Studies continue for Last Chance Grade Project
Caltrans is working to assess the environmental impacts of two proposed construction projects which aim to find a solution to the routine landslides and storms damaging Last Chance Grade, a three-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 101 between Klamath and Crescent City.
The reports, which are expected to be completed in 2023, are assessing the impact of two alternatives. Alternative F, which would build an estimated $1.3 billion tunnel, and Alternative X, which would move the road inland, install walls and be even more expensive. However, the potential economic cost of a shutdown to that stretch of highway, a key economic and transportation corridor, would be disastrous.
“We have multiple years of environmental studies wrapping up this winter, and then we begin our technical reports that inform the draft environmental document,” said Jaime Matteoli, project manager of Last Chance Grade. “Those include environmental reports, engineering reports, the geotechnical reports. Those are being developed through July. And then we begin writing that draft environmental document, working towards a circulation of that in late 2023, where we have a public hearing, and the public can review and comment on the draft environmental document itself. Then, we’ll be able to work towards selecting an alternative, hopefully soon after that in early 2024.”
Should Last Chance Grade face a semi-permanent closure, drivers would face a minimum six-hour detour between Crescent City and Eureka, which would increase to eight hours for drivers from Klamath, according to Matteoli.
Last Chance Grade, which is anticipated to start construction in 2030 and open to the public in 2038 according to the project’s website, is an attempt at permanently addressing piecemeal approaches to fixing a stretch of the highway that faces almost routine levels of hazards that can close the road.
“Nothing is simple when you are trying to reroute a critical transportation artery around seismically unstable land and through an incredibly fragile habitat,” North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) told the Times-Standard.
“Caltrans has worked miracles to find created bandaids that keep Highway 101 open in the face of almost constant failures, but one of these days there is going to be a failure so bad that they can’t find a bandaid,” he said. “At that point, we’re going to have no connect no north-south connection for the entire region and that will be just chaos, economically, from a public safety perspective, and a quality life perspective.”
While the alternatives to constant repairs of the highway are expensive, consistent repairs on the highway also come with a high price tag, according to Matteoli, who noted that Caltrans has spent more than $100 million repairing and maintaining that stretch of highway in the last 20 years and more in the last 10 years than ever before.
While the date for the next public comment period on the environmental reports is not set, Matteoli expects it to be sometime in Spring 2022.
Huffman noted that the project’s working groups and partners are key to its success and their continued collaboration is what will make or break the project. “All of this coordination and collaboration is so critical. We don’t have time for a decade of litigation on this one if the stakes are too high.”
By: Jackson Guilfoil
Source: Eureka Times-Standard
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