1 miramar beach resort and bungalows project 2 - Santa Barbara ...

1 Staff, would you mind commenting on the
2 mitigations related to the pile driving activities? One
3 of our public comments made a note of 120 decibel
4 instantaneous deafness. I mean I'm sure we've got --
5 I'd just like to hear it.
6 MS. BLACK: Mr. Chair, I can make a couple of
7 comments just recalling what we've heard. First of all,
8 I think we heard some say a mitigation to offer to
9 relocate people temporarily is not mitigation, and I can
10 tell you we've used that as a standard approach, and
11 that way people can choose to avoid exposure to noise or
12 not. I mean we're obviously not going to make someone
13 leave their home if they absolutely don't want to, but
14 we provide them that choice.
15 The other thing that I heard is that the pile
16 driving impacts on the beach should have been
17 considered, and I think what they meant was the noise
18 levels on the beach. And again, this is a very short
19 construction period, and people can avoid that.
20 The beach users are not considered to be
21 sensitive users. They're not residential; they're not
22 schools or churches or nursing homes or hospitals. So
23 they can avoid those periods, and it is very short term.
24 MR. BIERIG: Good. Those are mitigations
25 that you have used before in other places?
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