Work Now, Talk Later

Nobody can accuse Caltrans of thinking small.

When asked to design a safer intersection for the junction of Highways 118 and 34 near Somis, the agency’s engineers dreamed up a grand six-lane plan that, to local residents, smelled like an open invitation to a freeway. After months of public outcry, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors asked Caltrans to scale it back.

Now Caltrans is doing a little maintenance work along Highway 101 in the Rincon area just north of Ventura. Just cleaning out a drain inlet clogged by a landslide in 1998 winter storms, the agency told the county’s permit division.

Go ahead, the county replied, issuing the minimal “zoning clearance” required for minor work and requiring no environmental impact studies. The state Department of Fish and Game and the county Resource Management Agency gave similar green lights; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state Regional Water Quality Board said no permits were needed for such modest tidying up.

But when the bulldozers revved, the little maintenance project soon grew and grew. Given permission to remove 28,000 cubic feet of dirt, the agency’s contractor commenced removing more than three times that amount. The rustic canyon, facing the ocean across one of Southern California’s prettiest stretches of coastal freeway, was scraped into a vast gash of naked dirt far up the slope.

Environmental groups cried foul and the California Coastal Commission demanded that work cease until Caltrans obtains the correct permits for a grading and reshaping job of that scale. A week later, the project was suspended.

And that creates a dangerous dilemma. The wheels of bureaucracy may turn slowly but the seasons march at their own pace. If the job--however huge it ultimately turns out to be--isn’t completed and the recontoured slopes replanted well before the winter rains, the threat of mudslide and freeway flooding will be even worse than before.

With so much soil already laid bare, this is no time for a lengthy discussion of how this project might affect the environment, the aesthetics of the area or future approval of Caltrans maintenance projects. No, at this point the only prudent thing is to finish the work as quickly as possible and get those slopes stabilized.

But Ventura County should take a close look at how this miscommunication occurred and whether there was intentional understatement of what Caltrans had in mind. It hardly helps the public’s confidence to know that the contractor on the job is Tom Staben, who has been accused of lacking proper permits for county jobs in the past but convicted only of violating zoning laws.

Caltrans’ goal is to protect the highway from flooding, and we’re all for that. The permit process exists to make sure that goal is accomplished in an appropriate way that takes into account other concerns as well. For the system to work, Caltrans must follow the rules and be forthright about its plans--and Ventura County must hold the agency accountable.