Danger Apparently Still Being Ignored by Planning Division

(All pictures are courtesy of Maureen and Dan Smith, Wheeler Hot Springs)
In a August 21, 2006 letter regarding the Ozena Valley Ranch Mining project, the Board of the Ojai Valley Municipal Advisory Council warned Christopher Stephens, then the Director of Planning for the Ventura County Planning Division and now the head of the entire Resource Managment Agency for the County, that “SR-33 has suffered many landslides and slipped roadways in past years. The vibration created by the mine’s trucks on SR-33 may be adding significantly to the problem of road slippage, slumps, and slides. No review of vibration as a potential impact on SR-33 has been included in the Draft MND and vibration from trucks may present a significant adverse impact on the environment.”
In February of 2008 a portion of Route 33 collapsed into the river. Below are a dozen photographs of the damage done, indicating the collapse was far more significant than originally reported.

In August of 2008, the Stop the Trucks Coalition requested nine months of Ozena Valley Ranch trucking weigh tickets from Christopher Stephens in order to determine the mining operations degree of compliance with their permit. The tickets requested were from December 1, 2007 through August of 2008. A prior review of weigh tickets from August and July of 2007 by “Stop the Trucks,” indicated that possibly as many as 55% of all trucks traveling through Ojai were in violation of permit restrictions. This figure was approximately 10x the amount of violations County Planning staff reported in their own study.

The “Stop the Trucks” complaint about the inadequacy of Planning Division staff reviews and assements of violations was seconded by County CEO, Ms. Marty Robinson, in her September 30th letter to the Coalition. Christopher Stephens, response to our request for nine months of recent data was to instead provide us with only one week from April of 2008, claiming that the Agency had no other weigh tickets in its possession.

Christopher Stephens claim that the Agency has no other weigh tickets is directly contradicted by other letters and emails the Coaliton has recently obtained in a second Public Records Request. In those letters Planning staff discuss reviewing weigh tickets in response to a citizen complaint from that same nine month period.

The “Stop the Trucks” Coalition is left wondering if this failure to disclose is simply an error or in fact part of a larger pattern going back to Mr. Stephens’ days as Director of the Planning Division of a possible unwillingness to monitor violations of a project for which he once had oversight.

The warning from the Ojai Valley Muniicpal Advisory Council to monitor road vibrations and related issues seems to have been totally ignored in early drafts of EIR oversight scoping documents, also obtained duirng the course of our Public Records Request.

In July of 2007 – nine months before the road collapsed – Caltrans District 7 investigators concluded in a now controversial traffic study that State Route 33 is maintained to provide safe travel for all motorists, and is designed to accommodate large trucks.

Scott Ellison, a planner with the Ventura County Planning Division, who worked under Mr. Stephens, 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.”

After the collapse, 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.”

The “Stop the Trucks” Coalition has repeatedly questioned whether the vulnerable road should be open to any heavy gravel trucks. The Coalition has not only questioned why the possibility of such a failure had not been predicted during the Caltrans study of Highway 33, but why extensive studies of the impact of gravel trucks are seemingly being systematically excluded (along with many other issues) from the EIR review process.

The MAC letter also noted that “The proposed Project Description includes references to truck trips increasing from 66 Average Daily Trips to 132 Average Daily Trips (ADT). By using Average Daily Trips, both in the Project Description and proposed mitigation measures for Noise and Vibration, and Traffic and Circulation, Planning staff has failed to actually limit daily truck traffic. Using an average provides for extremes in actual trips.
In addition, mitigation measures based upon using ADT may also have significant adverse environmental effects associated with them because the actual number of trips per day cannot be controlled. Furthermore, monitoring an average would be nearly impossible. If monitoring is nearly impossible, then the proposed mitigation measure is infeasible and does not comply with the intent of State and County environmental requirements.”
You be the judge, Ojai…

Tagged as: stop the trucks