Submitted by the Albion Bridge Stewards, a working group of ACAB

At its Wednesday, September 12 meeting in Fort Bragg, the California Coastal Commission will hear comment regarding Caltrans’ proposed geotechnical investigation development—the first destructive step toward tearing down the historic Albion River Bridge. We urge everyone concerned about Caltrans’ expensive, destructive, and unnecessary plans to email the coastal commission before 5 pm on Friday, September 7.

To comment on the plan, visit the Coastal Commission’s agenda page, and locate Item 10a. It’s called “Application No. 1-16-0899 (California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Mendocino Co.)”.

At the end of the short description, you’ll find a “Submit Comment” link. This will create a new, blank email with the proper address and subject already filled out.

Or, simply send an email to: NorthCoast@coastal.ca.gov

With this subject:
Public Comment on September 2018 Agenda Item Wednesday 10a – Application No. 1-16-0899 (California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), Mendocino Co.)

Not sure what to say? Feel free to use the template below as a starting point. Cut and paste portions of it, or simply put things in your own words—even just a short, “Please deny this unnecessary application and help preserve the Albion River Bridge, not destroy it.”

I urge you to deny the Caltrans application to start on the slippery slope of replacing, for $91 million, the existing sound timber bridge with a wider and straighter concrete one just so the 2,100 cars per day that use it can go faster.

This “geotechnical investigation” development project is a Caltrans work program that is neither needed nor appropriate. As a result of the latest revisions, the project is only in the County’s Local Coastal Program permit jurisdiction, but Caltrans can’t meet the LCP’s standards and wants you to now side-step them.

Caltrans headquarters staff told the Albion community in a public meeting last November that the bridge is “safe” and, contrary to what District 1 staff has represented to you, that it is not “structurally deficient” or “functionally obsolete.” In the same vein, the photographs that Caltrans contributed to your staff report do not show any rigorous analysis of any “exponential decay” of the bridge, but rather splendidly make the community’s and the independent national timber experts recommendation that Caltrans needs to carry out a responsible and publicly transparent bridge maintenance program, with repairs as needed and the seismic retrofit completed.

The project is an exemplar of why we have a Coastal Act to protect this coast, its natural and human-made resources, and the workers in our coastal economy. To summarize the project is to list its blatant direct and cumulative Coastal Act inconsistencies.

The project:

• Blocks public and worker access on Highway 1 to and along the coast and its many small visitor-serving establishments, to public Albion Cove beach, and to the recreational opportunities on and along the wild-and-scenic Albion River.
• Preempts the County road for visitor-serving and local boating, lower cost camping, and fishing access at and from Albion Flat, to Albion Cove, the Pacific Ocean, and up the river.
  Removes not only hundreds of trees in the Coastal Commission certified blue heron rookery Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area at the northwest end of the bridge, but also their entire root system, with foreseeable destruction of the high and fragile bluffs that face Albion Cove and Albion River.
• Proposes 70- to 125-foot deep drilling into the fractured and unstable earth and rocks on steep to very steep bluff slopes, most of which can only be reached by helicopter. One drilling location is a cultural site of pre-European peoples. and several drill sites are so close to the existing bridge timber towers, the Coastal Act priority visitor serving uses, Highway 1, the beach, and Albion village that Caltrans has to get an impossible approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, since – as you know – its action needs to be consistent with the federally approved Coastal Act and County LCP.
• The project is clearly inconsistent with many of the mandatory Coastal Act standards, and hasn’t been properly presented to you for geographic jurisdictional reasons. The question, Commissioners, is whether you will uphold the Coastal Act and direct Caltrans to follow the rules, starting with doing an EIR and applying to the County.

Please do the only right thing: deny this coastal permit application. Thank you, for the coast.