Fountaingrove Environmental Impact Report - City of Santa Rosa ...

2.0 LIST OF COMMENTERS AND RESPONSE TO COMMENTS
impacts such as impacts to trees and visual resources would be far too small to
achieve most of the Project objectives.
23) As discussed in Section 5 of the Draft EIR, section 15126.6 of the California
Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Guidelines specify that an environmental
impact report (EIR) must describe a reasonable range of feasible alternatives to the
project that could feasibly attain most of the basic project objectives and would avoid or
substantially lessen any of the significant environmental impacts of the proposed
project (emphasis added). An alternative to the Project with a moderate reduction in
size would not avoid or substantially lessen most impacts from the Project, including
visual, habitat, and traffic impacts. In order to avoid or substantially lessen such
impacts, a smaller version of the Project, for example, would have to be limited
primarily to the grassland areas and reduced at least one floor in height. A project of
this size would be far too small to achieve most of the Project objectives; it would
accommodate only a fraction of the objective of 135 units and would not have room
to accommodate the community care facility or the employee housing. Seismicrelated
impacts would be similar for any project built on the site.
24) As discussed in Draft EIR Section 5.0, Alternatives, in general all the alternatives,
including the No Project Alterative, would be expected to have impacts similar to or
greater than the Project impacts. The Smaller Footprint Alternative and the State
Density Bonus Alternative meet the Project objectives discussed in Section 2.2,
Project Objectives, while the No Project Alternative may not, depending on the
development that occurs. The Smaller Footprint Alternative would reduce the level
of biological impacts compared to the Project, but would result in greater, potentially
significant and unavoidable visual impacts. The State Density Bonus Alternative
meets all the Project objectives, but would have greater environmental impacts than
the Project. The No Project Alternative could reduce visual impacts, depending on
the type of development that occurs, but could have increased traffic congestion,
noise, and air quality impacts as compared to the Project. Among the alternatives to
the Project, the Smaller Footprint Alternative would be the environmentally superior
alternative. However, as noted above, the Smaller Footprint Alternative would not
be environmentally superior to the Project because of greater, potentially significant
and unavoidable visual impacts.
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