Napa County officials say they will not meet a Sept. 15 target date to release an environmental review of the mixed-use development proposed at Napa Pipe.

A draft of the extensive study is now expected by the middle of October, Napa County Planning Director Hillary Gitelman said.

“It’s taking longer than I thought to get it all pulled together,” she said. “The final inch always takes longer than you thought.”

The change in schedule pushes the release of the final environmental review off to early 2010 and the county’s vote on the project to the middle of next year, she said.

Consultants, under the direction of county staff, have been hard at work on the environmental impact review — or EIR — since January, exhaustively studying potential impacts of the 2,580-home development proposed at the south county Napa Pipe site.

Gitelman said the EIR will identify ways to reduce environmental impacts and will study a handful of alternatives to the current proposal.

“We are studying a wide range of alternatives in order to give the public and decision-makers some real comparisons (and) choices,” she said.

Alternatives include a “no project” option that assumes the site remains zoned for industrial use and a series of less dense alternatives with the same mix of land uses as the proposed project.

“It’s a large project and a complex EIR,” Gitelman said. “We wanted to give the public and decision-makers all the information they need to make an informed decision about the proposal.”

Among the topics most likely to get people talking, Gitelman said, are traffic, groundwater, public services, flooding and hazardous materials.

“I think everybody’s going to be looking at all of it,” said Ginny Simms, a longstanding member of the local group Get a Grip on Growth. “I’ll be looking. We’ll all be looking.”

Napa Pipe developer Keith Rogal said the “exceptional degree of participation and scrutiny” will ensure that “no important question or possibility is overlooked.”

“When we started this effort a few years ago, we wanted a project that was informed by the needs of the community and addressed all reasonable questions concerns and suggestions,” Rogal said. “That’s why we’ve had hundreds of community meetings and made real changes to our plans based on the feedback from everyday Napans. And that’s why we have been fully supportive of an exceptionally comprehensive EIR and environmental review process.”

The report is being paid for by the developers and has cost about $1 million, Rogal said.

After the draft report comes out in October, the public will have 60 days to comment, according to Gitelman. County officials are considering a public meeting at the beginning of the process to explain how best to provide input.

The county must then address each of the comments in its final EIR, which Gitelman said should be out “early in the new year.”

Napa Pipe then heads to the Napa County Planning Commission and ultimately the Napa County Board of Supervisors for a vote in 2010.