AgdaPkt 2002-11-04 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The necessity to prepare this WSA comes at a time when the City is considering other actions regarding water supply - which was identified by the City Council as one of their top priorities for 2002-2004: · The City recently commissioned updated projections of water demand to 2020. The Redwood City Water Use Forecast 2000 to 2020 (June 20, 2002) was prepared by John Whitcomb, Ph.D. In turn, the Water Use Forecast projections were included in the City's Urban Water Management Plan, Revision No. 1 by amendment through City Council Resolution No. 14459 adopted on July 15, 2002. The projections show a 13% increase in Redwood City water demand by 2020 compared to 2000, not including new demand by the Kaiser Hospital Campus Expansion Project. · Concurrently, the City has been: o Planning for a recycled water project. The Planning Commission recently certified a Mitigated Negative Declaration and the final report of the Water Recycling Feasibility Study for Redwood City, by Kennedy/Jenks Consultants (August 7, 2002) was reviewed and accepted by the City Council on August 26, 2002. o Planning additional water conservation program elements and initiatives. This WSA determines that the City of Redwood City does not currently have sufficient water supply to meet the projected water demands of the proposed Kaiser Hospital Campus Expansion Project together with those of its existing customers as well as the demands of other planned development. However, if the City implements tentative plans for additional supplies (i.e.: recycled water and aggressive conservation) in the near future, there should be sufficient water supply to meet projected future demands. Without complete implementation of these measures, there will not be sufficient water supply for this or other development projects. As this WSA points out, Redwood City's supply reliability now and into the future is a key factor in this determination. Once the WSA has been prepared, it must be approved by the City Council. It should be noted that the City Council's action in approving a WSA for a proposed development project is not an approval or disapproval of the project itself, in part or in whole. Nor is consideration of this WSA a discussion on the merits of, or objections to, the proposed development. As of this date, the draft EIR for the proposed development has yet to be released for public comment, so this determination is very eady in the sequence of development review steps. Thus the Council's action should be narrow in its focus on the sufficiency of water supply. The WSA, including the information regarding plans for acquiring additional supplies, shall be included in the environmental document prepared for the project. In the case of the Kaiser Hospital Campus Expansion Project, it will be included in the CEQA Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR), currently in preparation. At the subsequent stage of project approval/disapprovai, the City "shall determine based on the entire record, whether projected water supplies will, or w'ill not be sufficient to satisfy the demands of the project, in addition to existing and planned future uses." If the City determines at that point that water supplies will not be sufficient, it must include that determination in its findings for the project. As other large scale projects come forward, Water Supply Assessments will need to be 2 of 3