Caltrans

Albion Bridge Stewards Sues Caltrans Over Albion River Bridge Project, Alleging Violations of CEQA

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We’ve filed a lawsuit in Mendocino County Superior Court challenging Caltrans’ approval of the environmental review for its proposed Albion River Bridge replacement project.

We didn’t come to this decision lightly. For years, our group has participated in good faith, attending meetings, submitting comments, and engaging with Caltrans to ensure that the process for this monumental project would be transparent, lawful, and respectful of the historic and environmental treasures of Albion. Unfortunately, despite hundreds of public comments and serious concerns raised by state agencies and conservation groups alike, Caltrans chose to move forward with what we believe is a deeply flawed Environmental Impact Report (EIR).

Our suit contends that Caltrans violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) — the state law designed to ensure that large public projects fully consider their environmental impacts and that the public has a real voice in shaping them. The EIR, as certified, lacks a clear and stable project description, defers key studies and mitigation plans to an unspecified future, and fails to meaningfully evaluate rehabilitation options that could preserve the bridge instead of destroying it.

At the center of all this is, of course, the Albion River Bridge itself — a 969-foot timber trestle built in 1944, now listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the California Register of Historical Resources. It’s the last remaining timber trestle bridge on the entire length of Highway 1, and it continues to serve our community safely and beautifully. Caltrans’ current plan would demolish this irreplaceable structure and build a massive concrete replacement costing between $126 and $155 million — transforming roughly a mile of our coastal landscape in the process.

When Caltrans began this process, the agency said it would study both rehabilitation and replacement options. But when the Draft EIR was released in July 2024, the rehabilitation alternatives had vanished. Only “build alternatives” — all versions of demolition and replacement — were analyzed. The preferred design wasn’t even identified until after public comments had closed. This left the public unable to comment on the actual project that would shape the future of our town and coastline.

More than 200 letters and emails were sent in during the comment period — from neighbors, historians, biologists, and even the California Department of Fish and Wildlife — urging Caltrans to correct these deficiencies. But the Final EIR, released on August 8, 2025, largely brushed aside these concerns without evidence or substantive response.

Our petition points out that the project would cause significant, irreversible harm to aesthetics, cultural heritage, and biological resources — and that Caltrans’ so-called “mitigation measures” are vague, unenforceable, and in some cases postponed until after project approval. This is not what CEQA allows.

With this filing, we’re asking the Court to set aside Caltrans’ approvals and require the agency to prepare a legally adequate EIR — one that fully and fairly considers feasible alternatives to demolition, includes real mitigation commitments, and respects the spirit and intent of CEQA.

We love this place. We believe it’s possible to meet safety needs without erasing history and damaging the coastal environment that defines Albion. This lawsuit is about accountability, transparency, and our shared responsibility to protect what makes this community so special.

Thank you to everyone who has written letters, spoken up, and supported this cause. We’re doing this together — for the bridge, for the river, and for the generations who will come after us.

Public Comment Period Extended to October 9 for Albion River Bridge DEIR/DEIS

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Well, well.

At 5:59 pm yesterday, we received an email from Caltrans:

The comment period for the Albion River Bridge Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (EIR/EIS) and Draft Section 4(f) Evaluation will be extended for another 30 days, ending on October 9, 2024. A virtual public meeting will be scheduled, and details will be released soon.

Our group had already submitted our public comments—54 pages worth—and we know that roughly 200 additional people from around the world (literally!) submitted comments through our comment template system. (If you’re in that group, thank you.)

Now we have another month.

Why the extension?

So why did Caltrans give the public another month to finish its homework?

Only Caltrans knows for sure, but we do know that some people were not properly noticed—that is, notified about the draft environmental impact statement/report and thus given an opportunity to comment. When a person or organization has requested to be noticed and they are not, there’s the potential for legal liability. By extending the deadline, Caltrans may have side-stepped this potential issue.

Why a virtual public meeting?

In teasing at another public meeting—this one via Zoom—Caltrans may again be addressing potential legal issues stemming from its incomplete noticing.

Will the meeting be a repeat of the in-person event held at Whitesboro Grange last month? A rehash of Caltrans’ incomplete and destructive plans, with a few minutes for Q&A? Or will there be a fresh set of doom-and-gloom scenarios about the beautiful, historic—and completely safe—Albion River Bridge?

We’ll see.

What’s next? Continue the fight

Now that we have another month, we have more time to gather signatures in our petition drive and to encourage members of the public to submit comment letters—optionally using our easy templates.

We have an extra month to continue driving home the point that Caltrans’ proposed plans are bad for the environment, bad for the economy, and bad for history. Rest assured, we plan to take advantage of it.

Caltrans’ bridge inspection report contains “severe problems”—world-class structural engineer

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Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, Ph.D., P.E. is a professor emeritus from UC Berkeley and a world-renowned expert on structural engineering.

He’s research and written extensively about the historic Albion River Bridge, and we asked him if he would be willing to review the most recent bridge inspection report for the bridge.

He responded with a detailed analysis. Summary: the bridge is in much better condition than Caltrans claims. He writes, in part:

There are severe problems in the 2023 Inspection Report and many violations of the FHWA National Bridge Inspection Standards (NBIS) requirements, making the 2023 Inspection Report almost invalid. Many statements and notes in this inspection report that declare the bridge’s current condition as “Poor” are not factual and contradict the data collected by the Caltrans inspectors and reported in the later pages of the 2023 Inspection Report.

The entire letter appears below. Read it or better yet, act today—September 9—and write one or more comment letters using our easy templates.

Dr. Astaneh Letter to Albion Bridge Stewards-September 9-2024Download



Tell Caltrans to rethink its plans for the Albion River Bridge

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We’ve made it easy with ten ready-to-send email templates

Caltrans needs to rethink its destructive and expensive plans to replace the Albion River Bridge. If you agree, let Caltrans know!

You can provide public comment by sending an email before September 9.

To make it as easy as possible, we’ve created ten email templates. Each template addresses a different aspect of the proposed replacement — the biological impact, the impact on traffic and business, the community impact on the loss of a historic bridge, and so on. It just takes one click to create a pre-filled email, ready to customize if you like, and then send.

Here’s how to use the templates

  1. From the list below, choose the issue you want to comment on.
    Your device should switch to your email program, with the email all ready to send. (If it doesn’t, see the “Having trouble?” section below.)
  2. Consider customizing the email to add a personal note: tell Caltrans how you use the bridge, what you think about it, how long you’ve lived in the area, and so on.
  3. Add your name and, optionally, your address to the end of the email
  4. Choose your email program’s Send option to send the email to Caltrans.

Choose your template

I want to comment on one of the following:

Having trouble? Download the templates instead

If the links above don’t work, you can view all ten of our templates. Copy the text you want to use, paste it into a new, blank email, and send to albionbridge@dot.ca.gov.

Still having trouble? We’re happy to help!

If you want to send a public-comment email but the options above aren’t working for you, let us know and we’ll be happy to help. Send an email to acab@mcn.org.

Read Caltrans’ so-called Community Impact Assessment document

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Buried within Caltrans’ reams of documentation about the Albion River Bridge is a critically important document: the Community Impact Assessment (CIA) document.

One paragraph hits the nail on the head with respect to the potential loss of the historic Albion River Bridge:

For some residents, the project would change their perception of community character due to the local importance of the existing bridge. The bridge is iconic, and some community members feel the existing bridge defines them as a unique coastal community. Replacement of this historic bridge would change their sense of historic character.

There are myriad other reasons to object to Caltrans’ plans, including environmental damage, taking of private property, up to five years of bridge closures, and much more. Our recent post describes more.

The version of the CIA that Caltrans posted weighs in at over 60MB—a pretty big download for residents of a region where fast internet connections aren’t a given.

We compressed it into a more-reasonable size (16MB). You can download it here.

Attend our community meeting and comment workshop

You can learn a lot more about Caltrans’ bad plans at our community meeting at 5:30 pm tomorrow (August 27) at the Mendocino Community Center in Mendocino. Learn more and plan to attend!

Tuesday, Aug 27: Albion River Bridge — Community Meeting and Public Comment Workshop

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WHAT:

An informal workshop aimed at providing more information about Caltrans’ proposed Albion River Bridge project.

WHO:

Presented by Albion Bridge Stewards, with experts on historic and environmental preservation and coastal land use policies. 

WHY:

Caltrans’ so-called “public meeting” earlier this month was very one-sided, with lengthy presentations that left little time for Q&A. Worse, the meeting facilitator refused to extend the meeting to accommodate the many raised hands in the room.

We think the community should hear the full story.

We’ll start with a short presentation, and then assist community members who would like to comment on Caltrans’ plans. (Public comment is due by September 9.)

WHERE:

Mendocino Community Center in Mendocino

WHEN:

Tuesday, August 27.

The meeting begins at 5:30, but anyone is welcome to drop in any time between 5:30 and 8 pm.

Refreshments will be served.

Caltran’s DEIS/DEIR Meeting: Lots of Questions, Few Answers

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Along with more than 100 other concerned members of the public, we attended Caltrans’ standing-room-only meeting concerning the draft environmental impact statement and draft environmental impact report (DEIS/DEIR).

Our bridge banner greeted attendees of the Caltrans meeting.

In our previous post, we outlined just some of our concerns with the proposed Albion River Bridge replacement project (starting with the fact that this proposed project used to include the word rehabilitation). Caltrans’ meeting only added to our concerns—attendees asked many questions that were met with answers like “we don’t know yet” or “that depends” or “that will be determined later.”

It’s hard to comment with specifics on plans that are vague.

Despite many still-raised hands, Caltrans ended the meeting promptly at 7:30 pm. When we suggested the meeting be extended, the meeting facilitator refused, noting simply that ”we’re hearing your feedback.” Implied in that response: “But we’re ignoring it.”

Here’s a short news report on the meeting that ran on KZYX, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting.

Here’s the recording of the meeting itself.

What’s Next: August 27 Community Commenting Meeting

On August 27, we will host a community commenting meeting aimed at enabling anyone concerned about Caltrans’ plans to provide public comment, which is due to the agency by September 9.

We’ll share more information about this important meeting this week.

What you should know about Caltrans’ latest plans

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We’ve created a flyer that briefly outlines the worst aspects of Caltrans’ proposed plans for destroying the historic Albion River Bridge.

Here’s the text of the flyer and accompanying map. You can also download a PDF of the flyer.

Caltrans plans to alter the Albion coast, destroying a piece of history and impacting the coastal environment and economy — for no good reason

Caltrans and the US Federal Highway  Administration propose to spend roughly $150 million of taxpayer money to destroy Albion’s iconic and historic Albion River Bridge.

Caltrans’ plans would create a wider, faster, out-of-place concrete bridge ­­— where the county, state, and federal law and coastal plans for our area specifically prohibit it.

Three to five years of construction, massive cut-and-fill grading, lane and road closures, and environmentally damaging noise and nighttime lighting

• Thousands of partial and full closure hours of Highway 1, with a 126-mile detour via Highway 101 (or by poorly maintained, low-capacity county roads, 28 miles)

• Closure of the wild and scenic Albion River to commercial fishing and recreational boats, including to build cofferdams in the estuarine river

• Closure of the Albion Flats campground and public recreational access to Albion Cove Beach

• Large, unsightly retaining walls along Highway 1 and on the unstable bluffs

• Substantial construction noise, vibrations from pile driving, and dust from grading

• Construction of haul roads through south and north Albion and down the North Side and South Side Albion River bluffs (see map below)

• Construction of two nearly 1000-foot-long, 50-foot-wide trestles (both sides of the existing bridge) and two other possible trestles off the north and south Albion River bluffs 

• Removal of trees and other major vegetation from the Albion River and Albion Cove bluffs, with subsequent erosion

• Mass cut-and-fill grading of some 450,000 cubic feet, with potentially 3,300 dump truck round trips (including removal of the Albion River Bridge)

• A bridge concept that is 81 percent wider than the existing bridge, and would cast shade over substantial eelgrass, beach, dune, bluff, and Albion Flats recreational areas

• Cumulative impacts from more than twenty other Highway 1 projects that stall travel to work, schools, stores, medical providers, and the hotels, inns, restaurants, and parks in our critical county coastal economy

Granite Construction: a dubious reputation

For this expensive and unnecessary project, Caltrans has tapped a design-build contractor with a history of environmental, worker safety, and financial violations (for a full list, go to tinyurl.com/ARBgranite).

The company has been fined more than $22 million since 2000 alone — a sordid mix of accounting violations ($12 million), competition-related offenses ($8.25 million), environmental offenses ($1.07 million), government contracting violations ($367,000), and safety violations ($354,633).

Is this a company we want anywhere near a state-designated Wild and Scenic River?

The solution: maintain and preserve

The answer is simple: tell Caltrans to maintain and preserve this historic bridge — and the beautiful environment that surrounds it.

Other states have proven the durability and economic benefits of timber bridges; Minnesota has more than 1700 timber bridges of all sizes and a robust system of inspection and maintenance (to learn more, search for “minnesota timber bridges”).

If Minnesota can do it, California can, too.

Join us and learn what you can do

Public comment on the latest plans is due on or before September 9. Submit your comments in writing no later than September 9, 2024, to Caltrans, Liza Walker, North Region
Environmental, 1656 Union Street, Eureka, CA 95501, or albionbridge@dot.ca.gov.

And don’t forget to attend the meeting on August 13 at 6 pm at the Whitesboro Grange, 32510 Navarro Ridge Rd., Albion.

Albion River Bridge: Public Meeting August 13

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In its attempt to sell the community on the need to replace the historic Albion River Bridge, Caltrans is holding a public meeting.

When: August 13, 6:00 pm.
Where: Whitesboro Grange, 32510 Navarro Ridge Rd., Albion

Read the Draft Environmental Reports

Caltrans has published the draft environmental reports for the proposed bridge replacement. You can read and download them here.

Tip: Caltrans doesn’t make it easy to retrieve these documents. Here is a direct link to the main document. You can also find supplemental documents at the bottom of this page.

Stay tuned…

We’ll be posting additional details about Caltrans’ unnecessary plans to replace this beautiful, iconic — and structurally sound — bridge in the weeks ahead.

For now, here are a two things to keep in mind.

  • The historic Albion River Bridge is structurally sound and needs only ongoing maintenance (details, video, and independent engineer’s report)
  • Granite Construction, the contracting firm Caltrans has hired to manage this project, has a disturbing track record of violations, everything from fraud to environmental violations. This is not a company that can be trusted to properly manage the sensitive environment at the Albion River.

More soon.