Draft Environmental Impact Report - California Off Highway Vehicle ...

Chapter 6.0 – Alternatives to the Proposed Project
6.0 Alternatives to the Proposed Action
State CEQA Guidelines Section 15126.6 details the guiding principles for analyzing alternatives in
this DEIR:
consider alternatives that could reduce or eliminate any significant environmental impacts
of the proposed project (the Clay Pit SVRA General Plan), including alternatives that may be
more costly or could otherwise impede the project’s objectives; and
describe a range of reasonable alternatives to the project that could feasibly attain most of
the basic objectives of the project;
evaluate the comparative merits of the alternatives.
The Clay Pit SVRA General Plan was developed concurrently with this DEIR. Development of the
General Plan was guided by the goal to develop a management plan that avoids significant impacts
on the environment. Thus, the General Plan is largely “self mitigating” and implementation of the
Clay Pit SVRA General Plan would not result in significant impacts on the environment. Therefore,
no alternatives exist that could reduce or eliminate significant environmental impacts. However,
the alternatives presented in this chapter each have the potential of minimizing several less‐than‐
significant impacts..
Because the General Plan was developed with the intent to attain all project objectives while
minimizing environmental impacts, it is difficult to develop alternatives that could reduce
environmental impacts while feasibly attaining most of the project objectives. Therefore, this
chapter describes a range of reasonable alternatives that could attain some of the project
objectives.
This chapter evaluates the merits of the alternatives compared with the proposed project, the Clay
Pit SVRA General Plan, as described in Chapter 4 of the General Plan.
The following three project alternatives are shown alongside the proposed project in Figure 6‐1:
the No‐Project Alternative,
the Reduced Developed Use Area Alternative, and
the Conservation Alternative.
The headquarters facilities would be constructed regardless of the alternative selected (except the
No‐Project Alternative); thus, any impacts attributed to the headquarters would occur under each
development alternative.
Clay Pit State Vehicular Recreation Area
Draft EIR 6-1 February 2012