i hope this allows us to take quantitative reductions from the greenhouse gas mitigation strategy. the threshold is compliant with a greenhouse strategy. the concept is if the city or county has prepared a greenhouse reduction strategy and a development comes along, then that project impact would be less than significant. the planning didn't was instrumental in shaping the final requirements of the greenhouse gas strategy, not only if we adopted an action plan, but many of the gases in that strategy have already been implemented and produced real reduction. i have just received our latest inventory, showing the city has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 6.8% below 1990

levels, we have met our goals and well on our way to meeting the city's more aggressive greenhouse gas reduction targets. part of the reason for our success is san francisco has implemented a broad set of policies and programs, spanning everything from our municipal operations, to requirements for private development projects. as such, we feel that greenhouse gas emissions, are most appropriately addressed in everything in the city is doing to reduce greenhouse gases. and we have pursued the greenhouse gas option under the 2010 significant thresholds. on august 12 we submitted a draft of our strategy to the air district and we are currently awaiting for the response due out sometime at the exhibit end of this month. this document presents a

comprehensive compendium of everything the city is doing to reduce greenhouse gases, and it's intended to serve as our greenhouse gas reduction strategy until the city updates are final action plan, so projects that are consistent with this strategy would be able to have a lessened green house gas impact. there are many benefits. for one, it removed the project by project greenhouse gas accounting that doesn't adequately account for the benefits of in fill development and second it looks at the issue of greenhouse gases from a larger lens, focusing on what the city is doing overall, as well as things under a developer's control. the greenhouse gas reduction strategy will also ease the concern that we have that otherwise dish shall in feel projects might be displaced. projects consistent with that

strategy would have a less than significant impact. so the second area where the air district has made considerable changes is in the area of community health risks, the community health risk thresholds are intended to address a question of whether or not a project will expose to substantial pollutants. the 1999 guidelines, cite new sources and cite new receptors near existing sources. the 2010 thresholds have expanded on the health risk analysis in a number of ways. for one they have added additional health risk thresholds, they now consider mobil source emission in addition to stationary sources, and also applies the threshold to construction projects. as a result you will see a great

deal more emphasis on health risk impact. san francisco has made a lot of headway in protecting our residential uses in passage of article 38 of the health code. article 38 goes as far back as 2008. this is a map showing the areas of the city that are incident to article 38. and if that air quality analysis finds that the roadway pollutants are elevated in those areas, the project must implement mitigation measures, such as infiltration. planning believes that this article adequately addresses roadway pollutants, but does not address stationary sources so a separate analysis would be required.

>> a health risk analysis relies on air base data pace of permitted sources this presents a conservative estimate of health risks and the air district is currently undating which will be available in the next three to six months. with respect to construction health risks, the air district is anticipated to release a new health risk calculator, due out by mid-september. this health risk calculator will present a conservative estimate of construction health risks with more defined analysis require fed projects exceed the threshold. the main way to mitigate emissions is to specify cleaner equipment. at this point it remains unclear how quickly clean technology will become available and be able to be utilized. what you can expect is more of the ceqa documents will include

an analysis of health risks. the methodology for health risk analysis is a development in process and will rely on the materials still forthcoming from the air district. we are also concerned about the availability of feasible mitigation members. and there's a potential that because of these concerned, these thresholds could push development to suburban locations, or outside the city unintentionally. as i have noted here, the thresholds for health risks for new receptors are not anticipated to be implemented until january 2011 and the reasons for the delayed implementation is so that the air district can develop a more accurate data base of the stationary sources and so that cities and counties can development a community risk reduction plan. the concept of a community risk reduction plan is something new that has come out of the air district's process and is

similar to a greenhouse gas reduction plan. if a fee or county has prepared a community risk plan and a project comes forth and complies, then that project's health impact could be less than significant. san francisco has been actively pursuing this concept and we have formed an interdepartmental group of planning staff, public health staff, department of the environment staff, as well as the mayor's office. at this point, we have roughly outlined our approach and have secured funding for our missions modeling being done by the public health department. because community risk plans do not exist we are working very closely with the air district we hope that development of the risk plan will alleviate the project by project health risk analyses that would be required. instead this would focus on air quality solutions and mitigation measures that could be adopted

by individual projects. we also feel that by addressing the community health risks through this plan, san francisco will take a leading rule in furthering in fill development and by protecting the quality of our in fill communities, we are furthering other state goals such as 8032 and sc35. a systemic approach would alleviate unintended consequences of the air district's threshold. so i am going to touch upon criteria air pollutants, and these thresholds are intended to answer a question whether a project would violate an air quality standard or result in an increase of any criteria air pollutant. these thresholds were generally lower and said to be consistent

with federal air quality standards. given the changes, it's anticipated that generally speaking, only the larger project will result in significant impact. the main change made to the threshold is that the air district has now also applied these thresholds to project construction activities, whereas the 1999 guidelines stated that individual projects can not quantify construction emissions, the 2010 threshold specifically requires analysis. you will notice that projects using the 2010 significant threshold will include a calculation of construction air pollutant emissions, and in some cases those would be considered significant. as with health risks, it's unclear how quickly clean construction technology london breed available. unlike the air district's health risks and greenhouse gas thresholds, there is no option for air pollutants, so if san

francisco is successful with its greenhouse gas strategy, some larger projects may include the thresholds. requiring an eir. so to wrap up, planning staff is actively engaged with the air district implementing the threshold. we are working with and through some of our main concerns. the city is actively engaged with the public health department and we have formed an air quality grope with the goal of making sure all staff subpoena to speed with the new guidelines. staff believes our strategy meets the air district requirements and will work to revise and add additional details needed. we are also continuing to develop the city's concept of a risk plan. it's staff's contention that a programmatic approach through a greenhouse gas strategy will

address concerned that it could displace infill development. until these are in place, you notice more projects will conclude greenhouse gas risks are significant, and more projects will result in significant air quality impacts. the risk plan and greenhouse gas strategy do not address air pollutants and some projects continue to initiate mitigation measures or eir. the next slide provides a link to the website where you can download their materials, as well as to a link on our website. this concludes my presentation. i understand it's a lot of material. and i am available for questions. vice president olague: public comment at this time. seeing none, public comment is

closed. director rahaim. >> i wanted to thank jessica for all her work. this is a tremendous amount of technical work that jessica has been leading for the department with the air quality district for what is probably close to a year now with these proposed changes. a couple of things, one, the reason we wanted to bring this to you today is because you are going to see new information in your eir's, related to these topics. and some of the eir's in the next few weeks will have this information. the other thing we wanted to alert you to is the fact that these, taken at face value these current guidelines could have the impact of taking some fairly modest size projects into a category of an eir and we have been working with the district how to best address that issue. that is why we are taking the approach of doing this community

risk reduction plan which can then qualitatively say projects meet within that plan without every project having to do an analysis. it's parallel with the process of changing from an auto trips system to a level of service, instead of looking at each individual project, you look at the whole and then each project can address to a standard in the code. that's what we are trying to do here. as she said, no city in the bay area has done this yet. nobody has done this community risk reduction plan. so we are kind of inventing the wheel here. but we are typing to move ahead with that. we don't think it's beneficial to have in fill projects, for all of our plans, and bump those into an eir. so that's what we are trying to address over the next few months and hopefully get that plan in place in the meantime.

commissio ner antonini? commissioner antonini: thank you. i add couple of questions for jessica. thank you. very good report. i guess the first question is, it is a bay area, you know eqa guidelines, and one would assume this is being done for the entire bay area. if we take an in fill project and we move it to a distant area, we are not only creating the greenhouse gas emissions that the project itself will have just because the residents are there, cooking, hair spray, who knows, all the types of things that people will do to add to that, but will also add to that the commute, assuming that a high percentage of these people in the in fill project work in san francisco or close to san francisco.

i assume this is being evaluated as part of the entire study. >> well, it is correct in that we have commented to the air district on that exact scenario of that being an unintended consequences of their guidelines. the way the methodology is set up right now is currently does not accurately reflect some of the green house gas, or other air quality reductions or benefits of in fill development. as such that's why we are moving forward with the city wide programmatic approaches. so we'll take those kinds of considerations into account. >> yeah, as long as our evaluation is the same as other places. as i mentioned, in addition to the emissions endemic to the project are the emissions of the commute that makes it twice as

bad. obviously doesn't seem like there's much of that. if you look out to dublin, recently, they have filled the entire countryside and hills with houses. so most probably work in dublin. the other thing is you talked about things we can do within san francisco, particularly municipality, and i have seen a much higher number of buses that are electrified prior to the time when many more were diesel and i think the technology is coming on board for electric buses that could be charge had and then go independent of the electricification. that might be something we could look into, because the diesel buses we have are a huge source of pollution, i would think and that's just one thing that comes to mind. i guess the third question is when we look at these community

health risk factors, that being people who look closer to heavily traveled areas, particularly automotive, i assume we are factoring into it their habits, heredity and all these other things, in other words the deleterious health results to some degree may be closed by the close proximity to automotive traffic. i think it's very important to figure out, or is it something where a lot of people with higher risks and badder habits are living there because maybe it's the lowest income area, they couldn't afford to live elsewhere. maybe not. hard to say. but i think that's really important to factor in those things so we can evaluate the risk accurately as to how big a factor it is, in one's health. it would be great if we could put like they did in boston,

although it costs billions of dollars, it took a lot to put a lot of the traffic underground and then you can build above it because there's no pollution any more, because it's limited to the tunnel. commissio ner moore? commissioner moore: i am glad we are moving ahead with the standards. the question for me is the one that most eir's lack funds by two to four years in addition to that, we have a large number of projects which have gotten extensions that were approved two to four years ago, and the eir's have accordingly aged. i am using that word intentionally. how are we prorating those eir's, and their calculated emission standards, updating them to new ones, and prorating that as we look forward? otherwise we have a cumulative impact of all things which

aren't built, while we are really trying to clamp down on current projects. can anybody explain how you are working that out? >> what you are seeing in some of the eir's that you have already reviewed and in one case certified, is we are presenting information both ways, according to the old calculation methods, and the new standards and new calculation methods. i don't think the issue is so much there's projects that are not being counted twice, or distorted. the air district standards are established according to their database of what is already out there, entitled, as well as their projections, from the state's, you know, what they use department finance, and a projection of what growth in the area will be.

so when they are establishing what is the threshold for greenhouse gases, it's based on what is already entitled, already built as well as a projection of what will come. so i think the issue of when a particular eir comes before you is accounted for either way. i think the real issue is how do you apply the standards, and when do you apply the standards. we are basically providing to you and the public the results in each instance, strictly speaking, projects that have been in the pipeline. in relationship to using the old standards, but we are giving the information in a few cases like candlestick where there is the prospect of further appeals and litigation, the findings were actually adopted based on the new standards. but legally speaking, they weren't obligated to do it that way, because the guidance is

reflective of how could you do your analysis, when you are 3/4 of the way through the process and a the rules changed. there's been a lot of scrambling with these projects to update the analysis to reflect that exposure, if you will. commissioner moore: that includes forward-looking considerations for health code 48, because you mentioned that would only be implemented 2011. >> health codes 38, that's two years ago. >> i misunderstood. >> on the health risks, we have over 30 pages of comments on the air district as we were formulating this, plus imnumbable hours trying to have a dialogue with them. and when we were first looking at the toxic air contaminants, we thought because the references were all over the place to article 38, and in terms of mobil sources, i think we are the aspect that we really

came to understand was more difficult to deal with was the overlay of your mobil sources, which article 38 does a more than adequate job of addressing, with the stationary sources. and stationary sources aren't just, you know, refineries. they can be everything from a traditional industrial use to a dry-cleaning plant, to a backup diesel generator. some of the database problems we are seeing as the air district tries to start develop a data base that we can actually use is generated by diesel backup generators, which large buildings have, commercial and residential, and most of which are not used at the level they are authorized to use, as backup

generators, and at long as the power doesn't go down, they aren't used. so emissions are shown at the level that freeze are authorized to be used and that's clearly an overstatement of what's going on. that's part of the problem. picture what are these effects, and that's why the health department feels they have a better handle starting from the work they've done in these affected communities, and do some local city wide modeling that accurately captures what are the sources, what are the effects, and maybe most importantly, how do you develop a plan that has built into it, means to deal with the genuine impacts. and not just now, but it's about protecting people's health as a bottom line. i think that's maybe the most fundamental concern we have had is this is descriptive of

analysis and not descriptive in terms of solutions, and i think we are moving in that direction. commissioner moore: thank you very much. great explanation. we could speak longer, but thanks for going into detail. vice president olague: eventualy i think i do want a little more detail. i didn't hear a lot, actually, today, but it was kind of a nice overview. but i am really curious about the specific criteria as it relates to a specific type of project. i am looking for a bit more detail than what i am seeing in front of me today. i would like to see that map of the area, subject to health code arm 38, i know -- maybe put it in my packet next week -- i guess we are not here next week. in two weeks. and you mentioned a draft of something that was sent. can we see a copy of that draft? that would be great. i would like to see a copy of

that draft. and has the department of public health, have they weighed in on this? i am curious to see if they have any -- >> jessica range, planning staff, we worked closely with the public health department when we were formulating a lot of our comments to the air district and we continued to meet with them and our meetings are almost every two weeks or so, so we do have an ongoing dialogue with them. >> great. because i know a few years ago we had the community health impact assessment. and i forget the name of that area of the health department. reggie, and other folks -- ok, that's good to know. thank you for your report, it was well done and thank you for all your work on this, but i will be asking you probably more about this, so thank you a lot.

commissioner moore? commissioner moore: if you could copy the other commissioners as well, i would appreciate it, thank you. clerk: that was an informational item, no action is necessary, moving to item 10, case 2006.0848e, for 23-35 doe lores are street, public hearing on the environmental impact report. written comments will be accepted at the planning department office until the close of dison september 7, 2010. >> commissioners i wanted to introduce you to her. she has not been before the commission, chelsea ford ham has been with the department for 20 years and is one of those staff you don't often see in the background doing this work. prior to joining the department she worked in oakland and humboldt and arcadia. she has a bachelor of science in

ecollie and evolutionary biology from u.c. santa cruz. vice president olague: welcome. thank you. >> though you can't believe anything from someone who comes from a slug. >> good afternoon vice president and members of the commission. i am chelsea fordham from the major environmental analysis inspection of the planning department. this is to receive comments for case 2006.0848e, 25-34 dolores street, residential project, including demolition of two contiguous, one-story garage, a new construction of a four story, 62,030 square foot, 47-unit residential build, they were built on the side through 1917 and 198 and are historic

resources. this hearing is not to consider approval or disapproval. that will follow the final eir. comments should be directed to the adequacy and accuracy of the information contained in the eir. speak slowly and clearly so the court reporter can produce an adequate transcript and identify themselves to be support copies of the comments when completed. staff is not here to answer comments. comments will be transcribed and commented on. we will respond to all verbal and other comments received. after hearing comments from the general public we will take comments on the draft eir from the planning commission. public comment period began july 14th and extends until

september 7th 2010. historic preservation held a hearing august 18, 2010. this concludes the presentation on the matter, and unless the commissioners have questions, i respectfully suggest the public hearing be open. vice president olague: thank you, we may have questions for you after the public comment. we have four speaker cards. steward mcfall, jay tobin, toby levy, and bill lightener. >> my name is steward mcfall i reside at 55 delores street, unit number 1. the building that's directly adjacent to the property in question.