MONTEREY ACCELERATED RESEARCH SYSTEM CABLED OBSERVATORY DRAFT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT REPORT/ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT PUBLIC MEETING TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS SESSION 1 Taken on behalf of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute at 8272 Moss Landing Road, Moss Landing, California, before Melinda Nunley, CCR #9332, a Notary Public within and for the County of Monterey, State of California. MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 2 APPEARANCES: 3 Vicki Hill, Consultant for Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute 4 Michelle Brown, Project Manager for California Lands 5 Commission 6 Keith Raybould, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute 7 Jon Davidson, EIR/EIS Project Manager from Aspen Environmental Group 8 9 --o0o-- 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 I N D E X 2 Page 3 Ms. Hill 4 4 Ms. Brown 9 5 Mr. Raybould 10 6 Mr. Davidson 15 7 Conclusion 23 8 --o0o-- 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 Moss Landing, California, Thursday, April 7, 2005 2 4:10 p.m. 3 4 MS. HILL: Okay. You think we should start? 5 Hopefully everybody has found a parking space by now and 6 found the building. I'd like to welcome everyone here 7 today to this meeting that's being held jointly by the 8 California State Lands Commission and Monterey Bay National 9 Marine Sanctuary. My name is Vicki Hill as you can see on 10 the name tag, and I'm a consultant to the Sanctuary helping 11 them with environmental issues associated with this 12 project. 13 We are here today to present information on the 14 Monterey Bay aquarium Research Institute's proposed MARS 15 cable project. The main intent of the meeting today is to 16 provide information on it but more importantly to get 17 public comments. 18 Before we get started I want to take care of a few 19 housekeeping items and that is I hope everyone has signed 20 in on the sign-in sheet that's at the back table, and back 21 there there are speaker slips if anyone would like to speak 22 today, make comments on the environmental document. Also 23 there are agendas back there. I hope everyone got a copy 24 of it. Also we have copies of the Draft Environmental 25 Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement, the EIR/EIS McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 on the back table as well, right, if anyone wants to take a 2 look at one during the meeting, and if you need to get a 3 copy of one for yourself, please feel free to ask. 4 We have several agency and applicant and 5 consultant representatives today. In fact I think we 6 outnumber any members of the public here, and I'll 7 introduce a few of these people. Unfortunately Dierdre 8 Hall from the Sanctuary could not be here today. She's the 9 project manager from the Sanctuary, but Holly Price is here 10 from the Sanctuary sitting in for her. From the State 11 Lands Commission we have Michelle Brown who is the project 12 manager for the environmental review process for the state 13 and Nancy Quesada who will be working -- raise your hand, 14 Nancy -- who will be working on writing the lease for the 15 project should the project be approved by the state. We 16 also have -- from the applicant we have Keith Raybould who 17 will be giving details about the project description and 18 Mandy Allen who's worked on the project as well. I know 19 that there's a lot of other people here from MBARI but I 20 don't think I need to go through everyone right now. 21 Finally we have our EIR/EIS contractor, Jon Davidson. He's 22 the project manager for Aspen Environmental Group who 23 prepared the EIR/EIS and he will go over the details, the 24 findings of the EIR/EIS later in the agenda. 25 So with that, I'd like to just give a brief McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 background on the joint EIR/EIS process for those of you 2 who might not be familiar with the process that has taken 3 place for this project. The application was filed in 4 February of 2004 and it was filed with both the State Lands 5 Commission and the Sanctuary, and shortly after that both 6 agencies got together and decided to do a joint 7 environmental document. Under state law -- let me back up 8 a second. Since the project crosses both state lands or 9 state waters as well as federal waters, it's subject to 10 both state and federal regulation. The state regulation is 11 the California Environmental Quality Act known as CEQA and 12 the Federal regulation National Environmental Policy Act, 13 NEPA. Since these 2 laws are very similar, we decided to 14 do one combined document rather than 2 separate documents 15 for the state and the feds. 16 The environmental document was prepared, as I 17 said, by Aspen Environmental Group under the direction of 18 the State Lands Commission and the Sanctuary, and the 19 consultant was selected jointly by the 2 agencies. And it 20 serves as an informational document. There is an important 21 point to make. It is not a decision document. It provides 22 information. It's full disclosure, and it doesn't make 23 recommendations on approval or denial of the project. Once 24 the environmental process is completed then the agencies 25 will make separate actions on the permit application and McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 they must consider information that's in the EIR/EIS in 2 making those decisions. 3 Let's talk about scoping for just a second. I 4 think Jon will probably cover some of the scoping issues as 5 well, but prior to starting preparation of the EIR/EIS, we 6 initiated a process called scoping that's required by both 7 state and federal law. The 2 agencies issued notices via 8 the Federal Register and mail, mailed out a number of 9 notices to a wide variety of agencies, Sanctuary users, 10 interest groups and other interested individuals. As a 11 result of the scoping process, we received only 7 comment 12 letters along with some verbal comments that were made 13 during a scoping meeting last June in this very same 14 location. Based on the scoping comments, on the 15 professional experience of the agency staff as well as the 16 environmental consultant, the work plan for the EIR/EIS was 17 developed. 18 So now we have the draft document. This is the 19 draft EIR/EIS and it was published on March 11th and it's 20 now out for public review for 45 days. At the end of that 21 45-day public review period, we will go through all the 22 comments and work with the consultant to prepare responses 23 to each comment that was made on the document. After that 24 we will prepare a final EIR/EIS in which all the comments 25 and responses will be included. Once that final document McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 is published, and we think that's around the 1st of July, 2 correct? We're hoping to get that out around the 1st of 3 July. Then the State Lands Commission will take action on 4 the project meaning they'll decide to either approve or 5 deny a lease for the project and they will hold a public 6 hearing associated with that. During the same time the 7 Sanctuary will be preparing a Record of Decision for the 8 project. This Record of Decision cannot be issued until 30 9 days after publication of the Final EIR/EIS. So that's the 10 process. Probably project approval or action -- action on 11 the project will take place by next summer, hopefully 12 August. 13 Just a couple other notes, other activities that 14 are happening right now, the document was sent out to a 15 number of agencies for review and those agencies will 16 probably use this document in making their decisions, such 17 as the Coastal Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers. 18 Also during this time I understand that the applicant and 19 the fishermen's representatives are working together to 20 develop a fishermen's agreement which will address issues 21 such as fishing gear loss and liability. So that's taking 22 place right now too. 23 I think that's all I have to say. With that I'd 24 like to turn it over to Michelle Brown from the State Lands 25 Commission who's going to spend a few minutes talking about McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 today's meeting and then we'll go on to the project 2 description that Keith will present. Thanks. 3 MS. BROWN: Hi. My name's Michelle Brown. I'd 4 like to thank you all for coming to this meeting. Again 5 most of the things I have to say Vicki's pretty much 6 covered but I have a little bit more. 7 MS. HILL: Sorry. 8 MS. BROWN: No, that's fine. 9 I'm a project manager for the California State 10 Lands Commission. As we said, this is a joint document 11 between the State Lands Commission and the Monterey Bay 12 National Marine Sanctuary and the purpose of this meeting 13 is for you to receive information about the project and for 14 us to hear your comments about the adequacy of the document 15 in addressing potential environmental impacts that may 16 result from the project. The purpose of this meeting is 17 not to discuss issues relating to the project or whether 18 you are for or against the project. 19 The draft EIR/EIS was released on March 11th and 20 comments must be received by the end of the 45-day review 21 period which ends on April 26th. We'll be taking comments 22 received today as well as those that are sent to us by fax 23 or by email or by regular mail and all those will be 24 responded to in the final document. The final document 25 will then be considered for certification in the near McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 future, most likely August by our commission as well as by 2 the Sanctuary. 3 Please make sure you've signed in on the sign-in 4 sheet and if you would like to speak today, we have speaker 5 slips. I'd like each person that would like to speak today 6 to please write down your name, your agency affiliation or 7 group affiliation so that our court reporter can properly 8 record you for the record and that we can respond to your 9 comments. 10 Now Keith Raybould will speak. He's going to give 11 a description of the project, and after Keith is finished, 12 then Jon Davidson will get into the details of the report. 13 Thank you. 14 MR. RAYBOULD: Okay. So what I'm going to go 15 through is a project description. I'm going to go through 16 the MARS location and cable route, the purpose of the cable 17 observatory, a description of the node and the trawl 18 resistant frame, shore landing, cable installation and 19 scheduling. 20 So the route starts at Moss Landing here and I'll 21 describe the shore landing in a short while. It goes 22 across the continental shelf to the north of the canyon 23 through this neck of the Smooth Ridge down to the node 24 that's here on Smooth Ridge. The depth of the node is 25 almost 3,000 feet. There's about 30 miles of cable, and McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 the shore landing here that I'll describe in detail in a 2 short while is through a horizontally directionally drilled 3 5-inch steel pipe. 4 The purpose -- the 2 main drivers and purposes for 5 the MARS Cable Observatory was first as a test bed. It's 6 a test bed for a larger regional cable observatory that's 7 going to be built soon funded by the National Science 8 Foundation as part of an Ocean Observer Initiative. This 9 larger test bed -- this larger cable observatory is off the 10 Oregon/Washington coast and it includes 30 or so nodes and 11 about 3,000 kilometers of cable. MARS is a single node and 12 50 kilometers of cable as a test bed for testing the 13 engineering that was necessary for building a cable 14 observatory of this scale. After this regional cable 15 observatory is built called NEPTUNE, MARS will be used for 16 testing instruments and methods for deploying instruments 17 prior to placing these instruments on this larger regional 18 cable observatory. That's one of the aims, as a test bed. 19 The other one is to perform science, area science 20 in the bay. There are many different science applications 21 being proposed that the observatory can be used for. I can 22 only just briefly mention 2 today in the time available. 23 One of them will be for the seismometer studies. These 24 are the faults that run through Monterey Bay. The San 25 Gregorio Fault runs right across here. MARS will be able McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 to power a permanently installed seismometer on the west 2 side of this fault. There are literally hundreds of 3 seismometers on the east side. By being able to locate a 4 seismometer on the west side that is able to get data 5 continuously and is powered continuously, it will provide a 6 lot of information on the mechanisms and locations of 7 seismic activity along these critical fault lines. 8 One of the other areas I was going to mention is 9 the application of using hydrophones on the cable 10 observatory. This is an example of some data taken which 11 shows whale calls here and this is a passing vessel. This 12 is some seismic activity and it shows some of the data that 13 can be taken with permanently installed cells such as MARS. 14 The cable will be buried to the maximum extent it 15 can, nearly 70 to 75 percent of the route. There's a 16 section just near Smooth Ridge where surface conditions 17 don't allow it to be buried. It's designed for a 25-year 18 lifetime after which it will be removed. During this 25 19 years new instruments will be designed and tested on the 20 MARS facility prior to being moved and used on the regional 21 cable observatory. These instruments will be located 22 within a 4-kilometer radius of the MARS node and then 23 connected and provided with powered communication by 24 service laid cables. The facility provides about 10 25 kilowatts of power and gigabits band width which is of McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 course a magnitude more than can be provided by 2 battery-powered self-contained instruments, and there's 8 3 instrument ports for connecting the instruments to it. 4 The node itself, that's shown here. This is 5 approximately 10 feet by 8 feet, weighs about 2 tons. This 6 is inserted inside a trawl resistant frame that you can see 7 here. This is the actual trawl resistant frame that's 8 being manufactured as we speak. This is the cable that 9 comes back to Moss Landing. These are the cables that go 10 out to the instruments that we'll connect to the ports on 11 here. So we can maintain this facility by bringing back 12 the node with our regular day vessel ships so there's no 13 need to bring extra vessels in for doing maintenance on the 14 system. All the electronics are contained in this node and 15 this can be retrieved on a daily mission to the location. 16 The shore landing, this is the entrance for Moss 17 Landing Harbor. The shore landing is just here. This is 18 the property that's owned by MBARI. There'll be a small 19 hut which is approximately the size of what you can see 20 here, and from this location there will be a horizontally 21 directionally drilled pipe which will go from that shore 22 landing location about 4700 feet to the other side of the 23 canyon. This is a profile of the HDD pipe. This is where 24 it enters on the shore side. It's located approximately 15 25 feet below the seabed surface and it exits here where the McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 cable will be inserted about 4700 feet offshore. 2 Cable installation, the cable is a one-inch 3 diameter cable. It's single armored, lightweight armor 4 protected. Those are 2 different types of cable. This the 5 armoring around here on the cable. It will be buried 70 6 percent of the route. It will take about 3 or 4 days to 7 install the cable and the node will take another 2 or 3 8 days and then the postlay inspection and burial which will 9 take 1 to 2 days so the entire operation is something no 10 longer than 8 or 9 days. 11 This is the cable laying vessel that we'll use for 12 installation. It's called the Alcatel. It's got 13 directional positioning. There's no need for any anchors 14 during the entire operation. 15 In terms of schedule, we're planning on starting 16 the horizontal directional drilling in September of this 17 year. This will be followed by the cable node installation 18 which, as I mentioned, will take somewhere in the order of 19 8 or 9 days to be done during this period, October, 20 November. We would like to do this to try and avoid the 21 southerly gray whale migration which is starting in 22 December. The shore landing installation and connection 23 back to utilities will then follow and the cable node 24 installation which will be done in December, the operations 25 starting in early 2006. And that's all I have for the McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 description. 2 MS. HILL: Are there any questions specific to the 3 project description? Everyone raise their hand at once. 4 Okay. Keith, you're getting off easy. No questions. 5 Okay. Jon Davidson from Aspen will now give an 6 overview of the EIR/EIS. 7 MS. DAVIDSON: One of the things I liked about 8 working on the environmental review for this project was 9 the look on people's faces I got when I told them I worked 10 on MARS. 11 I'm going to just kind of briefly give you an 12 overview of the findings of the EIR/EIS that we prepared. 13 First of all, the EIR/EIS was focused on 9 issues that the 14 lead agencies had identified in their initial review and 15 through the scoping process that Vicki already mentioned. 16 These are the 9 issues of a larger set of issues that were 17 considered potential to result in significant impacts and 18 so we focused the EIR analysis on these 9 issues. It turns 19 out that not all 9 had significant impacts but we didn't 20 know that until the analysis was completed. For the issues 21 that are not analyzed in the EIR/EIS, the reason why is 22 documented in the back of the document in section 5.7 in 23 your book. 24 If you're familiar with how these analyses are 25 done, it's a pretty standard approach that's taken. The McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 specifics vary by topic and the project itself, but if you 2 look at Section 4 of the document, the Impact Analysis, 3 just kind of the core of the EIR/EIS, you'll see that the 4 sections are all structured in a similar way and that's 5 what I'm stepping through here. And the first is to 6 establish current conditions, baseline conditions for each 7 topic that's analyzed, and so there's a description of a 8 current condition and there's also a description of 9 applicable regulations. After that, significance criteria 10 are presented, and what significance criteria tend to do is 11 to set a threshold to use to measure the significance of 12 the impacts. So if we know that the threshold is 13 triggered, then we're going to consider that impact 14 significant. 15 The -- the impacts we evaluate against those 16 criteria and there's a determination made on whether an 17 impact is significant or not, and you'll see a 18 classification system in the EIR/EIS which is significant 19 unavoidable impacts. These are impacts that can't be 20 mitigated to less than significant level. Those are what 21 we call Class 1 impacts. There's Class 2 impacts which are 22 potentially significant but we have high confidence that 23 the mitigation measures recommended in the document will 24 reduce them to less than significant level. Class 3 are 25 impacts that are adverse but not significant in magnitude McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 or severity. There's also a Class 4 which we really didn't 2 utilize but that's beneficial impacts. There's also a 3 category called no impact. Basically we don't give it a 4 classification. It just isn't an impact. There may be a 5 significance criteria that says here's something that could 6 occur and we analyze it and realize it wouldn't occur. 7 In general across those 9 issue areas that I 8 showed you earlier, we identified 34 impacts that were 9 potentially significant -- excuse me. They were 10 significant -- they were either less than significant, 11 potentially significant, or significant and unavoidable. 12 It turns out we had no significant and unavoidable. We 13 just had Class 2 and Class 3, which is significant but can 14 be reduced to less than significant level or less than 15 significant. So of those, the ones that are most important 16 to our analysis are the 4 that we've determined to be 17 potentially significant and those are impacts related to 18 air quality, cultural resources, marine vessel traffic and 19 noise, and all those impacts, as I said, can be reduced to 20 a less than significant level with the mitigation measures 21 that are recommended in the EIR/EIS, and because we have 22 such a small number, just 4, I'm going to go through each 23 impact briefly. 24 First the air quality impact will be analyzed 25 which is basically a violation of the threshold established McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 by the Monterey Bay Unified Pollution Control District for 2 construction emissions, and these are basically emissions 3 from the cable laying vessel and the other vessels that 4 will be used in the cable laying operation. Often for 5 land-based emissions, the construction equipment emissions 6 aren't considered significant from the way that the local 7 pollution control district defines significant because they 8 build that assumption of that type of construction vehicle 9 operation into their planning efforts, but they haven't 10 incorporated into the planning marine vessel construction 11 so we have to consider that as a separate impact. This 12 impact can be mitigated to less than significant level 13 through the use of low emission fuels which are available 14 for some of the support vessels and the on shore 15 construction, primarily for the horizontal directional 16 drilling that's proposed as part of the project, and then a 17 program that the air pollution control district has in 18 place, the standard mitigation that they use is to 19 contribute to an emission reduction program, and we have 20 several options there open from the district to determine 21 what is the appropriate contribution to an emission control 22 program. 23 The second impact is the cultural resources 24 impact. Basically the MBARI has designed the cable route 25 such as to avoid any known coastal resources, and by McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 coastal resources we're primarily talking about shipwrecks. 2 Those are the historical resources. There's potential, 3 however, that in some parts of the cable route, even though 4 they have not been detected, there is potential based on 5 the depth of the disturbance of the seabed that there could 6 be prehistoric resources, basically cultural resource sites 7 that were established about 18,000 years ago when the sea 8 level was much lower and some areas out in the bay were 9 actually dry land and able to be used by Man, so the 10 mitigation there is to more closely review the data that's 11 already been collected in selecting the cable route, and 12 the feeling is that with the combination of geologists and 13 qualified archeologists that they can then determine 14 whether there's anything that needs more specific 15 investigation with say an ROV to see if there's anything 16 that might be a significant historic impact. 17 The next impact relates to marine vessel traffic. 18 Basically the concern is here is vessels operating too 19 close to one another, and particularly the cabling vessel 20 which is a vessel with low maneuverability, and there's 21 supposed to be a buffer of one mile around such a ship when 22 it's operating. There's a possibility that another 23 research project which is the hole boring project which is 24 close to the planned location of the science node could 25 happen at the same time. If that's true, then there's the McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 possibility that the 2 operations could be within a mile of 2 one another, so the mitigation is simply to do some 3 planning to avoid that, if the ships are operating at the 4 same time, the boring ship and the cabling vessel, that 5 their scheduling be such that they wouldn't be operating at 6 the same time. 7 The last potentially significant impact had to do 8 with noise generated during construction. This is a fairly 9 common impact. As we all know, construction equipment 10 produces both intermittent and continuous noise levels that 11 are pretty high and it's often true that if there's a 12 sensitive receptor nearby, it would be exposed to high 13 noise levels, so the Monterey Bay County Noise Control 14 Ordinance specifies that at 50 feet no construction noise 15 is to exceed 85 decibels. We think there's a possibility 16 that during the horizontal directional drilling activity, 17 that could exceed that slightly, so there's some measures 18 recommended to avoid that excedence of that level which is 19 basically to shield their operating theatre and there's 20 several methods available. So those are the 4 potentially 21 significant impacts. All were reduced to a less than 22 insignificant level. 23 So another thing I wanted to talk about briefly 24 were the alternatives being evaluated. The consultant team 25 and the lead agencies got together and looked at several McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 alternatives, some of which were originally proposed by the 2 applicant and dismissed and reevaluated those as well to 3 see if they had merit in terms of the potential to be a 4 reasonable alternative and if they had potential to reduce 5 or avoid impacts of the proposed project, and so of the 6 6 original alternatives, we determined that there were 3, 7 including the alternative of doing nothing, the no action 8 project, the no action alternative, that there were 3 that 9 deserved a full evaluation in the EIR. So those are 10 basically 2 alternative landing locations, and the basic 11 cable route as you can see would be the same as proposed by 12 MBARI but it would come ashore and land at sundry 13 locations. And as it turns out, after we analyzed these, 14 the impacts were very similar. They were the same. There 15 were some differences but generally much more similarity to 16 what we had determined before. And just to briefly show 17 you what these alternative landing locations are, 18 Alternative 1 was a variation on a concept that MBARI had 19 previously developed for landing the cable. That was to 20 enter the pipeline that is owned by Duke Energy to serve -- 21 formerly serve the Moss Landing Power Plant. It's no 22 longer utilized, but it is a pipeline. It's in good 23 condition. It extends out from the shore, and it would be 24 to bring that cable to that pipe and pull it to shore 25 through that pipe. So we looked at the impacts of that and McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 it also involved horizontal directional drilling across the 2 harbor entrance to Moss Landing. 3 The second alternative was to the south which is 4 to bring the cable across the head of the Monterey Canyon 5 and run it parallel to shore and bring it to the location 6 of a planned pier that's going to be built at the end of 7 Sandholdt Road there by Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. 8 This pier isn't under construction yet but the idea is that 9 when it is built, the cable could come in at that location, 10 attach to the pier, and land using that method. 11 So that's a summary of the EIR/EIS, just an 12 overview. There's a lot more information I was going to 13 present to you in the document, but that's an overview of 14 the alternatives and the impacts that are potentially 15 significant. 16 MS. HILL: Thanks, Jon. 17 Well, is there anyone here who would like to make 18 any public comments at this time? No one? Not one little 19 comment from anyone? Okay. Are there any other questions? 20 No? Okay. Michelle, did you have some closing remarks or 21 did we cover them already? Any next steps? 22 MS. BROWN: No. 23 MS. HILL: Okay. We've pretty much covered 24 them. 25 MS. BROWN: If we have no further questions, or no McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 questions at all rather or comments, then this will close 2 the session and we will be having another public meeting at 3 6:30 p.m. Thank you. 4 (The meeting ended at 4:42.) 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767 MARS Project Draft EIR/EIS Public Meeting, Session 1, 4/7/05 1 STATE OF CALIFORNIA ) ) ss. 2 COUNTY OF SANTA CRUZ ) 3 4 5 6 I, MELINDA NUNLEY, a Certified Shorthand 7 Reporter, License Number 9332, and a Notary Public in and 8 for the State of California, do hereby certify: 9 That the said Transcript of Proceedings was 10 reported by me in machine shorthand at the time and place 11 therein named and was thereafter transcribed by means of 12 computer-aided transcription, and the same is a true, 13 correct and complete transcript of said proceedings, to the 14 best of my ability. 15 I further certify that I am not of counsel nor 16 related to any of the parties hereto, nor in any way 17 interested in the outcome of these proceedings. 18 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto subscribed my 19 name and affixed my official seal this 14th day of April 20 2005. 21 22 23 24 ________________________________ Certified Shorthand Reporter 25 and Notary Public McBRIDE & ASSOCIATES - (831) 426-5767