What the Sonoma Land Trust wants covered in the upcoming SDC study

Following the Board of Supervisors meeting on January 25, Permit Sonoma is preparing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Specific Plan that will guide redevelopment of the Sonoma Developmental Center (SDC). The planning area is the entire SDC property which includes the 180-acre developed core campus, the surrounding 755 acres of contiguous open space and the 11-acre Camp Via grounds within Jack London State Historic Park.

Because SDC is owned by the State of California, the Specific Plan can demonstrate the state’s leading role in redevelopment projects that deliver climate resilience, biodiversity protection and new affordable housing that meets community needs. This is the public’s opportunity to raise your voice to ensure all SDC development and future uses meet the requirements of the of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to “fully identify, avoid, and mitigate impacts” to the environment and all of the surrounding communities, both human and non-human.

Sonoma Land Trust has developed detailed comments on the Notice of Preparation for the EIR which we will release early next week, and we have prepared this summary to provide suggestions for important points to make in your letter to the County before the 5:00 PM March 25, 2022 comment deadline.

In order to meet legal requirements and deliver the best scientific information, the EIR must meet the following conditions and environmental performance standards:

1. The Notice of Preparation states that the SDC project will include between 450 and 1000 residential units. It does not provide any specific details about the location or intensity of proposed uses at the SDC. The EIR must include a complete analysis of the environmental impacts of various types of development within this proposed range, and must include these project variants in its core analysis, rather than as alternatives to the project.
2. The State’s own 2019 governing legislation and the Plan’s adopted Guiding Principles requires preservation of the SDC’s ecological resources, including the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor. The EIR must accurately describe wildlife’s use of the Corridor and of the SDC site and conserve and enhance irreplaceable habitat areas. Further, the EIR must employ the latest scientific tools, datasets, and studies so that the public and decision makers may fully understand, design around, and mitigate for development impacts to SDC’s ecological resources. The County should accept Sonoma Land Trust’s offer to partner with the County and the state to conduct the necessary detailed studies to document wildlife concentrations and movement at SDC.
3. The Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor serves as a critical linkage in a larger corridor from coastal Marin County to eastern Napa County. Because of its regional significance, analysis of cumulative impacts on the Corridor should include an area that is large enough to account for the movements of local populations of the widest-ranging species present (i.e., mountain lions), and evaluate the impacts of all the different types of development proposed for the property that will impact the permeability of the Wildlife Corridor and the ecosystem services it provides.
4. The project must incorporate appropriate buffers between development and sensitive habitats, such as watercourses and wetlands, to protect the ecological value of the SDC site and the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor. This may require the removal of existing, unused structures. Buffers will be particularly critical to protect the species that rely on the Wildlife Corridor.
5. The County must analyze wildfire risk and plan for safety in a way that preserves the ecological value of the SDC site and the Sonoma Valley Wildlife Corridor. For example, the County cannot approve development that would require vegetation management in areas (or to a degree) that would negatively impact the Wildlife Corridor or build new roads that will fragment intact habitat areas and eliminate or significantly disrupt wildlife use.
6. The EIR must consider how development at SDC will increase future water demand at the regional scale, and analyze the resulting ecological impacts from such water use. The EIR must consider the water use impacts on sensitive aquatic resources and groundwater, especially during drought conditions, and must also evaluate how these impacts will affect fish and wildlife that rely on local water sources for survival.

— Sonoma Land Trust