Richardson Grove PR funding redux

(Below is a guest post by Dr. Ken Miller in response to last week’s
MY WORD! Citizens duped by Headwaters Fund.)

Thank you, Heraldo, for publicizing the lack of disclosure regarding the media campaign funded by the Headwaters Fund to advocate for the Richardson Grove Improvement Project (RIP). The campaign is a line item in their 2/25/09 Grant update report on their accomplishments to date:

“Hired a PR Contractor to manage the EIR summarization, a letter-writing campaign, media outreach, business and public outreach.”

and

“Assisted in submission of approximately six “My Word” editorials in support of RG Project, written by business owners affected by the restrictions.”

We taxpayers who funded the Headwaters Fund, and constitute “the public,” should have been told that a media campaign, including letters to the editor and six “My Word” OpEd’s, was being funded by public funds.  The media campaign is designed to convince us that the RIP is benign, local businesses will totally benefit, and there will be no inappropriate growth induced or fostered by it.  Truck traffic will supposedly decline with larger trucks to haul goods, even though CalTrans admits that we mostly truck heavy goods like foodstuffs, which reach the legal weight capacity of all trucks, big or little, before needing more space.  Cal Trans acknowledges this fact in concluding that the:

“Proposed project would not result in significant increases in overall economic productivity in the region.” (DEIR 45).

CalTrans’ safety argument is also somewhat specious. CalTrans says that most collisions are with trees or other vehicles and are related to speeding or inattention. State Parks points out that straightening the curves in the RIP will encourage speeding, and old growth redwoods that will then be closer to the new pavement will become more vulnerable to collisions, not less, even factoring in the improved banking and visibility.

I am not suggesting that widening the road might not decrease vehicular accidents, but that slowing traffic would do this with far less consequences and cost.

One has to wonder what interests truly benefit from the RIP, interests that have a very long and very big view of things.  That brings me to Bryan Plumley’s because his perspective is illuminating.

The pro-RIP folks act as though our economy is sunk without access to large diesel trucks. I think they mean their economy.  Not only will the economy suffer if we refuse to open the bottleneck in Richardson Grove, says Plumley, but we will become bizarre mutants stifled by  “The Island Effect.”

In his  My Word  entitled “Isolation is equal to Suffocation,” Mr. Plumley  tells us to “Look at places like China and India. Self-imposed isolation led to poverty, desperation and the over-exploitation of their natural resources.”

Ignoring the obvious extravagant difference in population pressures, perhaps Mr Plumley, the investment adviser, should check out where India and China are in the global financial situation (at the top).

He then makes a startling conclusion:

“Ironically, in our own experience, it was these very transportation improvements that made Humboldt County accessible and threw open the shades to expose to the world the environmental destruction that was happening behind the redwood curtain.”

I do not understand the transportation-environmental  exposure connection, other than that everywhere else roads in particular precede — and often cause — environmental destruction. We have had no major transportation “improvements” in decades, which has not at all impeded liquidation logging or depletion of the salmonid fishery.

In fact, what opened the shades to the likes of Maxxam had  nothing to do with transportation, but everything to do with   local residents fighting tooth and nail get the truth out, and to stop the destruction.

The Buckhorn Project in Trinity County is the sister to the RIP widening project. $40,000  of our taxpayer monies have been spent on a DC lobbying firm for this, so far.  It would open 299 to the same large STAA trucks. Then containers from ships using the deep water port in Humboldt Bay could be trucked to the railhead at Redding, or to I-5. CalTrans predicts a doubling of international port imports and exports and as 50% increase in domestic port traffic in the next 10 years in California, as California’s population increases by 600,000 annually (CalTrans Strategic Plan 2007-2012). CalTrans is also “improving” routes 197 & 199 in Del Norte for STAA trucks, which would complete the loop and make major tract-home and strip-mall development of the North Coast a far more likely prospect..

RIP takes care of the north-south corridor, called our “Economic Lifeline” (Route 101 Safety and Commerce Study, April 2005).

Mr. Plumley’s platform in his Supervisorial candidacy consisted of developing a $100 million start-up venture capital investment fund to hold equity (ownership) positions in Humboldt County development, a la Goldman Sachs. This was before the meltdown and exposure of the Wall Street clowns who are reaping financial rewards for their (our) folly, including Goldman Sachs, which just got something like $12-14 Billion bailout money!

So, I can understand where  Plumley and Sachs are coming from, and why this RIP is so important to them, and to the Marina Center with its Home Depot, which plans to be STAA compliant (Rob Arkley’s Humboldt Sunshine has been advertising like crazy for RIP on KINS).

However, even the centerpiece of CalTrans’ economic argument, the Gallo Report, concludes that:

“The quantitative impact of the STAA truck restriction on H 101 at Richardson Grove on industry sales is particularly difficult to estimate…”

In other words, the RIP might help some local businesses, but, then again, that’s not really what it is for; it is for much bigger development in the near future.

The President of the local Cattlemen’s Association, Jorie Brundy questioned the need for RIP when he said:

While we respect those concerns we hope they come to realize that the road is actually wide enough to allow trucks with 48-foot trailers that have a kingpin to rear axle setting of 43 feet to pass safely through Richardson Grove, allowing Humboldt County producers to ship their product to market in a safe and timely manner.

My problem with this whole RIP thing is that we can do so much better. California leads the nation in trying to regulate and decrease greenhouse gas emissions — 98% of which come from burning fossil fuels. 40% of the human-related emissions derive from transportation.  In this time of critical climate change, non-fossil fueled transport alternatives are one of the federal government’s primary goals for stimulus funding. Diesel truck and rail are anachronistic modes of transportation.

For example, federal funding could be obtained by Schatz Energy, HSU, et al for an R&D facility to explore innovative short-sea shipping fueled by non-fossil fuels to serve coastal port communities. We could even build them, and produce the fuel from solar, wind, and wave generation.  We must look to 21st century solutions that employ people in good jobs, not 19th century boondoggles that have proved so destructive, and which are today essentially controlled  by computers and robots, thereby eliminating jobs.

And what about Richardson Grove itself? CalTrans’ plan  will disturb the roots of 30 large ancient redwood tree as large as 15 ft in diameter.  Richardson Grove is a memorial commemorating the first American Army officer of high rank to fall in World War I, Raynal Bolling, a lawyer and father of four who laid the foundation for the U. S. Military Aviation Service.

Bolling Grove reminds us of his wisdom:

“Let’s look inside and remember that it’s our ideals, our endeavors, our affections and love that are the realities in Life.”