California: Redding City Council to submit comments on Redding Rancheria casino project

The Redding City Council voted 3 to 2 to submit comments on the Redding Rancheria casino project's Final Environmental Impact Statement during its meeting on Tuesday night, sending them to the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs for review.

A Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the project was prepared and issued in 2019, according to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to assess the environmental impacts of the Redding Rancheria’s proposed relocation of Win-River Casino.

City Manager Barry Tippin outlined issues they had with the E.I.S. "There are a few areas that we have concerns on that I'll touch on," he said Tuesday, as reported by KRCR. "One is economic impact, next is the traffic and the transportation and circulation of traffic that's the most significant impact that we've identified."

The council felt the traffic analysis in the statement was lacking, said Tippin. "Our consultant believes that the peak hour of traffic that they should've studied would be midday on Saturday. Instead, they looked at peak hour being midweek at 5 o'clock or Saturday at 5 o'clock," he pointed out.

Officials think that the analysis underestimates the amount of traffic impact on city streets and that it therefore has not identified appropriate mitigations, Tippin said. 

“In the grand scheme of things we simply don’t believe they used standards of care and professionalism in developing that traffic impact analysis and that they should actually be asked to redo that document and redo the traffic section and provide proper mitigations," the City Manager added.

Members of the public also shared concerns. "The Final EIS is based on a draft EIS that is over five years old and I would say that it's stale information," said Steve Williams with Shasta County Citizens of Responsible Community Development, as reported by KRCR.

Vice Mayor Julie Winter also shared her thoughts. "I'm also concerned about the assumptions that the City of Redding will provide utilities outside the city limits, we do have a policy not to extend services outside the city limits," Winter explained.