Key decision nears for high-speed rail

Sierra Club urges Altamont route for wetlands protection

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) is about to make a crucial decision on the route for high-speed rail (HSR) between the Central Valley and the Bay Area.

For many years the Sierra Club has supported California HSR for its energy-efficiency and reduced pollution, but the route needs to be carefully planned to ensure that it does not create other forms of environmental damage.

The decision has come down to basically two choices: the Altamont route or the Pacheco route. The environmental community unanimously favors Altamont, but powerful business interests have been pushing for Pacheco. We need your help to get the CHSRA board to support the Altamont route.

The problems of Pacheco

All versions of the proposed Pacheco route bisect the Grasslands Ecological Area (GEA), which contains the largest contiguous block of wetlands in California, bigger even than Suisun Marsh. The GEA in its 180,000 acres includes a large portion of the remaining Central Valley wetlands, once 20 times larger than today. The GEA, designated a Wetlands of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, is home for 550 plant and animal species, some endangered or threatened. It also contains increasingly rare types of freshwater wetlands and native grassland.

HSR along Pacheco would increase development pressures on the GEA, and could also affect the Bolsa de San Felipe near Gilroy, designated by Audubon California as an Important Bird Area.

Misinformation

Pacheco backers have downplayed the environmental risks of Pacheco and inflated the difficulties of Altamont.

They claim that Coastal Commission approval is required to build an Altamont crossing, even though the Coastal Commission has no jurisdiction on matters inside San Francisco Bay. They allege that it would be impossible to build another Bay crossing, even though the new Benicia-Martinez and Carquinez Bridges have been constructed just recently.

Pacheco backers make hay over the fact that an Altamont route crosses the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. They imply that environmentalists would block HSR construction if Altamont is chosen. In fact, the Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge (CCCR), whose leaders helped create the refuge, strongly opposes a Pacheco Pass route and would accept an Altamont route - as long as appropriate mitigations are put in place. CCCR would prefer for HSR to be tunneled under the refuge, but would consider a route across a rebuilt Dumbarton rail bridge that restores to the refuge tidal flows that are now obstructed by the existing structure.

The Draft Program Environmental Impact Report/Statement (EIR/S) has serious flaws, obscuring the great environmental differences between the routes. The Sierra Club, in partnership with about a dozen other groups, submitted 67 pages of comments on it.

We fear that all these misrepresentations are being orchestrated by interests eager to profit from development along parts of the Pacheco route.

HSR success depends on doing it right

The financial and political success of HSR depends on the route decisions.The first phase of HSR needs to attract as many riders as possible, and to do that, it must go where the people are. HSR should be designed to concentrate growth in already-developed areas with existing infrastructure, not in precious wildlife habitat like the GEA. An Altamont route serves our most congested and populated corridors, and will contribute to HSR's financial and political success.

A Pacheco route would add 41 extra minutes to future HSR travel time between San Francisco and Sacramento, and an extra 29 minutes between San Jose and Sacramento. This would make it much less competitive with other modes of travel. Altamont would also be slightly faster between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It would add just 10 minutes between San Jose and Los Angeles, making it still very competitive compared to other modes.

The environmental impacts of an Altamont route can be fully mitigated. As CCCR concludes, "the adverse impacts of the [Pacheco] alignment are significant and cannot be mitigated."

WhatYouCanDo

Write to:

The Honorable Quentin Kopp and Boardmembers
California High-Speed Rail Authority
925 L St., #1425
Sacramento, CA 95814.

Urge them to choose an Altamont route and reject Pacheco.

Margaret Okuzumi