The Sierra Group of the Sierra Club Mother Lode Chapter appreciates the opportunity to comment on the

Sierra Nevada Group (Mother Lode Chapter) P.O. Box 1042 Nevada City, California 95959 January 20, 2009 Tom Last, Planning Director City of Grass Valley 125 East Main Street Grass Valley, CA 95945 toml@cityofgrassvalley.com Dear Planning Commission, The Sierra Nevada Group of the Sierra Club Mother Lode Chapter appreciates the opportunity to comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Idaho-Maryland Mine Project. Our organization has 1,385 members in Western Nevada County, Sierra County and portions of Yuba and Sutter County. There are 148 members living in the City of Grass Valley and another 352 members living within the Planning Area for the City. We learned at a recent meeting with IMMC officials that they will also be submitting public comments on this DEIR. Therefore, we request that the comment period be reopened to allow us to time to take this additional information into account. General Comments In general, the areas considered for analysis appear to be adequate. However, the discussions and conclusions of each of these areas are deficient in the following ways: 1) There is little or no quantification as to what constitutes a significant impact for this project. Certain impacts are considered less than significant, without showing what threshold of significant impact was not reached. In certain cases, there may be significant impacts to a certain class of people (residents in the ...