#29 When the Invaders Arrive

Bulldozer hauling away destroyed oaks by HW 101

            Surely it sounds overly dramatic to say, as I did at the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors meeting this morning, that the chain saws cutting down the oak trees and the bulldozers dragging them away feel like an invasion of the Nazi army.             

 

      And yet it’s true.  I’ve often wondered how Jews and their allies felt watching the goose-stepping invaders, knowing that the clop-clop-clop of their boots, along with the ever tightening restrictions of their laws, and the power of their guns and hatred, could only bode horrendous evil.

            So, too, the onslaught of CalTrans, with the power and money that support the bypass, seem to march over the voices of those people with a more reasoned vision for an alternative.

            The Board of Supervisors meeting was called because two of the Board Members, Dan Hamburg and John Pinches, had prepared a letter of support from the Board to CalTrans for the bypass, insisting that the protesters represent a fringe element of the Willits community.

Kim speaking at the Mendocino Board of Supervisors Meeting

            In fact, the Board meeting was packed with community members, 55 of whom spoke in their allotted 3 minute segments to explain why the bypass is a bad idea. ONLY ONE PERSON spoke in favor of the bypass; he was from the Mendocino County Organization of Governments, which had voted to spend $54 million of their money to support the bypass.

            For over three hours, the rest of us who stood up and spoke represented an amazing array of perspectives. We heard about the environmental problems that will result from the construction of the bypass, including the analysis of one author who researches oak trees and reported that over 300 species intersect with oak environments like this one which was being cut down as we spoke.

            We heard about the psychological impacts of this division on the community. Local business people warned of the negative impact on commerce. A 13-year-old girl spoke to the legal violations of a board of supervisors that is not adequately protecting the interests of the people who have elected them.

            Residents of Willits for over two decades revealed the many ways that the community has offered alternatives to the now-initiated bypass, all of which were consistently disregarded in favor of the current plan. They shed light on the history of this conflict, indicating how many of the arguments—even of our supervisor Pinches—can be reduced to a “he said, she said” battle of misrepresentation and lies.

            Many Willits residents complained that the town has been hoodwinked in various ways throughout this process. For example, I learned that the original plan called for a four-lane bypass, allowing for some safety measures should traffic stall along the four-mile viaduct. That plan, however, was deemed to have too much of a negative environmental impact on the wetlands that would be drained to provide its “footprint.” The community thought that theisviaduct plan was dashed. However, a two-lane alternative replaced the four-lane scheme, and because “someone” deemed it was more viable, then the two-lanes were accepted.

Police blocking access to Warbler in her tree

            Notice my use of the passive voice. As I’ve said before, I’m still trying to figure this all out myself. In fact, the gist of my own 3-minute talk was to speak to why so many Willits people are, ONLY NOW, responding in protest to this bypass, for I’ve talked to those both in favor of the bypass and those who have had no opinion who say, “Why are they complaining now? We knew this was going to happen.” But what did we really know? I certainly had no idea.

            To the assembled supervisors and public, I said, “I’ve had property here for 25 years, and over the years, whenever I asked people about what they thought about the bypass, they said, ‘Oh, it’s so controversial, it’ll never happen.’ So people like me remained ignorant and complacent. But when Warbler went up a tree to protest the bypass, she brought attention to the horrors of this plan that we had not known. And we’ve woken up.”

            I believe, however, that the pro-bypass contingent is counting on the rest of us being ignorant. Once those of us start talking to everyone we know about some of the impacts of the bypass, they, too, express surprise. For example, one of the biggest communities within Willits is the Brooktrails neighborhood, which I go through to get to my own little dirt road community at the north end of town. But there will be only two planned off/on ramps for Willits, one at the very south end where Warbler sits in her tree, and another at the complete opposite end of town, far beyond the turn off for Brooktrails. So that means most Brooktrails residents are likely to go all the way through town to get to their turn off, rather than use the bypass anyhow. So what good is the bypass in that situation?

            Similarly, a good 30% of traffic coming into town is heading for Highway 20 to get to the Mendocino coast. They will still come most of the way into town and contribute to the infamous “bottleneck” at the Safeway just before the Highway 20 turn off.

            It’s complicated. And you see, the bypass as instigated does not resolve many of the problems that the Willits community experiences.

            Many speakers at the meeting mentioned the Old Railroad Route, the alternative that would have little impact on the community because it’s already a four-lane “road” for the no-longer used railroad, and it can be used as an alternative route for cars and trucks that do not want to get caught up in Main Street traffic. The estimates for building this route came in at $30 million, compared to the $300 million for the CalTrans route—and realistically speaking, that plan will cost $400 million before the six years of construction are over.

            Why was this community-proposed and supported “railroad route” alternative ignored? I keep asking and find no good responses. I must find out.

            When I left the Board of Supervisors meeting, I came back through the Highway 101 site where Warbler bravely continues to sit in her tree after CalTrans put in a fence and the police started blocking any access to her tree sit. They are waiting for her to get too thirsty and hungry to stay in her tree any longer.

On right, officer leading away arrestee on right

            While I watched, the police arrested four more protestors who got in the way of the chainsaws and bulldozers.

HW 101 south of Willits with police and tree cutting to right

            The website for Save Our Little Lake Valley also has more photos and information:

http://www.savelittlelakevalley.org/

            These are a few photos of the oak grove that will be cut down to pave the bypass.

Oak grove slated for destruction

        

  

 

One person commenting on my blog suggested that we all enjoy the opportunities that modern transportation have provided us by driving on freeways all the time, and so Willits is going to join modern society and enjoy progress with its own bypass. How interesting that San Francisco decided to destroy its 101 bypass, the Embarcadero Freeway, when the city realized that the freeway was destroying its way of life. Surely we pay a price for progress, but this is not the price that so many Willits residents want—and the more they learn, the less they want it, with now 1800 petitions signed to prevent the bypass in a town of 5000.

            Supervisor John Pinches claimed at the meeting that the bypass is now “a done deal.” The protestors continue to believe that Goliath can be stopped, especially as more and more people begin to understand the implications of what the cement viaduct will impose on the valley. Ignorance is no excuse for injustice and stupidity.

 

 

#28 Making Voices Heard

A month and a half after CalTrans decided to start cutting down trees in preparation for construction of the Willits Bypass, several actions have prevented them from going forward. Of course, as I’ve noted in earlier blogs, the initial interference with the CalTrans offensive on Little Lake Valley was the presence of a woman calling herself Warbler living on a platform in a tree at the southern end of the Bypass and her supporters’ continuous presence under the tree and providing Warbler with sustenance.

But protesters also called in the Fish and Game Department to call CalTrans on their lack of adequate provision for the migratory birds now nesting in the area, including inadequate biological surveys for the protection of flora and fauna living in the path of the proposed Bypass.

I’m attaching below a fact sheet  distributed by the community group Save Our Little Lake Valley or SOLLV. They are the main organizers of the protest. As I’ve said before, this struggle over to bypass or not to bypass has gone on for twenty years and involves a court case with at least three litigants, including the Willits Environmental Center and the local Farm Bureau that are protesting the impact of the proposed by pass on the wetlands and farmlands of the valley.

I recognize that I don’t have a similar fact sheet for those in favor of the Bypass, such as the amount of pollution created by the slowly moving cars and trucks that are the source of grief, or the amount of jobs purported to be created by the Bypass that local people want (including one guy who told me so when he stopped by the tree sit site while I was there holding a sign—I thanked him for letting me know).

One inarguable fact is that the bypass will essentially be a “great wall” 200 feet wide and 20 feet high, almost six miles with a mile-­long bridge passing through the middle of 2,000 acres of valley farmland,  with 400 acres taken out of agricultural production. This is the largest wetland fill of any project in northern California in over 50 years.

Just driving through the north end of the valley on Sunday afternoon, I stopped to snap this picture of tule elk lounging exactly where the bypass will come through. Hence, this sign at the side of 101 at the southern entrance to Willits begs drivers to think about tolerating the slower pace of moving through Willits so that we can save such wildlife and farmland.

Those protesting the bypass hoped to put an injunction on construction, but the court denied the injunction. An appeal is meant to be heard in June, but as a CalTrans engineer told us, since the injunction was denied, CalTrans took that as a sign to forge ahead, regardless of whether there will be an ultimate decision against the bypass upon appeal.
The next tactic of the protesters was to prevent damage to the fragile ecosystem of migrating birds where fencing was being installed last week along part of the Bypass route. The fence company was stopped from proceeding by protestors last week, some of whom sat in front of the huge ground moving equipment. Also, SOLLV asked a Fish and Game department agent to come insure that CalTrans was obeying the law with regards to inspecting for bird and frogs eggs where the excavators were digging in. Apparently, CalTrans was out of compliance, and so work was stopped on that account as well.
I was present last Wednesday at yet another show down with the police. Officer Epperson provided a positive example of an officer of the law trying to work with the protesters. He said that his job entailed defending the law, and that included defending the laws that we as protestors were defending. He indicated that we were all trespassing on state property, so he could arrest us right then and there, but he wanted to hear us out and prevent a lot of misery for everyone. What were we willing to accept? A dedicated protest site, with a porta-potty provided, where we could continue to voice our dissent while watching the construction go up before us?

That offer was, naturally, not accepted—it was actually received with laughter. One of the most vocal and omnipresent leaders of SOLLV, Sara Grusky, whipped out her analysis of how CalTrans is currently violating the law by not following the regulations of the environmental policies set by the state, and suggested that they be arrested for trespassing with their heavy equipment.

Another negotiating chip in favor of the protestors was that our state representative, Noreen Evans, had written a letter of protest on behalf of the many Willits and other constituents who had signed petitions and called her with concerns about the negative impacts of the proposed Bypass. The SOLLV protestors at the fence site said that it would be valuable to hear what our state representative suggests for resolving the impasse.

After two hours of negotiations, the officers convinced the fence company to pack up, and the protestors had a moment of cheer for our efforts. However, we were also sobered by knowing that the fence company is a local organization that has a huge contract with CalTrans, so by preventing them from working, we were costing them their livelihood. These ethical questions are deeply implicated in every aspect of this protest in ways too numerous to describe in this post alone.

In fact, such decisions are always difficult when trying to balance our daily lives against the demands of any protest against a behemoth, as anyone knows who has committed to such an action—whether walking miles to work for over a year to protest a society bent on making you a second-class citizen at the back of the bus; or going to jail in opposition to a war started on implausible criteria; or railing against a corporation whose production creates environmental hazards to which the rest of society is blind—even at the cost of alienating valued neighbors and friends; or living in a tree for weeks, if not months on end, when the wind and rain blows, and hot meals and close contact with loved ones are rare.

 

So when does one decide to throw off job and social connections in favor of a battle in which the few are confronting the mighty? How do we know if we did enough? And how do we know absolutely what is the right thing to do?

 

As I struggle with these questions, I am happy to receive your own comments on dealing with this particular battle of the Bypass or similar battles that pit so many people against one another in harsh ways.

 

Here is some of the information from the SOLLV group below, as well as in an attached PDF:

 

Willits Bypass Fact Sheet compiled by David Partch

Congestion Relief?
*The Bypass will divert only 20-30% of traffic, including trucks. It will not eliminate stop and go traffic for at least 70% of the remaining traffic and will eliminate only a small part of congestion.

*An alternative solution could divert almost all truck traffic off of Main St. and virtually eliminate stop and go traffic entirely.

*The projected future increase in traffic along the 101 corridor (used by Caltrans to justify the Bypass) has not been realized since predicted. Instead there has even been a slight decline. There are also reasons to believe this trend will continue.

* The congestion at the Hwy 20 turn off was introduced ~20 years ago, when Caltrans re-striped the northbound approach to a single lane, eliminating a critical right-turn capability. The backup started the very next day. This has greatly contributed to the perception that we need a Bypass to solve the problem – a problem that was artificially created with poor traffic engineering.

*A proposal at the Willits City Council to resolve our traffic problems with an alternative route through town by connecting Railroad Ave. to Baechtel Ave. was discouraged by MCOG Executive Direct, Phil Dow, with the argument that alleviating the backup would reduce local support for a Bypass.

*All Hwy 20 traffic (including trucks) will continue to use Main St. since there is no central connectivity with the Bypass (and there are no future plans for it either).

*The southern interchange is designed to require Willits traffic coming from the South to exit the freeway on the right, stop at the end of the off-ramp and then turn left to proceed into town. This will inevitably create a new bottleneck and inconvenience for drivers coming into Willits.

*The northern interchange will create similar unnecessary inconveniences for vehicles coming in and out of Willits only to go from one 2-lane road right back to another.

Local Economic Impacts

 

*14-26 (out of 118) Willits businesses will fail due to the Bypass. In addition, any remaining businesses will suffer at least a 10% loss of revenue. This will mean a significant loss of sales tax revenues.

* The southern interchange of the Bypass has been designed to accommodate a freeway-style business section (gas stations, restaurants, motels) outside of the city limits which could further erode business in Willits and the city’s sales tax revenues.

*90% of local business owners/managers on Main St. have signed a petition voicing their opposition to the Bypass in its current design.

*Caltrans has already started to retreat from their assurances to ranchers (some forced to sell their lands into the Mitigation Trust) that they would be able to lease back their lands for grazing. This could have a considerable negative impact on the local production of meat products.

*No funding is allocated (thru relinquishment or otherwise) to make necessary and desirable enhancements to Main St. in conjunction with the Bypass project. The relinquishment offered to the city is only enough to cover the cost of bringing sidewalks into ADA compliance (something that should have happened years ago at Caltrans expense anyway, since they own the road).

*The relinquishment funds include nothing for future maintenance costs that will be incurred by the City of Willits after the relinquishment.

*The Bypass together with its Mitigation Plan requires the purchase of ~2000 acres of farmland. Much of this will be taken out of production. All of it will be removed from the county tax base.

*Through MCOG the entire county has committed >31 million of its own STIP funds (State Transportation Improvement Program) to the Bypass, virtually eliminating years of funding that would have been better spent on other local transportation improvement projects (including, among other things, money for public transportation and bike/pedestrian trails.

Construction Impacts

* Piles must be driven as deep as 100 feet into the ground to build the viaduct section of the bypass (>1 mile in length). 1,600 piles are needed. Each pile will require up to 2,210 strikes at decibel levels of 187 – 220. (For comparison a jet taking off is 140 decibels.) Because the noise from pile driving will kill the fish in near-by streams, Caltrans has been required to hunt down and find the fish and temporarily relocate them. This noisy pile driving will go on for three years from 7am – 7pm. And this is just for half of the proposed 4-lane bypass.

*A conservative estimate of 95,000 tons of CO2 per year of construction will be dumped into the atmosphere. That is a total of at least 380,000 tons over the construction period (probably a lot more). Caltrans claims that the Bypass will reduce CO2 emissions because it will reduce stop and go traffic. However, it will take 70-80 years for their calculated emissions savings to compensate for the construction impact. And that does not take emissions due to future Bypass maintenance into account. It also ignores the fact that alternative solutions could greatly reduce stop and go traffic for

all of the vehicles passing through Willits – not just the 20-30% that would utilize the Bypass.

*The construction of the bypass (Phase 1 only) will require 1,400,000 cubic yds of fill. This will require 140,000 dump truck loads or an average of 22 loads/per hour over the construction period (200 days/yr X 4 yrs X 8 hrs/day). Many of these trucks will inevitably need to pass through town (and Caltrans has repeatedly refused to make any promises to the contrary, claiming they cannot impose rules on the contractors).

*Construction will require the use of haul roads through wetlands that that supposedly will be restored. Caltrans has offered no explanation or plans for how these wetlands will be de-compacted and "restored" after completion of the Bypass (the possible success of which is highly controversial).

*Placing huge amounts of fill dirt on top of wetlands will require that the ground below will need to be drained and collapsed (intentionally compacted) by the insertion of 55,000 wick drains. This will form an underground dam across the flood plane with unpredictable underground hydrological effects.

*The process of placing the fill dirt itself will require the use of huge (and unspecified) amounts of water. Where this water will come from is unclear. Probably it will come from wells on the surrounding Mitigation lands – either existing or new. This excessive extraction of water would have a dramatic impact on the groundwater level and, therefore, all the other wells in the valley.

*No monitoring plan has been set forth for the impact on the water quality of the creeks that the haul roads will have to cross.

Physical Impacts

*Since the Bypass route cuts through the valley bottom, it will all have to be a raised structure (from 10-30 feet above the valley floor). Much of this distance cuts right through a flood plane. The section closest to the city will rise to 30 feet (over the railroad tracks). Part of this will be a viaduct (a bridge-like structure) ~1 mile in length. It will pass over Commercial and East Valley – and our sewer plant. The rest of this section will be a huge dirt wall (2-3 stories in height) that will represent a dam to the flood waters (not to mention a visual abomination).

*This elevated section with greatly increased vehicle speeds will project an intolerable level of noise throughout the valley and up into the surrounding hills (especially from the trucks).

 

Social Considerations

 

*The Bypass has been a deeply divisive issue in our community. There are strong feelings on both sides of the fence. These divisions will continue and possibly even intensify in the coming years, especially as the real consequences of the Bypass become more and more apparent.

* Caltrans has repeatedly and consistently refused to work together with members of our community to resolve disputes – even with people strongly in favor of the Bypass but concerned about certain aspects of the design (like the lack of a Hwy 20 interchange) and much to the exasperation of even those City Council members who favored the bypass. It seems as though very few people in the community are entirely happy with the Bypass as it is being crammed down our throats.