Crown Castle NG West
San Mateo County Project

Welcome to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) website for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review of proposed construction, operation and maintenance of Crown Castle NG West’s (Crown Castle’s) (U-6745-C) San Mateo County Project. An application for this project was submitted to the CPUC on February 5, 2013 (Application A.13-02-007). An amendment to the application was submitted to the CPUC on September 6, 2013. The amended application accompanied by an amended Proponents Environmental Assessment (PEA) supersedes the original application and PEA. This site provides access to public documents and information relevant to the CEQA review process.

Background

Crown Castle has filed an application with the CPUC to construct, operate and maintain the San Mateo County Project. The CPUC is the CEQA lead agency and the County of San Mateo is a responsible agency.

The project would consist of the installation of distributed antenna systems (DAS) network facilities, including fiber optic cable, antennas, nodes, and related facilities along approximately 14.22 miles of existing highway rights-of-way (ROW), primarily along Highway 1 (Hwy 1) in San Mateo County, California . Approximately 10.76 miles of the fiber-optic cable would be placed aerially on existing utility poles, and approximately 3.46 miles of new conduit would be installed underground within existing ROWs.

The project would consists of:

• Installing a total of 10 antennae, pole extenders, and associated equipment, two on each of five node poles (all existing utility poles).
• Installing 14.22 miles of fiber-optic cable (10.76 miles across approximately 258 existing utility poles and 3.46 miles underground).
• Installing guy wires and anchors on up to 70 existing utility poles, pending further engineering analysis and structural testing.
• Potentially replacing up to 14 existing utility poles to accommodate the new stress loads, pending further engineering analysis.

See the Project Location Map from the PEA

Application and Proponent's Environmental Assessment (PEA)

The amended application for the San Mateo County Project is here.

The PEA for the San Mateo County Project is here.

The deficiency letter mailed out by the CPUC on June 5, 2013 is here.

The letter deeming the application complete mailed out by CPUC on November 6, 2013 is here.

Initial Study / Mitigated Negative Declaration

The CPUC released the Notice of Intent to Adopt a Draft Initial Study/Mitigated Negative Declaration (Draft IS/MND) for the proposed project on March 20 2014 . The public comment period for this document is March 20, 2013 to April 18, 2013. Following the end of the public comment period, responses to all comments received on the Draft IS/MND and submitted within the specified 30-day review period will be prepared by the CPUC and included in a response to comments document, which together with the Draft IS/MND, will constitute the Final IS/MND for the proposed project.

The CPUC will hold a public meeting on Wednesday, April 10, 2014, at the Native Sons Community Hall, 112 Stage Road, Pescadero, CA from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The meeting will begin with a brief presentation providing an overview of the proposed project followed by interested parties having an opportunity to provide comments about the proposed project.

Final Negative Declaration

On May 11, 2015, the CPUC released the Notice of Availability and Final Initial Study/Negative Declaration (Final IS/ND) under CEQA for consideration of the San Mateo County Project.

Since publication of the Draft IS/MND, the applicant has proposed to reroute portions of the alignment to avoid State Parks lands based on State Parks comments on the Draft IS/MND. Under the CEQA Guidelines, Section 15073.5 (c)(2), if no new avoidable significant effects result from project revisions, then the lead agency is not required to recirculate a Negative Declaration. In this instance, the type and magnitude of the impacts associated with the proposed project changes were already disclosed within the Draft IS/MND; therefore, no new avoidable significant effects would occur due to the proposed revisions. See Attachment B, which includes the analysis to support the CPUC’s decision to not recirculate this document, for more information. Further, based on the applicant’s proposed change, the only mitigation measure proposed is no longer required; the document is now appropriately a Negative Declaration.

The Final IS/ND incorporates all comments received during the public review period for the Draft IS/MND. The responses to comments are provided in Attachment A and Attachment C. Revisions to the Draft IS/MND are shown in strikethrough/underline in the Final IS/ND.

Commission Decision

On December 3, 2015, issued the construction permit; certified the Final IS/ND as being compliant with CEQA; and filed a Notice of Determination to the State Clearinghouse. The 30-day statute of limitations for court challenges begins after the Notice of Determination is filed.

Construction Progress and Mitigation Monitoring

Reports issued by the CPUC, reports on construction progress, and reports issued as part of the Mitigation Monitoring Program can be found by clicking on the following link:

• Mitigation Monitoring and Reporting Program

For Additional Information

The CPUC, through its Environmental Review Team, is conducting an environmental review of the project. To request additional information or to be added to the mailing list, please contact us by email, fax, or phone, as follows:

Project email: CrownCastleSanMateoCountyProject@dudek.com
Project fax: (415) 655-8339
Project voicemail: (415) 321-5319
 

The CPUC’s Project Manager is:

Jensen Uchida, CPUC Project Manager
California Public Utilities Commission
505 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
Tel.: (415) 703-5484
 

Please report any problems to the Energy Division web coordinator.