Lawsuit Filed Against Caltrans Roadblocks Highway 1 Public Meetings

Members of the Pacifica City Council are frustrated, explains Mayor Len Stone in a prepared press release from the City of Pacifica.

The community meetings planned by the City Council to hear the thoughts of Pacificans about Caltrans' proposed work on Highway 1 from north of Reina Del Mar to sough of Fassler Avenue (known as the Calera Parkway Project) are now delayed because of a lawsuit filed against Caltrans.

"The council has been waiting patiently for the opportunity for our community to be heard and now we are forced to wait to move forward," Stone stated in the release. 

Pacificans for a Scenic Coast filed the suit, which challenges the adequacy of the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the Calera Parkway Project. Pacifica attorney Celeste Langille filed suit for the group, which is publicly represented by Peter Loeb, plaintiff in a separate lawsuit on the highway widening. 

Calera Parkway is a Caltrans project, funded by the San Mateo Transportation Authority (TA). The TA has a policy that a project will be funded only if the host city requests that it be funded. This means that Caltrans will complete all planning and environmental documents, and the Pacifica City Council, having the benefit of this information, will vote to either request the funding or not.

The environmental documents have been deemed finished and have been certified by Caltrans, according to City of Pacifica officials. However, because a lawsuit charges that the documents are not complete, the next step for the project will not be a public meeting, it will be in a courtroom. In a nutshell, the project can't move forward until the legal issues are resolved.

"It is frustrating," said Stone. "Many of our citizens have been waiting to learn more about this project and to voice their opinion of whether Pacifica should support it or not."

The council was planning on hosting a series of meetings about the project for the public. The first meeting was going to focus on fact-finding with the consultants who prepared the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for Caltrans making a comprehensive presentation of their work, a document more than 1,900 pages.

The goal of this first meeting was to assure that everyone concerned about the project, whether supportive or against, had an opportunity to learn all they could from the team that did the research and wrote the EIR.

Subsequent meetings would be devoted to the council's hearing the comments of all residents about whether the project should be supported or not. According to the press release, the council was planning to hold as many meetings as were necessary to assure interested residents could be heard.

Stone added that the city will keep citizens posted about the progress after the opposing attorneys have met and things become more clear.

Copes of the EIR can be viewed at both Pacifica libraries or on the Caltrans website by clicking here under "Route 1/Calera Parkway Project from North of Reina Del Mar to South of Fassler Avenue."