Author: earthfirst

July 30th

In yet anoth­er stealthy pre-dawn action, pro­test­ers against the Cal­trans bypass around Willits again snuck onto the con­struc­tion site, this time on the south end of the route, lock­ing them­selves to a giant bull­doz­er called a rip­per. The machine is tear­ing apart a hill­side and using the soil to fill in wet­lands and streams to build a free­way. For the first time, press has access to the protest site, after Willits News pho­tog­ra­ph­er Steve Eber­hard was arrest­ed when he tried to cov­er a protest last week.

Two women, Kim Ban­croft and Mau­reen Kane, have locked their hands around the equip­ment in weld­ed steel tubes, which are dif­fi­cult to remove and must be sawn through. A third pro­test­er, Steve Keyes, was arrest­ed when he would not leave their side, where he was sta­tioned with water. Tem­per­a­tures have been in the nineties all week. A crowd of local cit­i­zens has gath­ered in sup­port, and CHP is on scene. Ban­croft explained: “Cal­trans put out false infor­ma­tion to jus­ti­fy a four-lane bypass. The peo­ple of Willits designed an alter­na­tive route that would not be so expen­sive or destruc­tive, and it was ignored.”  The project’s cost at this point is $210 mil­lion.

“Cal­trans is attempt­ing to mit­i­gate for the loss of wet­lands on an unprece­dent­ed scale, using an untried method with no long term man­ag­er and with­out long term fund­ing to sus­tain it”, said Ellen Drell, found­ing board mem­ber of the Willits Envi­ron­men­tal Cen­ter. “They’re replac­ing an already func­tion­ing wet­land with a spec­u­la­tive plan.”

Cal­trans pur­chased one third of the entire Lit­tle Lake Val­ley in an effort to mit­i­gate for this project, which will cause the largest loss of wet­lands in 50 years. In a scheme that they them­selves acknowl­edge to be exper­i­men­tal, Cal­trans will exca­vate 266,000 cubic yards of wet­land soils, goug­ing out unnat­ur­al depres­sions. In oth­er areas the plan calls for strip­ping off exist­ing veg­e­ta­tion and replac­ing it nurs­ery grown plants.

“The total price tag of this mit­i­ga­tion trav­es­ty to the tax­pay­ers is $54 mil­lion dol­lars,” said Drell.

 The Men­do­ci­no Con­ser­va­tion Resource Dis­trict (RDC), which Cal­trans assumed would take over man­age­ment of the mit­i­ga­tion plan, has declined to accept own­er­ship of the mit­i­ga­tion lands or respon­si­bil­i­ty for its man­age­ment, after review­ing the mit­i­ga­tion plan.  Thus the plan is mov­ing for­ward with no man­ag­er, leav­ing one-third of val­ley lands with Cal­trans as the sole own­er, and no plan for the future. While there is fund­ing for earth mov­ing, plant­i­ng and 40 miles of fenc­ing, there is zero fund­ing for land man­age­ment, includ­ing rota­tion­al graz­ing for cat­tle, over­sight, main­te­nance, and flood con­trol.

Protests over the Willits Bypass free­way have been ongo­ing since Jan­u­ary when a young woman call­ing her­self “War­bler” took up res­i­dence high in a pine tree on the route. Her tree-sit, and 5 oth­ers were end­ed after 2 months in a huge mil­i­tary-style oper­a­tion by CHP swat teams. “War­bler” returned to the trees this week, this time in a rare wet­land ash for­est at the north end of the route. Over 30 peo­ple have been arrest­ed, and ral­lies, peti­tions, protests and a law­suit con­tin­ue.

http://youtu.be/0y1vwWVTGv4