San Jose-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility Eagle Permit NEPA Documents

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received an application from the City of San José in November 2020 requesting eagle take coverage under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.  The application requested incidental disturbance take of eagles for the San José Headworks Improvements and New Headworks Project at the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility in San José, California. The Project includes improvements to existing facilities and construction of new headworks facilities occurring over 28 months, from approximately June 2020 through September 2022. In May 2021, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a two-year short-term incidental eagle take permit for the disturbance and loss of breeding productivity of one golden eagle pair during the 2021 and 2022 eagle breeding seasons due to project construction activities.

We prepared an Environmental Assessment (EA), pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act, to assess impacts of the proposed action of issuance of the requested eagle take permit to the applicant, as well as alternatives to the proposed action. The proposed action of issuing a permit required implementation of measures to avoid and minimize adverse effects to eagles to the maximum extent practicable and compensatory mitigation to fully offset eagle take. Details of the minimizations measures and compensatory mitigation can be found in the EA document. The analysis detailed in the EA resulted in selection of the proposed action and a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI). The FONSI and final EA documents are provided here.