Coalition Block Highway Construction on Back-to-Back Days

Tribal Pomo Representatives, AIM elders and Environmentalists Block Filling of Wetlands

[Today (Sep­tem­ber 28th, 2014) , rough­ly 30 peo­ple block­ad­ed dump trucks at both entrance gates to the Willits Bypass north­ern inter­change con­struc­tion zone, halt­ing near­ly all soil dump­ing for the day.  At rough­ly 11 a.m., the dump trucks went home for the day. The Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol took a light approach to polic­ing the demon­stra­tion, mak­ing no arrests.  We are gath­er­ing again tomor­row at 7 a.m. at The Tipi! Only seri­ous rain will pre­vent us from gath­er­ing. Check out the KMUD News report filed by Annie Espos­i­to, which begins at 6:00 into the broad­cast.]

Native Amer­i­can Trib­al mem­bers, includ­ing direct descen­dants of the Pomo peo­ples who once pop­u­lat­ed the Lit­tle Lake Val­ley where Cal­trans is cur­rent­ly build­ing an over­sized free­way Bypass, will join envi­ron­men­tal groups in a mass protest on the north end of the project today. Pro­tes­tors will enter the con­struc­tion zone north of town in the ear­ly morn­ing hours, slow­ing and stop­ping the fast and furi­ous flow of dirt-filled, dou­ble-bel­ly dump trucks work­ing from dawn to dusk to cov­er the wet­lands and arche­o­log­i­cal sites the activists seek to pro­tect.
Elders and spir­i­tu­al lead­ers from local Pomo Indi­an Bands and the Amer­i­can Indi­an Move­ment (AIM) will lead the way to threat­ened cul­tur­al sites where prayers will be offered for the ances­tors. The AIM flag and drum will be present near the con­struc­tion area where Native Amer­i­can cul­tur­al arti­facts have been dis­cov­ered. The sites have been doc­u­ment­ed and fenced off by Cal­trans, but are still slat­ed to be destroyed by being per­ma­nent­ly grad­ed and buried under the Bypass as cur­rent­ly designed.

“I hear and feel our ances­tors cry to save our vil­lages from destruc­tion. The white man’s his­to­ry repeats itself. We pray that the Cre­ator will hear our prayers”, said Priscil­la Hunter, trib­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Coy­ote Val­ley Band of Pomo Indi­ans. “Cal­trans pla­cat­ed the inter­ests of local ranch­ers by giv­ing them per­ma­nent graz­ing rights on the mit­i­ga­tion lands and built the viaduct over the rail­road track to pre­serve it, but yet they don’t lis­ten to the Indi­ans’ con­cerns for pro­tec­tion of our ances­tors’ cul­ture or to our call for down­siz­ing the north­ern inter­change to avoid a large vil­lage site.”

The Coy­ote Val­ley Tribe request­ed gov­ern­ment to gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tions with the Army Corps of Engi­neers in June, but to date has received no response. Hunter stat­ed that Cal­trans was like­ly in vio­la­tion of the Clean Water Act 404 Per­mit Gen­er­al Con­di­tion # 3 which specif­i­cal­ly ref­er­ences the pro­tec­tion of arche­o­log­i­cal sites and Sec­tion 106 of the Nation­al His­toric Preser­va­tion Act. At this time, Cal­trans has refused to pro­vide any fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the recent cul­tur­al find­ings to Hunter.

The Coy­ote Val­ley Band of Pomo Indi­ans let­ter to the Army Corps of Engi­neers and their Res­o­lu­tion for Gov­ern­ment to Gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion can be found here.

Over thir­ty addi­tion­al sites and more than one hun­dred arti­facts have been iden­ti­fied since Bypass con­struc­tion in the val­ley began. One site is thought to be the ancient vil­lage site of Yami. After ini­tial­ly assur­ing the Sher­wood Val­ley Band of Pomo that con­struc­tion on this large, known site would be avoid­ed, Cal­trans destroyed the vil­lage com­plete­ly in the sum­mer of 2013. Equip­ment oper­a­tors did not stop work and did not noti­fy the Tribes, as required. Cal­trans admit­ted the destruc­tion months lat­er, call­ing it “acci­den­tal” and blam­ing faulty maps. Arti­facts in Lit­tle Lake Val­ley are so plen­ti­ful it has been described by arche­ol­o­gists as an Arche­o­log­i­cal Dis­trict.

Some of the cul­tur­al sites being “dis­cov­ered by bull­doz­er” are on the so-called mit­i­ga­tion lands, acres Cal­trans is rely­ing upon to com­pen­sate for envi­ron­men­tal dam­age to pub­lic val­ues, called “tem­po­ral loss”. When cul­tur­al sites are iden­ti­fied, the area is set aside, reduc­ing the acreage avail­able for mit­i­ga­tions. Cal­trans needs every acre of scarce mit­i­ga­tion land to make up for the tem­po­ral loss­es already incurred by its chron­ic fail­ure to per­form mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures now two years over­due.

Bypass oppo­nents have pro­posed a small­er, low­er impact design to reduce the amount of mit­i­ga­tion lands need­ed to sat­is­fy require­ments that would also save time mon­ey as well as some 30 acres of wet­lands while avoid­ing cul­tur­al sites. Cal­trans had com­mit­ted to find­ing ways to reduce the amount of fill used on the north­ern inter­change as one of the con­di­tions of rein­stat­ing its pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pend­ed 404 Oper­at­ing Per­mit under lead agency Army Corps of Engi­neers. Cal­trans has pro­posed only a min­i­mal 3.5 acre reduc­tion carved from minor design adjust­ments, with­out eval­u­at­ing oth­er, less destruc­tive options.

The Coali­tion to Save Lit­tle Lake Val­ley and oth­ers includ­ing Save Our Lit­tle Lake Val­ley, Earth First!, the Willits Envi­ron­men­tal Cen­ter and Bay Area Coali­tion for Head­wa­ters are demand­ing an imme­di­ate halt to all fill activ­i­ties on the north­ern inter­change pend­ing a sig­nif­i­cant reduc­tion of impacts to pro­tect both wet­lands and cul­tur­al sites.

9/24 Protesters Come Back!

from Save Little Lake Valley