Agenda - Environmental Policy Board - 11/19/2018

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5. POLICY BOARD BUSINESS 5.01: Review Updated Alternative Urbanwide Area Review (AUAR) for The COR (Project No. 18-112) City Planner Anderson presented the staff report. He stated that in 2003, the City Council adopted Resolution #03-01-012 ordering an Alternative Urbanwide Area Review (AUAR) for The COR (formerly known as Ramsey Town Center). An AUAR is an environmental review process that can be used in lieu of more traditional environmental reviews such as Environmental Assessment Worksheets (EAW) and Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), as long as the geographic area is covered by an acceptable Comprehensive Plan. When considering The COR as a whole, it is likely that a series of individual projects in short sequence could trigger the need for an EAW. For example, the recent project known as Affinity at Ramsey likely would have triggered the need for an EAW based on the number of projects approved in the past number of years. City Planner Anderson reported that WSB has completed a draft update of The COR AUAR. There have been no new findings of threatened or endangered species (based on the Natural Heritage Information System). There have been no significant deviations or changes to the overall vision or development plan for The COR since the last update. The document has been updated with all development within The COR since the last update and the Mitigation Plan has also been updated as well. City Planner Anderson stated that ultimately, Staff will be bringing forward this planning document for City Council authorization to distribute the updated AUAR to the requisite agencies. The updated AUAR also needs to be submitted to the Environmental Quality Board (state agency) for a ten (10) day comment period. Upon completion of the comment period, the City will need to develop responses to any comments received and add them as an appendix to the document. It then must go back to City Council for final adoption. Chairperson Valentine expressed appreciation to staff for the thorough description, as this is a complicated process. Acting Mayor LeTourneau agreed that this is a complicated process. He asked if there was any discussion to expand the boundary of the AUAR to include the Bunker Lake industrial park. City Planner Anderson explained that could be considered but noted that if the boundaries are changed, that may trigger the need to start a new AUAR rather than simply completing an update. He noted that the Bunker Lake industrial park did not trigger the need for an AUAR and therefore it was not contemplated to expand the boundaries. and asked what the City would do to help the company implement the sensors mentioned. City Planner Anderson replied that would be a discussion. He stated that may have already occurred and simply was not recorded in the inspection process. He noted that the tank storage is double walled and explained that the sensor would simply be another element of safety that could alert to a leak. He stated that staff is looking through documentation to determine if the Environmental Policy Board / October 15, 2018 Page 2 of 5