Environmental Assessment- It is critical you provide written comments to TRPA about what environmental impacts you feel should be analyzed in the Barton Hospital EA.
Written comments must be submitted to BartonProject@trpa.gov no later than noon on February 7, 2025. It is very important you align your comments directly with categories listed below in the Table of Contents for the Barton Hospital EA. Acceptable formats for electronic submissions include email message, plain text (.txt), rich text format (.rtf), Word (.doc or .docx) or portable document file (.pdf).
TRPA, Barton, and Douglas County initially hoped to complete only an Initial Environmental Checklist—see supporting information. Here is an example of a study prepared by Barton and accepted by TRPA, suggesting that vehicle miles traveled would decrease with the new hospital. However, public inquiries prompted TRPA to reevaluate the situation and require an environmental assessment.
To best protect the environment from a project of this magnitude, TRPA should require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). It is up to us to submit comments that help TRPA recognize that an EIS is the only appropriate option for the proposed Barton project.
Use ideas from this link and make your comments specific to the categories in the Table of Contents document for the Barton project (below).
*** see additional PDF documents below to help with your comments***
Email comments to BartonProject@trpa.gov
​​The scoping period for the Environmental Assessment for the potential project has been extended to February 7 to give the public and partner organizations additional time to provide comments on the scope of the environmental analysis.
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A scoping period helps identify specific areas that an environmental analysis should include, such as water quality, transportation, or scenic quality, and helps identify project alternatives that are also studied. TRPA, Douglas County, and Barton Health opened the public scoping period in December 2024. TRPA held a public workshop with Barton and Douglas County representatives on January 16, 2025 to answer questions about the review process and possible amendments to the Douglas County South Shore Area Plan.
What happened at the Scoping Meeting on 1/16/25? Link
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TRPA Code 2.2.1 uses a standardized Initial Environmental Checklist (IEC) to identify potential impacts and determine what level of environmental review is required for project approval (TRPA Rules of Procedure 6.4). If the IEC results in a Finding of No Significant Effect or Mitigated Finding of No Significant Effect, the project may proceed without further documentation (Rules of Procedure 6.6-6.7). If the IEC is unclear or indicates a potentially significant impact, then a more substantive Environmental Assessment (EA) or Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) may be required (Rules of Procedure 6.5).
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