search

RadicalResearchLLC / CEQA_tracker

0 stars 0 forks source link

CEQA project geometries #1

Open max-mapper opened 3 days ago

max-mapper commented 3 days ago

Hi, I am looking into a volunteer project for the California Native Plant Society (my local chapter is in Pasadena) to scrape ceqanet and notify local CNPS chapters to alert them of potential projects. Showing projects on a map wasn't something I had considered, but I just found this repo on a github search and the warehouse shiny app is pretty awesome. I had a couple questions if you have time.

  1. How did you query only warehouse projects from ceqanet?
  2. How did you extract parcel numbers and then get project boundaries from ceqanet?

Thank you!

RadicalResearchLLC commented 3 days ago

Hi Max-mapper,

  1. It was manually checking each project, nothing automated. If naming was consistent enough in project descriptions, the CEQANET data could be keyword searched for a couple dozen terms, but it would still need manual QA/QC.
  2. There's a hodgepodge of stuff, but I've manually entered hundreds of lat-longs, and recently developed a dashboard to help draw the polygons and export them by project number. I can share the code on github in a separate repository if you are interested.

I've worked recently with the IE chapter of the CNPS and Aaron Echols and I'd be happy to collaborate or share what I've done and see what kind of auto-notification stuff is possible.

max-mapper commented 3 days ago

Cool! Thanks for the reply. I was impressed you had the Irwindale Brew Yard project on the map... we are trying to protect the habitat adjacent to that proposed project (there are rare Horkelia growing there among other things). Looking at your map, it looks like one of the (if not the) largest proposed warehouse projects in LA County! I did not know that.

CNPS has this new project to try and help members understand CEQA https://ct.cnps.org/. I'm new to CEQA as well and trying to understand which document types and queries from ceqanet matter for early detection of potentially damaging project proposals. If you have any thoughts on that I'd appreciate it, I only just started digging around today. The initial idea was to download all the NOP (Notice Of Preparation) projects, maybe filter them by project size if that is machine readable, and then have monthly emails to chapters in each county.

RadicalResearchLLC commented 2 days ago

That's a cool website. I like the filters for the different phases of the project.

I'd note that NOP is first stage only for projects the lead agency has deemed controversial. Oftentimes a lead agency will consider a project as an MND with no NOP stage. It is important for folks to get eyes on those projects that might be misclassified to force them to do a proper EIR when they omit or misrepresent the situation on the ground.

max-mapper commented 2 days ago

Ahh makes sense, thank you.

On Fri, Jun 28, 2024, 8:16 AM Mike McCarthy @.***> wrote:

That's a cool website. I like the filters for the different phases of the project.

I'd note that NOP is first stage only for projects the lead agency has deemed controversial. Oftentimes a lead agency will consider a project as an MND with no NOP stage. It is important for folks to get eyes on those projects that might be misclassified to force them to do a proper EIR when they omit or misrepresent the situation on the ground.

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/RadicalResearchLLC/CEQA_tracker/issues/1#issuecomment-2197158269, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAAJWT3D4IIG4GUDMMG5MRLZJV43VAVCNFSM6AAAAABKBGK6TOVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDCOJXGE2TQMRWHE . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

max-mapper commented 1 day ago

I ended up using pdftotext and setting up a google cloud run pipeline that checks all uploaded PDFs every night and scans for mentions of rare native plant species on MND or NOP documents https://github.com/max-mapper/ceqa-plants/

RadicalResearchLLC commented 1 day ago

Interesting - but it assumes that the consultants for the project will do their job.

I just dealt with a project where they missed multiple rare species, and I imagine most won't mention rare species in the NOP/MND summary text.

max-mapper commented 1 day ago

Yes I'll probably expand the word list... this is just a prototype. I have a list of all 6000+ native plants, or I could just search for all of the genera to broaden it to any report that mentions any plant by scientific name. And probably a manual word list with other high value keyword like "survey period" or "endemic" etc. If you want to run it to scan PDFs for a custom keyword list it deploys pretty easily to google cloud run.