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State Clearinghouse <br />March 16, 2009 <br />Page 6 <br />environmental document, presumably with more complete and accurate <br />information, should be put back through the comment process. <br />SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT <br />.This project does not satisfy a FONSI-finding of no significant impact. To <br />the contrary, this EA considered along with these comments evidence a project <br />that will have profound environmental impacts. This project will bring masses of <br />human garbage to a location that has not previously experienced it. This project <br />will bring clearing, logging, grading, trucks, and construction to a site that has <br />not experienced it before and to a community that has never experienced it on <br />this scale. Most importantly, this project will transform that rural, beautiful <br />community into an industrial and commercial area-transforming an area known <br />for wildlife, bicycling, historic farms, dark night skies, and peace into just another <br />noisy, dirty, smelly commercial and industrial area. This is environmental impact <br />of the most significant and important kind. <br />For these reasons, a full Environmental Impact Analysis should be <br />required for this project. Clearly, the planners of this project have a poor <br />understanding both of the property and:cor~munity into which they wish to insert ~, <br />this project and of the potential environmental impacts of the project. The <br />specific purpose of the N.C. Environmental Policy Act is to "ensure that <br />government agencies seriously consider the environmental effects of each of the <br />reasonable and realistic alternatives available to them:' N.C. Gen. Stat. §113A-1; <br />Department of Transportation u. B/ue, 556 S.E.2d 609 (N.C. Ct. App. 2001). The <br />more complete and thorough analysis of an EIS is required to fulfill this mandate. <br />Put another way, a Finding of No Significant Impact is not justified here <br />for two reasons. First, the anticipated impacts of this project are quite <br />significant. Second, the information presented in the EA is far too inadequafie, <br />erroneous, and untrue to form any basis for a finding of no significant impact. <br />Therefore, pursuant to 01 NCAC 25 .0506(c)(2), "[b]ased on the comments <br />submitted, the clearinghouse shall advise the [county] as follows: ....the <br />document does not satisfy a finding of no significant impact and an EIS should <br />be prepared:' <br />