Oral Comments and Responses

This chapter addresses the oral comments received on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) during the September 15, 1998 public hearing on the document. A copy of the transcript from the public hearing is included first, followed by responses to those comments. The responses emphasize issues related to the adequacy of the EIR in identifying and analyzing the possible environmental impacts of the project and possible approaches for avoiding or mitigating these impacts.

Some comments include issues that are not related to the adequacy of the DEIR. Detailed responses have not been prepared for these comments, but they are acknowledged in this document. Because all of the comments received regarding the DEIR are reproduced here, they are part of the Final EIR for this project. As such, they will be considered by project decision-makers as they decide whether to approve the proposed project or one of the alternatives evaluated in this report.

Oral comments are presented in the order in which the speakers were heard. Each organization or individual has been assigned a number (e.g., "1"), and each individual comment by the organization or individual received has been assigned a sequential number (e.g. "1"). Therefore, a unique descriptor, consisting of a number, hyphen, and number, applies to each comment and response. For example, "response 1-1" refers to the response to the first comment from the first speaker at the hearing. These descriptors appear on each page of the transcript where a comment was given to indicate what text is considered part of each comment.