Planning commission certifies EIR, recommends Humboldt Regional Climate Action Plan; adopts CEQA GHG thresholds at 75% of initial calculations

The Humboldt County Planning Commission voted to certify a programmatic environmental impact report and to recommend that the Board of Supervisors adopt the Humboldt Regional Climate Action Plan (RCAP) under Alternative 2 (a sustainable communities approach). The commission also adopted CEQA greenhouse‑gas (GHG) significance thresholds at 75% of the initial calculated values and forwarded the combined package to the Board of Supervisors.

Planning staff presented the RCAP, the recommended CEQA GHG thresholds guidance and the programmatic EIR prepared for both documents. "We are focused around increasing renewable energy, building electrification and decarbonization, reducing vehicle miles traveled and increasing zero‑emission vehicles, organic waste diversion, and carbon sequestration," planner Megan Acevedo said during the presentation. The EIR was prepared as a programmatic analysis; staff summarized potential significant and unavoidable impacts in several resource areas while also listing mitigation measures to reduce some effects to less‑than‑significant levels.

What the commission adopted: staff recommended — and the commission approved — a package that (a) certifies the RCAP EIR, (b) adopts RCAP Alternative 2 (the sustainable communities alternative), and (c) adopts countywide CEQA GHG thresholds set at 75% of the initial calculations presented in the guidance report.…