Whatever the merits of the proposal to build a casino/hotel complex on land the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians owns next to the reservation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs environmental impact statement meant to evaluate the effects of the move failed to answer many of the most fundamental questions, said members of the Hemet City Council on Tuesday.

After hearing a presentation from planner Richard Masyczek, the council instructed City Manager Brian Nakamura — who attended a council meeting for the first time this week — to prepare a letter in response to the study laying out its shortcomings and opposing the transfer of land now outside the reservation onto the reservation until the questions are answered.

“I believe we agree the environmental impact statement is wholly inadequate,” Mayor Eric McBride said at the conclusion of about an hour of review by Masyczek.

Chief among the concerns expressed by Masyczek and council members is the impact on Hemet street and roads, which would get no help from the tribe under the existing plan.

Masyczek said only one of the 11 intersections included in the study is in Hemet, Florida and San Jacinto avenues, and that intersection is already congested.

The casino/hotel complex would sit on about 50 of the 535 acres the tribe owns at the north edge of San Jacinto at Soboba Road and Spring Lake Drive. The implication that it would have no impact on other city routes is unlikely, Masyczek said.

“We’ve had smaller projects that had far broader impacts,” he said.

“This would be an 87 percent increase in traffic, and I can’t believe a couple of traffic signals will solve the problem,” Councilman Robert Youssef said.

Without addressing the circulation issues early, Hemet could be left with clogged streets and gridlocked intersections, he said.

“We’ve seen what happened in Temecula. They put these things in place without the infrastructure to support it and they’re still paying for it,” he said.

Councilman Jim Foreman agreed. “Every intersection will be affected, and we’re already packed,” he said.

Foreman also expressed doubt about an assertion in the environmental impact statement that the additional activity — as many as 11,000 more cars coming into the San Jacinto Valley each day — would have no impact on public safety.

“There will be more accidents, and that will involve the Fire Department,” he said. “With that many more people, there is going to be more crime,” adding: “This is really good for Soboba, but it doesn’t look good for Hemet.

The only mitigation suggested for the intersection is widening, apparently not by the tribe, but by the city, which Masyczek indicated is not acceptable.

Besides, he said, widening the intersection would require closing some businesses to make way for the wider street.

Masyczek, the city’s retired planning director who works part time as needed, said other mitigation measures included in the report indicate the tribe plans to use commercial and school parking lots to handle the overflow from special events.

If so, said Masyczek, it comes as a surprise to school officials.

“I talked with the school district and they were unaware they were providing parking for special events,” he said.

In addition to the additional traffic generated by the casino, hotel, golf course, and retail shops envisioned for the project, “the events area is projected to generate a total of approximately 6,848 vehicle trips,” said Masyczek’s PowerPoint presentation. “During special events, the high volume of vehicles traveling to and from the events arena has the potential to create bumper-to-bumper traffic conditions that could affect nearby residential communities.”

Several critics of the reservation annexation proposal have said those conditions exist already whenever a major program is scheduled at the open-air arena adjacent to the existing casino on Soboba Road southeast of the site of the proposed new casino.

Masyczek said businesses in the city could lose customers to the complex, particularly the hotels along Florida Avenue.

Besides that, the study’s estimates of economic activity include only revenue the casino and associated facilities would generate and include no estimate of the cost to existing businesses or the cost of mitigating the other effects that would inevitably follow the annexation.

The annexation was proposed by the Sobobas under a process called fee-to-trust, in which the land is taken off the tax rolls and essentially out of the United States.

It would be turned over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which would hold it in trust for the tribe.

It would become part of the reservation.

As part of the reservation, it would no longer be subject to most laws. Under a court decision of several years back, reservations are considered sovereign nations on which residents make the laws.

Concern about the implications of that have been expressed by several residents of neighborhoods adjacent to the fee-to-trust acreage.

Tish Arciniega, a resident of a neighborhood just northwest of the site, repeated that concern at this week’s council meeting, saying the roads that provide access to the three neighborhoods surrounding the site would be on reservation land and there would be no legal way the residents could keep the routes open if the tribe chose to interfere with their use.

The public comment period on the environmental impact statement closes in mid-September.

A decision will come after months, if no more, examination of the comments and other considerations, according to the BIA.