U.S. Urges New Review for Long Beach Freeway Extension
In yet another setback for the repeatedly stalled Long Beach Freeway extension, the U.S. Department of Interior, citing the designation of a new historic district in El Sereno along the highway’s corridor, has recommended an additional environmental assessment of the route.
In a Wednesday letter to federal highway administrator Rodney Slater, Interior officials said the additional report is necessary because of a Nov. 20 finding by the National Register of Historic Places that a five-block area of the mostly Latino community in the freeway’s path is eligible for historic designation.
Interior officials said a 1992 environmental assessment did not analyze the area and that such an omission could violate a presidential executive order requiring federal projects not to disproportionately affect disadvantaged communities.
Since 1965, there have been four environmental assessments of the proposed route.
Civil rights groups are suing Caltrans on behalf of El Sereno residents, arguing that the noise and pollution from the freeway would not be mitigated in poorer areas as it would be in more affluent South Pasadena and Pasadena. “This is what we’ve been saying: Caltrans rode roughshod over this community,” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, an attorney for the Environmental Justice Resource Network.
Caltrans spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli said the agency will conduct a full study of the issue and make it available in two months.
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