, including:
- Designation and adoption by ordinance of the High and Highest Hazard areas delineated in the General Plan (Moritz) fire hazard map as High and Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones pursuant to the California Government Code.
- Adoption by ordinance of Cal Fire’s minimum fire safe development regulations in all Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones within Portola Valley and designation of WFPD as the authority responsible for enforcement of the regulations.
- Amendment of the adopted Cal Fire regulations to require 30- foot separation between structures and to specify the bases on which the regulations’ building setback and separation requirements may be relaxed.
- Codification in the Municipal Code of the wildfire prevention policies set forth in the 2010 Safety element for the High and Highest Hazard areas identified on the General Plan (Moritz) fire hazard map.
- Adoption by ordinance of a mandatory procedure and standards for review of the impact on public safety of each new land use, development and building proposal that is based on State ADU, lot split (SB-9) or bonus density law.
In February 2023, the Planning Commission proposed amending the IS/MND to add specific additional mitigations to address some of the other environmental impacts the original IS/MND had overlooked or ignored. Two Council members embraced that approach and recommended further mitigations.
On Wednesday, March 29, 2023, our new Town Council gave us its answer. By a vote of 3 in favor and 2 abstaining, the Town Council decided to approve the IS/MND with no amendment to correct its many blatant deficiencies and no adoption of any of the mitigation measures the Fire District, the Planning Commission, and our new Council members are requesting.
Although the three approving members agreed to “consider” future possible adoption of “policies” to address the stated concerns of the Fire District and Planning Commission, the Town Attorney insisted that the Council’s resolution make clear that its decision would in NO WAY obligate the Council to adopt or implement any of the District’s or Planning Commission’s requested mitigation measures, and that none of the changes or additions requested by the Fire District or Planning Commission be characterized as a “mitigation” measure.
Why did the Town Attorney urge the approving Council members to make clear that the Planning Commission and Fire District proposals would not be adopted as CEQA mitigation measures? Because doing so – characterizing them as CEQA mitigation measures – would ensure that under CEQA the measures must then be adopted and implemented as binding preconditions for approval of the Town’s new Housing Element. And that, in turn, would require all future developers who rely on the new Housing Element similarly to respect and abide by those CEQA-imposed mitigation measures.
Whose interest is the Town Attorney serving? If the Town Council adopted the measures requested by the Fire District and Planning Commission as CEQA “mitigation” measures, the measures would become required, enforceable parts of our new Housing Element. So why does the Town Attorney oppose adopting the mitigation measures requested by the WFPD and the Planning Commission as CEQA mitigation measures?
As the Town Attorney indicated at the meeting, calling the WFPD requested measures “mitigations” would render them binding preconditions that the Town must fulfill as part of its new Housing Element. By refusing to adopt these measures as CEQA mitigation measures, the three approving Council members are not only freeing the Town from any binding commitment to implement these important measures. They are also weakening and possibly undermining the Town’s ability to adopt and enforce such critical public safety measures going forward.
By approving an IS/MND that falsely concludes there will be no significant environmental impact on public safety and no need for mitigations, the three Council members – at our Town Attorney’s urging – are handing State housing authorities and all prospective developers an erroneous and gratuitous admission that such mitigation measures are not warranted and are not needed. Such false and unjustified conclusions can and will be used to attack and defeat all future fire safety measures the Town may seek to adopt.
The bottom line: In short, through the artifice of a grossly deficient and incompetent IS/MND, three members of the new Town Council have decided to deprive residents of the very protections CEQA was enacted to provide.
Where does that leave us? Unless the Town Council is quickly persuaded to undo its short-sighted decision, the only recourse available to Town residents is to ask a judge to correct the Town’s erroneous and deficient IS/MND.
Does our Town government really need a judge to tell it to do what the law requires? Or will it wisely avoid that needless cost and disgrace by fulfilling its obligation to assess and disclose, candidly and honestly, the environmental impacts of its choices?
What can you do? Please contact your Town Council members:
- that they should reconsider their approval of the IS/MND and its blanket CEQA exemption for all housing projects going forward
- and instead to institute a comprehensive Environmental Impact Review (EIR) to understand the effects that each proposed project location will have on their local ecosystems and public safety.
You can reach Planning Director Russell at lrussell@portolavalley.net
You can reach Town Council Members as follows:
- Jeff Aalfs: jaalfs@portolavalley.net
- Sarah Wernikoff: swernikoff@portolavalley.net
- Mary Hufty: mhufty@portolavalley.net
- Craig Taylor: ctaylor@portolavalley.net
- Judith Hasko: jhasko@portolavalley.net