ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

In a letter from Doug Failing, Caltrans District 7 Director, to Supervisor Bennett, the Caltrans chief concluded, "As long as trucks and vehicles abide by the existing regulatory and warning signage, the travel through the subject corridor can safely accommodate the design envelope of the 'California Legal' truck."

The collapsed portion of Highway 33 will take several months to repair, according to Caltrans

Recent OVN stories quote Caltrans officials that "Years of erosion by the creek below caused the slope underneath the road to give way, and the part of the road to collapse"

The Stop the Trucks coalition has repeatedly questioned whether the vulnerable road should be open to heavy gravel trucks. The Coalition has also wondered why the possibility of such a failure,had not been predicted during the Caltrans study of the safety of the mountainous portion of Highway 33.

The study of the Highway from the five points intersection through Pine Mountain and its descent into Lockwood Valley, released at the end of May 2007, after taking over three months to complete, determined that, according to Caltrans, the road was indeed safe for all motorists.

Maria Raptis, spokesperson for Caltrans District 7 said that the study had focused exclusively on the geometric design of the road for safe and orderly movement of vehicles. According to Caltrans engineers it did not focus on the stability of the roads or the hydraulics."

When the "Study" was concluded last year, mining advocates and some County Planning officials in both Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties cited the study to reinforce their positions.

Scott Ellison, a planner with the Ventura County Planning Division that issued the Conditional Use Permit for the Ozena Mine was quoted in the Ventura County Reporter last year as saying, “They concluded it was safe for the trucks, as long as they followed the posted limitations.” Ellison added that Caltrans examined the “radius of the turns, the way the turns are sloped — road geometrics, looking at the height of the tunnels, for instance, blind curves, these sorts of things. They felt the road geometrics were safe for the trucks. As a local agency we’re not likely to challenge a Caltrans safety study that’s two weeks old that looks at the road segment we’re interested in.”

Gary Kaiser, the Santa Barbara County Planner who led the drafting of the 2007 staff report on the proposed Diamond Rock Mine apparently thought so little about the safety issues related to Route 33, that they were practically ignored in his draft.

By way of contrast, Michael Shapiro, the current chair of "Stop the Trucks," wrote in an op ed piece last summer,

"After months of stalling, Caltrans has responded to Ojai’s request for a safety study of Route 33, finally releasing six-pages to conclude that the highway is, in fact, safe and appropriate for heavy, large-scale, industrial trucking. Taking its cue from the industry and industry lobbyists who desired that finding - without regard to the health, safety and welfare of the people here in the Ojai Valley - the Caltrans “study” is a patently outrageous travesty and a whitewash."

You be the judge, Ojai…