Editorials

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today we are pleased to offer for your information a guest editorial, author unknown. It’s a cogent, well-written summary of why the City of Berkeley needs an adequate environmental impact report from the University of California before the university moves forward with its relentless desire to radically change the face of our city between now and 2020. Nothing’s changed—the points made in this piece, placed on the city’s website in February when the lawsuit was filed under the title “Fact Sheet,” are still valid.  

There is no reason the City Council should rush to concede anything to the university within the next month, or at least no reason which would benefit Berkeley citizens. There is also no reason that the public is being kept in the dark about the terms of the proposed agreement between the city and the university.  

Even worse, it now appears that the “confidentiality agreement” between the city and the university was not voted on by any elected officials, and perhaps was not even signed by the city manager. We’ve tried to find out who did sign it, but the Daily Planet’s California Public Records Act request to see the document was denied by City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque on dubious grounds.  

It would be unheard of in the business world, where I spent 18 years, for an attorney to purport to bind her clients by a confidentiality agreement like this without express authorization from her principals to do so. Any attorney trying to do something like this on behalf of any company I’ve ever worked with would have been summarily discharged.  

It’s no surprise that the University of California, having suckered some gullible operative claiming to represent the City of Berkeley into agreeing to keep the deal a secret, won’t let go now. That’s typical of the way the university treats Berkeley.  

What is somewhat of a surprise, and a disappointment, is that our City Council is allowing itself to be led around by the nose like this. Two and possibly three councilmembers seem to be showing courage in speaking for the public interest, but the rest of them seem to be falling for the specious legal arguments for secrecy that they’ve been fed. The public will, of course, have a chance to see the deal eventually, after it’s signed, sealed and delivered. The next chance to hold city councilmembers responsible for what they decide to do now will be in November of 2006. 

Here, from the anonymous author, is the “Fact Sheet” from the city’s website:  

Background 

The UC Berkeley campus is comprised of 12.1 million square feet of academic and support space and serves 31,800 students and 11,600 faculty and staff. The LRDP calls for major increases: 

• 2.2 million new square feet of academic, research and administrative space. 

• 4,000 additional full-time equivalent students. 

• Over 3,500 additional faculty, staff and visitors. 

• Up to 2,300 new parking spaces. 

• 2,600 new housing beds.  

Between March 2003 and January 2005, the city expressed its concerns about the LRDP to the university repeatedly in meetings with UC officials and staff, submitted hundreds of pages of information and comments, and repeatedly invited UC to have a serious discussion of how the city and UC could collaborate on planning for the affected areas of the city and mitigating the impacts of additional UC development. The university has not reciprocated. 

Physical Impacts 

This additional development will have a number of significant environmental impacts, notably increasing traffic congestion, but also on historic resources, storm water, aesthetics, and all of the other impacts that accompany major development. The university has offered no assurance that it will fully address all environmental impacts resulting from the LRDP. 

Fiscal Impacts 

The LRDP will put further stress on already strained city services. Unfortunately, university development also takes property off the tax rolls. The university is exempt from most taxes, assessments and fees. The current annual cost to the city of providing public services to the university is estimated at $13.5 million.  

Under the LRDP, the cost will rise by approximately $2 million. The EIR recognizes that the services provided by the city are tools for reducing environmental impacts, yet the university has not made any commitment to paying for these services as a way to mitigate the impacts resulting from the LRDP. As a result, the city will not be able to sustain the level of service needed and as those services are stretched, environmental impacts will result; from spills due to dilapidated sewer pipes and waste water systems, to deteriorating air quality as cars idle on grid-locked streets. 

Why the EIR is Inadequate 

• The LRDP and EIR contain no details about the actual development that will occur under the LRDP, or where it will occur. As a result, the EIR contains little useful information. However, the university intends to exempt projects from full environmental review (a process known as “tiering”), thus avoiding any real environmental evaluation of the projects that will be developed under it. 

• The university claimed in the LRDP and EIR that it had insufficient information to describe several specific projects, such as the Memorial Stadium renovation and Southeast Quadrant Academic Commons, even though those projects were in advanced stages of planning even as the EIR was being prepared. 

• The EIR did not evaluate the LRDP’s significant impacts on aesthetics, air quality, biological resources, cultural resources, geology, seismicity and soils, hazardous materials, hydrology and water quality, land use, noise, population and housing, public services, transportation and traffic, and utilities and service systems. It did this by treating certain significant impacts as if they did not rise to a level of significance, entirely ignoring the fact that certain aspects of the LRDP will have impacts; assuming that other impacts would be mitigated even though there was no evidence to this effect; relying on the city to mitigate certain impacts; and relying on purported mitigation measures that are unlikely to happen. 

• The EIR failed to take into account the cumulative impacts of developing the LRDP in conjunction with the forthcoming long range development plan for the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). 

• The EIR did not examine a reasonable range of alternatives to the LRDP that would have reduced its impacts. 

In general, the EIR did not provide good faith, reasoned responses to the many comments the university received, on all of these issues, and others. 

The Regents’ approval of the LRDP was based on findings about the regional economic impacts of the university that entirely ignored its significant and uncompensated local costs.