ER - City threatened with potential lawsuit

City threatened with potential lawsuit
by Shane Mizer, 12/2/2005

In a letter mailed Wednesday to Eureka City Manager David Tyson, Jim Clark threatened litigation if the city does not respond to demands to cease efforts to develop the Waterfront Drive extension.

“Continued pursuit of this project will not only lead to wasted expenditure of public resources on a doomed project, but may incur the additional cost of legal defense,” Clark, president of the Redwood Region Audubon Society, wrote in the letter.

If the city continues the development on the Waterfront site, Clark said the next letter they receive will be a 60-day notice to sue. The letter begins with a reference to California Coastal Commission Executive Director Peter Douglas’ Oct. 5 letter to Tyson, which urged the city to cease activities associated with the development of a new road behind the Bayshore Mall on the Waterfront property between the south end of Del Norte Street and Hilfiker Lane.


“We see no way this project can be recommended for approval by the commission since it is clearly inconsistent with applicable, enforceable policies of the California Coastal Act,” the Douglas letter stated.

The main point of the CCC’s argument against the Waterfront Drive extension plan, according to Coastal Planner Jim Baskin, rests on there being no provision in the California Coastal Act for the filling of wetlands for construction of a new road.

The list of signatories to accompany Clark included representatives of the North Group Redwood Chapter of the Sierra Club, North Coast Chapter of the California Native Plant Society, Environmental Protection and Information Center, Humboldt Baykeeper, Humboldt Watch and Humboldt Watershed Council.

“It just means that somebody might sue them,” Claire Courtney, president of the Northcoast Environmental Center board of directors, said when asked if NCEC had plans to file a lawsuit against the city based on the letter. “The letter is self-explanatory — it doesn’t mean anything other than what it says.”

Larry Evans, president of EPIC’s board of directors, told The Eureka Reporter that a lawsuit has not been drafted yet, but that when analyzing and writing about a project, EPIC is always creating documentation that could potentially form the basis of a lawsuit.

“It’s a recourse we will use if necessary, but we don’t want to go there,” Evans said.

Both Evans and Clark said their agencies intend to file a lawsuit if the city does not heed their warnings and continues with plans to develop the Waterfront Drive extension.

For more than 30 years, plans have been under way to construct an alternative roadway that would diminish traffic congestion on Broadway. Lands and funds originally acquired by CalTrans were later transferred to the city in 1984 for this type of development.

The Environmental Impact Report due sometime next year will present studies exploring the potential biological and archeological impacts as well as traffic congestion relief and noise disturbance impacts that would result from the Waterfront Drive extension. So far, the city has used federal funds to conduct the study and is hoping that it will be allowed the opportunity to at least consider the ramifications of the project before making any decisions to halt it.

“To me, there’s no mistaking the message,” City Attorney David Tranberg said. “What these people are saying is there’s no middle ground and that we either throw in the towel now or we’ll be sued.”

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