CORRECTING A PREVIOUS EIRror

This one starts with an Environmental Impact Report. Stop me anytime you think you know where it’s going to end up.

I wasn’t there, but from what I read in the papers, some Oakland folks got upset the other day after looking over an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) concerning the city of Alameda. It seems that Alameda was planning a big development over there, right across from the Webster Street area, and the EIR said it would cause a lot of new auto traffic in Oakland accessing the Posey Tube. The Oaklanders were upset that all of that traffic would pass right through Oakland’s Chinatown, which is already one of the most congested areas of the city.

Stop me anytime you think you know where this is going to end up.

Anyways, without the Environmental Impact Report, the Oaklanders probably wouldn’t have known the full extent of this Alameda development’s impact on Chinatown. And that’s because of the way developers do business.

A developer is a capitalist, and while there are some exceptions, the goal of most capitalists is to make as much money as possible, without too much concern about the effect on others. So when a developer releases plans for a potential development, he…or she…naturally has the tendency to emphasize the positive things about that development while minimizing the negative. The developer, after all, wants Planning Commissions to approve and banks to lend and investors to invest, all so that the development can be built. That’s the only way that the developer can make money, which is how this capitalism thing is supposed to work.

That’s where these Environmental Impact Reports…or EIR’s…come in. Thirty years ago, knowing how developers (and capitalists) generally operate, the California legislature passed CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act), which requires that before a new development is approved, developers must to put together a report on all the potential negative affects on the surrounding communities. In urban areas, these negative effects can be things like increased traffic, decreased parking spaces, air quality, access to utilities and city services. Stuff like that. The report is called an Environmental Impact Report. Beyond calling for the issuing a report so that folks can be forewarned, the EIR process gives communities some other good tools to make sure developers don’t screw up the local environment with their developments. Not to stop development. Just to make it more responsible. (It was Reagan who signed CEQA, so it almost certainly wasn’t anti-development.)

Anyhow, stop me anytime you think you’ve figured out where this is going to end up.

So the way I read it in the paper, some Oakland residents looked at this big new proposed Alameda development, saw how much negative effect it would have had on Chinatown, and brought the matter to Oakland City Council. Led by Councilmembers Danny Wan and Henry Chang, the Council put up a big fuss. Partly as a result of Oakland’s protest…which might not have had much weight without the EIR process…the Alameda developers announced plans to scale down their project so it wouldn’t have so much negative impact on Chinatown.

Stop me anytime you think you know where this is going to end up.

Now go back a few months, when Oakland City Council ratified a state law (AB436) that weakened the use of Environmental Impact Reports for certain developments in downtown Oakland, and only in downtown Oakland…nowhere else in the state (okay, so you knew where this one was going to end up). And that vote was led by Councilmember Danny Wan, who argued at the time that Environmental Impact Reports were really more designed for rural areas and places that bordered on water, not for inner cities like Oakland’s downtown.

And that was odd, because if a big development all the way over in Alameda could have a potential negative impact on Oakland’s Chinatown, doesn’t it stand to reason that a big development in downtown Oakland…such as the mayor’s 10k plan…might have an even greater potential negative impact on Oakland’s Chinatown, it being closer and all? Negative effects like, say, increased traffic and such. And without EIR’s, how will Chinatown residents fight such negative effects or even know about it?

Maybe Councilmember Wan…who is one of the more studious and responsible of Councilmembers…might want to bring AB436 up again for reconsideration. Might be something we need to think about some more.