#42 In the Dumps, In the News

What WAS Little Lake Valley Wetlands, North of Willits
(All Photos by Steve Eberhard)

The wetland turned into a wickfield, soon to be covered by dirt

In the Dumps: Irreversible Destruction to the Wetlands

Southern "Interchange" where Warbler's Ponderosa Pine once was.
The hill to the right is where the bulldozer I was locked to was.
This hill is now being used to create "fill," dumped on the wetlands to the north.

            For the last three weeks, caravans of dump trucks have been travelling up and down the Main Street of Willits at night.


  Back in May we were protesting the drilling of 55,000 wickdrains into the wetlands 85 feet deep. Those plastic wickdrains serve to pump the water out of the deep ground after 20’-30’ of dirt is piled on top. Wetlands are like a sponge. The fill on top will compress the sponge and press out the water. The wetlands of Little Lake Valley are being irreversibly destroyed every day now.

A one-container truck being filled by day

Their lights and heft and numbers resemble an invading army. With one or two enormous containers filled with dirt from the very hill where I was once locked to a bulldozer at the south end of town, the trucks caravan to the north end of town to dump their loads on what were our beautiful wetlands.

What was the wetlands, now a "wickfield"

 

 

 

 

 

(Left, plastic wicks)

 

 

 

Arrests continue: Not to be stuck in the dumps about this desecration, resistance continues, from mere crosswalk delays to prevent the trucks from making faster progress to recent lockdowns on a truck by two young people (right), preventing the caravan from delivering their death blows for 8 hours.

       Such desperate acts of civil disobedience have been spurred by citizens' failure to be taken seriously by city councils, the board of supervisors, the governor’s office, and courts of law. Undeterred, opponents to the bypass continue insisting on the insanity of kowtowing to the Caltrans vision of progress.

       But we have been heard by several news outlets that also wonder if this bypass is not a “boondoggle,” given that it’s a major freeway design to carry 40,000 cars when only 8000 cars on average head in and out of Willits to the north. 70% of the traffic congestion is from Willits area residents who have been asking for alternate routes through town for years.

     This brief ABC video outlines some of the key issues with great visuals regarding the amount of actual traffic that leaves Willits to the north. ABC asks why this rural town deserves so much money for an unnecessary freeway, while the Bay Area continues to suffer from transportation nightmares.

      The Willits News posted a wonderful aerial overview done by their intrepid photojournalist Steve Eberhard, showing the Caltrans plan in comparison to what has actually occurred thus far.

      KGO out of San Francisco has done several stories about the Willits Bypass debacle, always . For a hot minute, county authorities questioned whether Caltrans was taking fill dirt from a toxic area: Here are two stories on that, one from Aug. 26th and their story from Aug. 28.

       On Aug. 23 the Army Corps of Engineers questions whether Caltrans was complying with its environmental mitigation plans. The actual letter from the ACE is here.

        Willits was also in the Los Angeles Times on Aug. 24th in an article that detailed what both proponents and opponents are saying about the bypass.

 

       While I'm heartened that we gave gotten this attention, we cannot ignore the daily ravages that we cannot seem to stop. Given the $300 million at Caltrans’ disposal, they could buy an army of contractors with huge machines and buy the use of the police force to protect them, so Caltrans has now completed 25% of their planned bypass. Protestors have used every means possible to alert the public to the expensive, unnecessary, and damaging impacts of their plan, compared to a plan devised by the community to reduce traffic congestion (yes, we want that, too) but in a way consistent with protecting the vital resources we have in this valley.

           This valley was called Little Lake Valley because the winter and spring flow down the hills from six creeks surrounding the valley transformed that north end into a virtual lake. In turn, that water feeds into Outlet Creek to the north of Willits, which in turn feeds into the Eel River. We are a vital part of a watershed for elk, salmon, and other creatures that traversed those wetlands for eons. Now an underground dam and a thirty foot tall earthen and cement barrier will destroy that habitat—and it didn’t have to happen that way.

Do We See Ourselves as Protectors of the Earth or As Dominators?

    Since I last posted to my blog after my jail time, I’ve been working hard on another job. I am not, in fact, a “worthless welfare environmentalist” as I’ve been called by bypass proponents. In fact, I’ve been writing a book about an inspirational man, Malcolm Margolin, who started a publishing company called Heyday, now a "cultural institution." Among many virtues of Heyday, thier books contribute to protecting the natural environment and the heritage of the First Peoples here in California. Malcolm initiated Heyday in 1974 with a book about the natural and cultural history of the East Bay Regional Parks. He went on to write The Ohlone Way, a book that captured the way of life of the Ohlone people in the larger San Francisco-Monterey area.

        What Malcolm said about those Native Californians’ early way of life reflects the values of those seeking to protect Little Lake Valley from the Caltrans Willits Bypass: “The Ohlones lived in a world where people were few and animals were many, …they lived in a world where the animal kingdom had not yet fallen under the domination of the human race and where (how difficult it is for us to fully grasp the implication of this!)  people did not yet see themselves as the undisputed lords of all creation” (p. 12).

One of many roadside demos

       How we relate to nature is at the essence of this battle over the future of Little Lake Valley. The California Highway Patrol officer who arrested me and my companion explained on our ride to the Mendocino County Jail that he did not believe that global climate change is a true phenomenon, and that “God gave man the power to be stewards of the earth.” Therein lies the difference between those who dominate and pillage this valley, and those who seek to protect creation.

   

"Condor" in the last stand of trees to be felled

 

 

    Meanwhile, the last treesitter in a tree that has been continuously befriended is soon to be evicted as Caltrans has begun to cut down the last little forest in the path of the bypass. The ravages continue.