Business News & Views

Richardson Grove Project Gets Shot in the Arm

 

After years of struggling under the weight of exorbitant shipping costs, North Coast businesses are hopeful that the California Department of Transportation will get the green light to begin construction on a project to realign Highway 101 through Richardson Grove.

The project was developed with the intent to lift transportation barriers created by a windy, narrow one-mile stretch of road flanked by old growth redwoods. Because of safety concerns, standard sized trucks conforming to the Surface Transportation Assistance Act (STAA) are prohibited from traveling North of Leggitt on Highway 101 into Humboldt County. The concerns are primarily due to the off-tracking of longer trucks as they travel around the curves. As a result, Humboldt County businesses have been forced to use smaller, less efficient trucks, spending far more than competitors to get their products to market.

The majority of the work proposed along the mile-long route just outside of Richardson Grove State Park will be new asphalt paving, and slight widening to allow for 2 to 4 foot shoulders where possible with cut and fill slopes along the way. The primary changes include a small triangular shaped cut slope and a sliver fill slope near the South end of the project and two larger cut slopes toward the North end of the project. The larger cut slopes would be located is outside the park near Overpacks Grove Resort driveway and the Singing Trees Recovery Center. Those cut slopes will allow for construction of a 300-foot-long retaining wall. The purpose of the wall is to preserve the majority of the trees located higher on the cut slope.

According to Caltrans project director Kim Floyd, once the project is completed, these changes will not only allow STAA trucks to stay in their own lane when going around tight corners, but it will also allow two STAA trucks going in opposite directions pass each other safely.

The Business Case

While it can be argued that nearly every business on the North Coast is in some way affected by higher transportation costs, it is the small to mid-size manufacturers, specialty agriculture businesses and food producers that suffer most from the STAA restrictions. In its wake, the prohibition on STAA trucks has left a trail of several large Humboldt County businesses headed out of the area in order to regain a competitive foothold within their respective industries. According to Humboldt County Economic Development Coordinator Jacqueline Debets, over the past couple of years manufacturers like Yakima, Calgon Carbon, Amulet Manufacturing and Premiere Meats have all cited transportation limitations as part of their reasoning behind relocation.

"While we can't get back the jobs we've lost to this restriction, we can save local jobs and companies from being forced to export their jobs if we make this fix," Debets said, adding many manufacturers are more concerned that the new emissions legislation (AB 32) will eliminate the small trucks altogether, than they are about saving money.

Cypress Grove Chevre of Arcata has experienced the truck shortage first hand. The company employs approximately 50 people in the production and sales of artisan goat cheeses. Mary Keehn, founder and CEO of Cypress Grove, said that Humboldt County sales only account for about one percent of the company’s overall business. With so much shipping out of the area, Keehn said there have been times when she couldn’t find a trucker willing to use a smaller truck to bring goods into Humboldt County, and has had to pay to store the load at a refrigerated facility then have it trucked over in pieces.

Lost Coast Brewery General Manager Briar Bush also has difficulty securing trucks and paying for refrigerated storage at cross-docking facilities. One of the most frustrating aspects of the STAA limitations for Bush is the inconvenience and added cost to his customers.

“We are trying to open up Indiana but the distributer is telling me that the freight is cost prohibitive,” he said, adding that his customer in Canada just can’t understand why they have to ship South to San Francisco just to turnaround to the North again. “Eventually these issues drag on your ability to maintain business relationships. Even though (distributers) pass those costs onto the customer, they reduce consumer vitality and slow down consumption rates.”

Sun Valley Floral is one of the largest employers in Humboldt County, and one of the largest producers of cut flowers in the country. Sun Valley estimates that it ships about 1,000 trucks annually and CEO Lane DeVries is concerned that the already shrinking fleet of smaller trucks allowed to transport products within the county, will be phased out along with the new diesel emission standards coming up. The smaller trucks are older and less efficient and because of their size companies like Sun Valley have to send out more of them to in order to get the product to market.

If the Richardson Grove project is completed, Sun Valley estimates that the business would save “50,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually, equating to 1 million pounds of carbon emissions.”

For non profit Arcata Community Recycling Center, lifting the STAA truck limitation would be a welcome relief for the company that has endured a difficult couple of months. Executive Director Mark Loughmiller said that Arcata Recycling is proud that it diverts 10,000 tons of recyclable materials from landfills annually. While there is normally a hardy interest in those recyclables, the global economic recession has taken a toll on demand and has substantially reduced a recycling center’s ability to recoup costs. This is especially true for Arcata Recycling Company because all of the processing mills that purchase recycling materials are far away and Loughmiller said it takes 600 trucks to ship out those materials every year.

“The inability to use STAA standardized trailers effectively reduces revenues for companies that sell products and adds cost to almost everything that is sold in Humboldt County,” he said. “The STAA trucks are what most recyclers use and are not available to my organization leaving Arcata Recycling at a competitive disadvantage.”

The EIR

Because of the sensitivity of the environment around Richardson Grove State Park, Caltrans designed the $5 million project to accommodate the STAA trucks and improve safety along the corridor, but leave the smallest possible footprint on the environment. In December Caltrans released a draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) detailing how the project would be executed, what trees would be removed and what harm minimization measures would be utilized. In every category ranging from scenic aesthetics and air quality to biologic and geologic resources, the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) report determined that the Caltrans Richardson Grove project was expected to have either less than significant impact, or no impact to the environment.

To facilitate the cut slopes, Caltrans anticipates there will be approximately 89 trees removed along the corridor. The majority of those trees (49) are tan oak and Douglas Fir (28) and seven trees slated for removal are small redwoods that range in size between 4 and 16 inches in diameter. None of those trees slated for removal meet the California Department of Parks and Recreation definition of large tree that says a tree is large if it is 36 inches in diameter at breast height. Caltrans officials have stated repeatedly that no old growth trees of any species are to be removed for the sake of this alignment project. 

Additional harm minimization measures include:

• With exception of the culvert excavation, the contractor will be required to use an air spade while excavating the soil within the structural root zone of redwood trees which will minimize physical injury to the tree roots.
• Restorative planting of native plants that are from the immediate vicinity. To do that they have secured a CCC contract for 300 hours per year for four years to establish plants and remove invasive species.
• A two-year survey by a biologist will be done to monitor marbled murrellets and document their presence.
• Caltrans will replace 13 trash containers in Richardson Grove State Park with corvid proof waste receptacles. This is to benefit wildlife in the vicinity. (For example: Ravens are a predator of marbled murrellets that are known to nest in giant redwoods. Ravens scavenge trash and murrellet eggs. If the trash was not available then the eliminated primary food source would theoretically eliminate the scavengers.
• The new pavement will be (CTPB) “Cement Treated Permeable base to minimize the thickness of the structural section, provide greater porosity, minimize compaction of roots and minimize thermal exposure to roots from Hot Mix Asphalt paving.”
• Where trees would be removed, the stumps will be left (where applicable) the top four inches of the forest floor or duff (redwood shed) would be raked off, stored during construction and replaced for erosion control.
• There will be a 9” layer of permeable material between the concrete and the ground to protect redwood tree root systems.
• The retaining wall that will be constructed allows for the protection of most of the trees on the cut slope.
• To avoid impacts to nesting migratory birds, vegetation removal will be done between Sept. 30 and March 1.

Opponents of the project have criticized the plan because it lacks a bike path component through the Highway 101 corridor. Caltrans Senior Environmental Planner Deborah Harmon said that Caltrans was so cognizant of protecting the trees along the narrow road, that it seemed counter productive to cut down more to assist in developing a bike lane along a notoriously dangerous stretch of road. However, in an answer to the call for safe bike passage, California State Park supervisor Steve Horvitz confirmed that park officials have a plan for a bike path in the works and said that they are currently in the midst of their own environmental studies. Horvitz said that the path be 1,700 feet long through Richardson Grove State Park, rather than along Highway 101, and would connect to existing Richardson Grove park trails.

For more information about the Caltrans Richardson Grove alignment project contact Caltrans Project Manager Kim Floyd at kim_floyd@dot.ca.gov. For more information about the economic impacts of the project, contact the Humboldt County Office of Economic Development at 445-7745 or go online to www.northcoastprosperity.com.