On Thursday, May 13, the Clearlake City Council was forced to take some very drastic action in order to balance their budget so that they will continue to be able to pay their bills. The problem with the city of Clearlake’s finances is lack of adequate income. The cuts are major but would not have been nearly as severe if the Sierra Club had been willing to withdraw their lawsuit whose effect is to slow down, and perhaps eliminate, the Lowe’s project on the old airport property.

It is true the Sierra Club did not create the city’s current financial crises, but the lawsuit eliminates “the light at the end of the tunnel” that could have prevented many of the layoffs.

The future sales tax income – estimated by the Sierra Club’s own experts to be based on revenues of $38.2 million – of between $400,000 and $600,000 every year would have started in early 2012. The building of the project would have provided money for several city employees who would be working on the project thus making other general fund money available for the positions that had to be eliminated.

The airport property has been slated to be a business park since it was purchased by the city in 1996. The Clearlake Vision Task Force Report describes it as part of “the area which has the greatest potential to grow into an important source of employment and the retail center for the region.” The Lowe’s project fulfills this vision as the project also contains six additional retail business spaces.

It has taken time to find and negotiate a contract with a developer with an anchor tenant who would sign a contract and make the commitment to build the project. Lowe’s did this and the contractual obligations in the contract would have protected the city financially from building delays.

The Sierra Club lawsuit outlines a number of concerns, and states that a full environmental impact report (EIR) is required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA ). CEQA requires a full EIR only when substantial evidence exists that a project may result in significant impacts to the environment.

The studies done for this project that resulted in the negative declaration decision detail that significant impacts will either not occur or were mitigated within the project. Mitigating environmental effects is the purpose of CEQA. CEQA is not designed to stop a project; it is designed to protect the environment through mitigation of any significant environmental issues. In the case of the Lowe’s project the requirements under CEQA were satisfied.

The areas of the Sierra Club’s environmental concerns and the already accomplished resolutions are as follows:

Air quality: First, the Lake County Air Quality Management District agreed with the city’s assessment that the impacts on air quality by the Lowe’s project would be mitigated to less than significant. Second, the carbon monoxide (CO) emissions have decreased by 50 percent between 1990 and 2008. Additionally, an analysis meeting state requirements was done showing that greenhouse gasses would be decreased as much is possible. The Lowe’s store would actually exceed the state’s energy saving requirements by 20 percent. Greenhouse gasses also would be reduced when people shop locally instead of driving to Santa Rosa or Ukiah for building materials.

Traffic: A traffic study was completed by a registered traffic engineer and a total of $2.1 million in mitigation measures were required and built into the project to provide the improvements necessary to solve the traffic and circulation problems identified by the study. This is exactly what an environmental review is intended to accomplish – the mitigation of impacts.

Urban decay: The city of Clearlake is very aware of its status and actually has significantly more blight than urban decay. Blight is more severe than urban decay and the lawsuit will actually increase it because there is very likely to be an increase in crime with less police officers and more unabated public nuisance properties because of the elimination of the code enforcement program. Additionally, the elimination of the planning department will mean significant degradation of services to new businesses attempting to locate here. The city adequately addressed the potential for urban decay.

Although the above items are the ones listed in the lawsuit, another substantially different set of reasons is outlined in the Sierra Club’s position paper available at their Web site – http://redwood.sierraclub.org/lake.

Most of the items in the position paper are economic issues which would not be covered under CEQA and so would not be addressed in an EIR. Therefore the filing of a lawsuit requesting an EIR unnecessarily negates the time and effort that the city of Clearlake has devoted to creating a more livable city for its residents and begs the question – what is actually behind this lawsuit if it is not really environmental?

Susanne Scholz lives in the city of Clearlake.