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Matthew J. Cunningham

California Coastal Commission: Putting Pocket Mice First

Posted by at 12:00 am on Jan 18, 2008

I wouldn’t normally recommend a government document to anyone as a good read, this report from the Transportation Corridors Agencies (TCA) in Orange County is a refreshing exception.

The report was released last week by the TCA in response to the California Coastal Commission’s state-of-fear staff report that blasted the TCA’s plans to complete its 241 tollroad as hastening the destruction of all life on Earth. OK, I exaggerate the alarmism of the Coastal Commission report — but not by much.

The opening paragraphs will give you a flavor of this scathing response:

Our review of the Staff Report has discovered factual errors, misrepresentations, distortions, baseless conclusions, and egregiously misleading statements in such numbers and of such extraordinary proportions as to require our response to be stated with an unusual degree of candor. The staff’s analysis is further undermined by reliance on zealous non-staff opponents for information. In addition, staff has cited faulty science and weak “engineering” studies that the preparers have acknowledged are flawed.

Faced with a wall of inconvenient truths, the Staff Report attempts to scale it with a hodgepodge of supposition, speculation, hypotheticals, urban legend and anecdotal observations. It is charitable to conclude that the Coastal Staff Report concerning the consistency certification for the completion of SR-241 (also called Foothill Transportation Corridor South, or “FTC-S”) presents an inaccurate, one-sided analysis of the project and of the two decade-long federal/state environmental process that resulted in the adoption of the Green Alternative as the least environmentally damaging alternative.

It’s a joy to read, and I strongly encourage all FR readers to do so — as well as to contact the Coastal Commission in support of completing the 241.

The Coastal Commission staff report is worth reading, as well, because it is an example par excellence of scare ’em school of environmental advocacy masquerading as analysis. The section dealing with widening Interstate 5 as an alternative to completing the 241 makes chillingly clear that to the Coastal Commission staff, the needs of critters matter more than people:

TCA’s comparison of impacts from these alternatives and the weight given to community disruption do not take into account the quality of the resources being affected, or reflect prioritization of resource values according to the resource protection priorities contained in the Coastal Act.

And…

Thus, TCA’s assumption that community disruption and higher economic cost can be accorded higher priority than the exceptionally limited and valuable sensitive habitat, recreation, and archaeological resources is in direct conflict with the resource protection priorities spelled out in the Coastal Act. Southern California highways are regularly implemented using condemnation procedures. Freeway dependent southern California would not exist as we know it if this were not the case. Unlike the more easily quantifiable social and economic mitigation typically associated with condemnation, the type and extent of adverse impacts to coastal resources this toll road would cause cannot be mitigated and would be irreversible.

In plain English, the homes, businesses and property of human beings are expendable and of less value than mice and toads. It’s positively Soviet-esque. The Bolshevik commissars likely gave the kulaks a kindred rationale during forced farm collectivization.

Readers should take note that according to the TCA’s EIR, widening the I-5 as an alternative to completing the 241 would require taking 1,220 homes, businesses, churches, schools and other institutions.

Apparently, Coastal Commission staffers believe in government of the staff, paid for by the people, for the benefit of the critters.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.