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For neighbors and community members

The community view. Same scoreboard your council reads.

Public dashboards, project forums, sentiment monitoring, Community Impact Briefs, alert subscriptions, council-meeting question downloads, and post-approval commitment tracking. Designed so a neighbor can walk into the public hearing with the same data the developer filed and the council read.

Read the community brief

Community Portal

A community-facing portal for every project near you

When a project is in active permitting, LSARS publishes a public portal for it. The portal shows the same emissions, water, and energy numbers the council reads. No login. No paywall. The page is built from the live permit data, so it stays current as the application progresses.

What this means for you

  • See the disclosed emissions, water draw, and electricity load for the project
  • Read the analysis in plain language, with the methodology cited
  • Find the project even if your council has not held the public hearing yet

Impact Brief

A clearer public story for complex projects

The Community Impact Brief gives residents and community organizations a plain-language summary of what is known, what is missing, and what is being tracked. It highlights jobs, workforce programs, health and safety context, water and power questions, noise concerns, community commitments, and the public conversation around the project.

What this means for you

  • Understand benefits, risks, and open questions before the meeting
  • See when a topic is not included in the current scope or awaiting inputs
  • Use the brief as a gateway into deeper health, environmental, trust, and public discussion views

Permit Snapshot

A snapshot of what the project is asking permission to build

Each project page has an Environmental tab that shows what the applicant is asking permission to build, what pollutant categories are under the air permit, who the lead environmental agency is, and how many days the public-review window has been open. The page is built from the live permit record, so it stays current as the application progresses.

What this means for you

  • Facility type, project start date, and lead environmental agency at a glance
  • Pollutant categories under the air permit, in plain language
  • Public-review window status, so you know when comments are still being accepted

Project Forum

Project forums and community Q&A

A moderated forum dedicated to a single project. Neighbors post questions; the platform routes them to the right party (the applicant, the agency, or the council office). Questions and answers are public. Threads are searchable. The same Q&A appears on the council briefing so officials can see what neighbors are asking before the public hearing.

What this means for you

  • Post a question and get a routed answer, not a general inbox reply
  • Read what your neighbors have already asked
  • Subscribe to a project so you get notified on new answers

Sentiment

Sentiment monitoring across public sources

LSARS aggregates public sentiment from forums, news coverage, and social platforms about a specific project. The view is designed to surface the questions communities are actually asking, so organizers can see whether their concerns are being heard, and council offices can see what is rising before the public hearing.

What this means for you

  • See which concerns are coming up most often in your community
  • Track sentiment shifts as new project information is filed
  • Use the trend data to focus your testimony at the public hearing

Council Questions

Council-meeting question downloads

A printable, focused list of questions to bring to the public hearing. Specific questions about cumulative emissions, water sourcing, school proximity, noise propagation, traffic, and post-approval benefit tracking. The list arrives in your inbox, ready to print, and you can hand a copy to your council member during public comment.

What this means for you

  • Bring a printable question list to the public hearing
  • Three follow-up tips on how to make the questions stick
  • Designed to shift the conversation to conditions and accountability
See the full question list

Alerts

Alert subscriptions for new filings, hearings, and exceedances

Subscribe to a project and get notified when something material happens. New permit filings, scheduled public hearings, monitoring exceedances, post-approval commitment milestones. Email and in-product alerts. No spam, no developer brochures.

What this means for you

  • Get notified before the public hearing, not after the vote
  • See monitoring exceedances when they happen, not at the next annual report
  • Pick the alert frequency that fits your schedule

Commitment Tracker

Post-approval commitment tracking

Promises about jobs, infrastructure, road improvements, green space, and water sourcing rarely get tracked publicly after approval. LSARS tracks committed benefits against actual delivery on the project portal, with sourced citations to the original commitment documents and the council resolution that adopted them.

What this means for you

  • See what was promised at the entitlement, on a public timeline
  • Compare the promise against the latest reported delivery
  • Each entry links back to the source document so you can verify

Directory

A searchable directory of every publicly-published project

A public index across every jurisdiction on LSARS, with no login or paywall. Search by city, county, project name, or applicant. Filter by facility type. Each card opens the same project landing page the council reads, with the Impact Brief, Health, Environmental, Trust, and Sources tabs.

What this means for you

  • Search across every jurisdiction on LSARS, not one county at a time
  • Filter by data center, warehouse, manufacturing, and solar projects
  • Direct link from a card to the full public landing page in two taps

Sources

Every number cited, every source named

Each public project landing page includes a Sources tab that names the methodology behind the health-risk numbers, the demographic context, and the community discussion. EPA AirToxScreen and California OEHHA cancer potency factors for health risk. CDC Social Vulnerability Index for demographics. The public forum archive for community discussion. No black box.

What this means for you

  • Health-risk methodology: EPA AirToxScreen plus California OEHHA cancer potency factors
  • Demographics: CDC Social Vulnerability Index and Census ACS 5-year estimates
  • Community discussion: linked back to the public forum archive

Health Context

Baseline health context for residents near the project

The Health tab on each project page sets the health-and-safety context for the geography around the project: modeled population, baseline cancer-risk rate per million, the community vulnerability ranking from the CDC Social Vulnerability Index, and the top pollutants driving the baseline risk. The numbers are computed from EPA AirToxScreen and U.S. Census ACS data — public sources, with the methodology cited on the Sources tab.

What this means for you

  • Baseline cancer-risk rate per million for the modeled population
  • Top pollutants driving baseline risk for the geography
  • Community vulnerability ranking from the CDC Social Vulnerability Index
Why trust this view

The same numbers go to the developer, the council, and your community.

The applicant pays for the analysis. The methods are published by the EPA and the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. No party can quietly alter the numbers. You read what the council reads, on the same day.

See the other views.

The community dashboard is one of three coordinated views. The same data drives all three.

Officials

What the council briefing looks like

The regulator-grade briefing pack for council members and planning staff.

View features

Developers

What the applicant workspace looks like

The full LSARS toolset for developers, applicants, and environmental consultants.

View features
Read the community brief: questions, FAQs, what to ask the council

Get the printable council-meeting question list.

We will send you the focused question list and let you know when there is a public dashboard for a project near you.