The meeting may not have resulted in any definitive action from the seven-member City Council, but for the crowd of opponents of the proposed development in Northeast Tacoma (and a stone's throw away from the Federal Way line), the venting session must have felt cathartic.

The group of more than 100 concerned citizens of the area, including many from Federal Way's Stonebrook neighborhood, used the public forum at the November 6 City Council meeting to voice their concerns about the impending issues of burgeoning traffic, over-crowded schools and a lamentable loss of green space.

Last year, owners of the nearby Northshore public golf course in Northeast Tacoma announced their intent to sell their property. Soundbulit homes, a Puyallup-based company, plans to build more than 800 residences (372 single family detached homes and 492 townhomes) on the site.

The meeting drew a large audience, in part, because of the information presented by Assistant City Manager Cary Roe, who briefed the City Council on the status of the development and the current state of the City of Tacoma's pending Environmental Impact Study.

Roe also provided the council and the audience with the city's assessment of the predicted traffic impact through Federal Way.

The figures Roe presented did not seem to surprise many in the audience, who, along with supporters of the group and website saveNEtacoma.org, have predicted the bogdowns that would likely occur near the development's two main outlets, Northshore Parkway and 33rd Street Northeast.

Roe told the council that the Northshore developers contacted the City of Federal Way in 2006 to discuss the traffic impact the new homes will have on Federal Way's roads.

"We have received a fair number of emails from people in the Stonebrook area," Roe said, "It's not hard to see by looking at the map what their concern is."

Roe added that the 52 percent of the trips generated in and out of the proposed development would come through Federal Way.

The Assistant City Manager also said that the majority of these trips, estimated to max out at 523 additional trips during weekday p.m. peak hours, would utilize the 340th/348th/SW Campus Drive thoroughfare.

Additionally, 3.5 percent of commuters would use 320th Street, while 5.9 percent would use 356th.

Aside from the impact on roads and traffic, Roe told the council and the audience that his team would like to study the potential development's impact on storm water drainage and open space and recreation.

Roe said the city is currently conducting a wetlands assessment and an open space and recreation level of service study.

The former intends to determine the impact on the Joe's Creek watershed and the amount of displaced rainwater currently soaked up by the golf course, while the latter study determines the impact of more than 1,000 additional users will have on the city's limited parks and recreation facilities.

"We have not concluded these documents at this point," Roe said.

Roe suggested that mitigation efforts, like those use to curb cut-across traffic accessing the new Christian Faith Center, would likely curtail much of the congrestion generated by these new developments.

The measurement of environmental impact, however seemed to attract most of the fire from the audience and even members of the coucil.

From this week until the end of November, Roe said, the City of Tacoma will finalize its Environmental Impact Study for the development and report back with its findings.

Opponents of the development pointed to what they viewed as an obvious flaw in Tacoma's EIS, namely that some of its assessment data used information about the land around Northeast Tacoma from 1981.

"A 1981 EIS is highly irrelevant," said Eric Elgar, a resident of NE Tacoma. "This area was populated with mostly deer and forests...It (predates) the Growth Management Act."

Elgar, and many others who took the podium during public comment, said that Federal Way needs to request its own environmental impact study.

"It's appropriate for Federal Way to be asking for this," he said.

Councilmember Jim Ferrell also pressed Roe about the validity of the 1981 data used in Tacoma's EIS.

"Don't you think that a 30-year-old EIS is patently absurd?" Ferrell asked.

Roe responded that the study did not rely on the three-decades-old data alone.

"It's highly supplemented by new data for drainage and traffic," Roe said.

Roe also suggested that the City Council seek legal advice if they decide to request their own EIS from the developer.

But for now, Mayor Michael Park and the City Council will wait for the results of Tacoma's EIS before deciding their next move.

"On a personal level," Park said, "it's very difficult to imagine all of that green space turned into so many homes."