Santa Cruz Group submits comments on University expansion
The Sierra Club is concerned that the growth planned for the two UCSC
campuses in Santa Cruz will exceed the carrying capacity of the city.
Accordingly, the Santa Cruz Group submitted comments to the Draft
Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) prepared for the University's expansion.
The fact that two separate DEIRs have been prepared, one for the main
campus and another for the Marine Science Campus (Terrace Point) appears
to be an attempt to segment the expansion project, a tactic that is
forbidden under the California Environmental Quality Act.
Besides the "significant and unavoidable" impacts which
the plan itself identifies, the Club enumerated other impacts in
the areas of aesthetics, biological resources and major loss of
natural resources. Especially egregious is the meaningless wording
where proposed mitigations are to be carried out "to the extent
feasible." This is no mitigation at all.
The impact that campus development will have on wildlife habitat
is great. Habitat will be fragmented with a significant impact on
wildlife. The Draft Environmental Impact Report greatly underrates
the effect on wildlife.
The Club's comments also ask for a more serious analysis of the
alternative of locating the projected University growth at its satellite
campus in Silicon Valley.
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