Willits Bypass: Why We Protest and Why You Should Too...

---

From MICHAEL FOLEY
Willits

Last week a group of Willits residents launched a growing protest against the start of CalTrans’ by-pass project through the Little Lake Valley.  Why do we protest?  For one, because our political system and our politicians have failed us.

Instead of allowing the citizens of Willits to choose among a range of alternatives, democratically, we were invited to participate in a bureaucratic process, with the stipulation that the bureaucrats got to decide.  A few of us participated.  The Willits Environmental Center took a special interest once CalTrans decided to plough through what remains of our Little Lake.  A lot of ranchers and local landowners took part in a forum to hear about CalTrans’ mitigation plan (still not complete, I might add).  They were angry at the agency’s decision to renege on its promises to landowners that they would be able to continue grazing on lands acquired by the agency to “mitigate” for destroying the wetlands at the north end of the valley.  CalTrans heard a lot from the ranchers, and more from WEC, but scarcely listened, because CalTrans, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other bureaucracies were going to make the ultimate decisions.  Our elected officials, or most of them, conservative, liberal, and whatjamacallit in between, all supported the bureaucrats.

When our elected officials choose to leave it to the bureaucrats and leave us out, it becomes not just a right but an obligation of citizens to protest.  That’s what Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and the rest of the Founding Fathers said.  I know that “obligation” is an old-fashioned, even conservative, concept.  But that’s what citizenship was supposed to be all about when I was growing up.  If there was a vote on the by-pass project, it passed us by.  We don’t have much left to do but protest.

But why protest the By-Pass?  Because it’s a boondogle, for one.  CalTrans could have chosen almost any other route across the valley for a lot less money and with less destruction.  It didn’t.  It chose to run right through a wetlands, requiring not only a long, drawn-out process of getting permits, but millions of dollars spent acquiring land, millions for perpetual “mitigation” of the impact on the wetlands, and tens of millions for building a causeway across some very squishy terrain.

Why did they do it?  Because the primary purpose of any bureaucracy is to spend as much money as possible in hopes of having an even bigger budget next year.  CalTrans does this by building freeways.  In fact, that’s the only thing CalTrans really knows how to do.  They don’t do it well, as anyone who has traveled the grade up from Ukiah over the years knows, as anyone caught on the Bay Area freeways during the earthquake of 1989 knows.  But this is what they specialize in, because freeways cost lots of money, and lots of money supports lots of CalTrans engineers and a whole passel of favored contractors.

Other things CalTrans does indifferently or really badly.  Ask them to fix a minor traffic problem, and they build a dangerous five-lane highway.  Take a look at that absurd little stretch outside the Village of Mendocino on Hwy 1.  Take a look, for that matter, at South Main (101) in Willits.  Want them to build a round about?  They build a monstrosity.  The new one just south of Ft. Bragg is an example.  (Personal note:  I lived for years near Washington, D.C.  DC is full of modest little traffic circles, of the sort that would easily solve Willits’ Hwy 20 intersection traffic problem.  Almost every major street out of DC has one, and everyone manages just fine with them.  CalTrans can’t figure out how to do it without pouring obscene amounts of concrete and spending tens of millions of dollars.)

But won’t the By-Pass solve Willits’ traffic problems?  No.  The logging trucks that service ex-Mayor Bruce Burton’s lumber mill and the trucks that take his lumber out will still come through town.  Shusters trucking hasn’t plans that I know of to relocate at either one of the interchanges.  Those are reserved for some ugly truck stop in any case.  Safeway’s supply trucks will come through town, and so will the gas trucks for our service stations.  Sparetime will continue sending trucks in and out of its yard through town, and so will Mendo Mill.  Even Brookstrails’ commuters are more likely to come through town than take CalTrans’ two-lane “freeway” all the way to the far north end of the valley and then circle back to Sherwood Road.

CalTrans officials, in fact, have publicly said that their by-pass (CalTrans’ By-Pass, not Willits’ By-Pass) is not intended to solve Willits’ traffic problems.  It’s intended, in fact, to get the new super-trucks through the valley as quickly as possible.  And to serve the big trucking interests and their clients, CalTrans has offered its engineering feat of the decade, a two-lane freeway across a causeway built on muck.

What will it cost us?  We might start with the $200+ million dollar price tag.  But don’t forget “cost overruns”.  Then there’s the years (6) of hauling fill dirt through our streets and roads, the incessant, ear-splitting noise of pile drivers, and the plain ugliness and noise of an elevated freeway looping through the valley.  Not to mention the farm and ranch land lost to “mitigation.”  Or the salmon runs polluted by highway run-off.

Our politicians and political system have failed us.  So-called “conservatives” have decided to let the bureaucracies decide.  They’re supporting the back room decisions of one of the biggest bureaucracies in the world.  If CalTrans isn’t Big Government, I don’t know what is.

So I’m protesting.  And I’m calling on any true conservatives left out there to join us.  We aren’t hippy freaks.  Our “Warbler” up in that tree isn’t a Black Block anarchist.  We’re ordinary citizens doing what ordinary citizens ought to do.  We’re protesting.  Please join us.

Michael Foley grows vegetables at Green Uprising Farm on East Hill Rd.
~
See also The Insanity of the Willits Bypass
~~