by Eric Rice
This is the second of a three-part series on the history of Devil's
Slide.
Periodically throughout its history, the peaceful slumber enfolding the
issue of what to do about Highway 1 at Devil's Slide has been shattered
by episodic fits of feverish interest.
A flurry of activity in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the aim
of approving a six-lane inland bypass to replace the existing Highway
1 between Montara and Pacifica, preceded the tranquil holding pattern
that characterized the issue throughout the rest of the 1960s.
The idea of a bypass was revived again in 1971, only to be forced back
into remission a year later when environmentalists used powerful new environmental
protection laws to halt the project.
Rather than abandoning the idea, however, the California Department of
Transportation (CalTrans) turned its attention elsewhere, biding its time
until, it hoped, frustrated motorists would rise up and brush aside opposition.
But the arrival of Gov. Jerry Brown in 1974 and his pro-environment administration
brought a different vision for transportation in California, one that
turned away from the notion of paving the way to ever-expanding suburbs
with big freeways.
In a deposition taken in 1986 as part of a Sierra Club lawsuit against
the bypass, Adriana Gianturco, Brown's transportation director, described
what she considered the appropriate road for Devil's Slide.
"The highway that was contemplated ... was a basic two-lane road, which
would conform to the existing topography of the land forms," she said.
"Its design was to be in keeping with CalTrans' overall policy of maintaining
Highway 1 in rural areas as a two-lane road."
Bypass passed over
That was not how the Devil's Slide bypass had been envisioned by its
originators. As a result, the bypass became a casualty during the Brown
administration. Money that had been reserved for the bypass was spent
elsewhere.
When Republican Congressman Bill Royer inquired about the bypass, Gianturco
put him off, saying that CalTrans was focusing on "low-cost corrective
measures" and that she could not "justify the expenditure of necessary
resources to proceed with long-range environmental studies" that had been
ordered by the court in the first round of lawsuits against the bypass
in 1972.
Abandoned, but not dead, the bypass limped along through the 1970s, awaiting
the return of an administration that would again embrace it.
The decision by the Brown administration to spend little time on Devil's
Slide was not only political, but also pragmatic.
Other projects, such as the Highway 92/101 interchange, were eating up
transportation funding in San Mateo County, and CalTrans knew it could
expect organized opposition to the bypass at every step.
So the agency decided to focus its efforts in other areas where more
could be accomplished.
One of the few notable activities involving Devil's Slide was the purchase
of McNee Ranch, located north of Montara and right in the path of the
proposed bypass.
In 1978 the state approved the purchase of two parcels of McNee Ranch
land. The two parcels were bisected by approximately 150 parcels of land
that CalTrans had acquired between 1969 to 1972, comprising 55 percent
of what was expected to some day serve as right of way for the bypass.
In winter 1980, after eight years out of the public eye, Devil's Slide
leaped back into prominence because of a dramatic closure of Highway 1.
Three hours after CalTrans crews found cracks in the highway's southbound
lane, a 30-foot section of pavement and rock broke away and tumbled down
the cliff.
Highway 1 was shut down completely for one week, followed by five weeks
of one-way traffic control during the daytime and closures at night.
CalTrans spent $150,000 on new drains, culverts and rock bolts drilled
into the mountain to stabilize the road.
When the work was completed five months later, G.L. Russell, CalTrans
deputy director for Project Development, concluded, "It is my position
... that we have a reasonable expectation of maintaining this state highway
well into the future."
Support reawakens
However, the 1980 closure set in motion a reawakening of support for
the bypass that would fully blossom two years later with the election
of George Deukmejian as governor.
To CalTrans engineer Burch Bachtold a change in administrations and attitudes
was overdue by 1982.
Bachtold, employed at CalTrans from 1948 until his retirement in 1990,
had dealt with Devil's Slide over the years, primarily with its maintenance.
In 1983 under Deukmejian he was promoted to regional director of CalTrans
for its Bay Area office and quickly set about reversing the policies of
the Brown administration.
Bachtold to this day scorns what he says was an "anti-vehicle" and "anti-freeway"
attitude foisted upon CalTrans and the people of California by Brown and
Gianturco.
Some roads that were approved were built, but others, Bachtold scoffs,
were derailed by "anti-everything" environmentalists.
"If they had been built," he asserted in an interview at his South San
Francisco home, "the Bay Area would be a better place."
In the fall of 1981, a group calling itself CRASH (California Residents
After Safe Highways) traveled to Sacramento to present petitions with
7,000 signatures to Gianturco and local representatives demanding that
Highways 1 and 92 be widened.
"We would like to have you put this on your priority list for funding,"
a Montara representative told Gianturco, according to a San Mateo Times
report. "Everyone seems to be in accord that Devil's Slide should be bypassed."
The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors also attempted to get the ball
rolling in October 1981 by offering CalTrans as much as $700,000 to prepare
the environmental study required by court order in 1972, but Gianturco
turned down the offer.
Finally, in January 1982 with pressure mounting to address the issue,
Gianturco ordered Norman Kelley, the Bay Area regional director of CalTrans
at the time, to take a fresh look at the controversy, but with an eye
toward finding a new, cheaper, less environmentally controversial alternative
to the bypass.
MDA emerges
In an address to the Board of Supervisors, Kelley suggested that the
existing road might be fixed. The idea ultimately became the equally controversial
Marine Disposal Alternative.
The idea was to scrape off the unstable side of San Pedro Mountain, dumping
it into the ocean below, and then build a new road on a stable ledge.
Although CalTrans reported in January 1983 that fixing the existing road
this way was geologically feasible, it dismissed it as too expensive.
That same month gubernatorial administrations changed and Gianturco was
replaced by Leo Trombatore, the engineer on the original six-lane bypass
proposal. The shift in approaches and attitudes was dramatic.
Bachtold, the new regional director, told a gathering of city and county
officials that there was "almost a euphoria" within CalTrans over Gianturco's
departure.
But before the new bypass-friendly administration at CalTrans had time
to dust off its old files, Devil's Slide roared back into the headlines
in its old familiar way.
On March 3 sustained, heavy rain caused Highway 1 to be shut down between
Montara and Pacifica when a 300-foot section of the road began breaking
free. The highway wound up being shut down for 84 days, disrupting travel
and business.
Residents demanded a solution, spurring government into action just as
CalTrans had hoped.
Devil's Slide rocketed out of bureaucratic limbo to the top of the five-year
transportation priority lists of both the Metropolitan Transportation
Commission and the county Board of Supervisors.
The Deukmejian administration announced that it had "found" $51 million
for the bypass from the proceeds of a new gas tax. Congressman Tom Lantos,
D-San Mateo, convinced Congress to make emergency funds available for
Devil's Slide.
Even with the momentum provided by the closure, it took CalTrans another
year and a half to complete the required environmental impact study. An
early version of the report was so inadequate that Attorney General John
Van de Kamp protested it in writing.
Finally in December 1984 CalTrans recommended the 6.8-mile Adopted Alignment
bypass from Pacifica to the Half Moon Bay Airport rather than a 4.5-mile
Martini Creek bypass that rejoined existing Highway 1 north of Montara,
and the Marine Disposal Alternative.
The hope was to secure approval for the Adopted Alignment and have final
plans ready by Sept. 30, 1986 - the deadline to be eligible for the federal
emergency money available from the 1983 storms.
But many hurdles awaited.
One was the county's own planning commission, which had been critical
of the bypass and came out in support of marine disposal.
In an end-around, a majority of the board voted, with Supervisors Jackie
Speier and Anna Eshoo objecting, to remove review of Devil's Slide from
the commission's responsibility.
That cleared the way for the board, again on a 3-2 vote, with Supervisors
William Schumacher, John Ward and Tom Nolan voting yes, to approve a change
to the county's Local Coastal Plan allowing the Adopted Alignment, now
planned at four lanes, but expandable to six.
Unusual vote
An unusual and dubious series of events involving the California Coastal
Commission between June and September 1985 raised and punctured hopes
of both supporters and opponents.
In an ironic prelude to its June meeting to vote on the fate of an unsafe
road, a tour of Devil's Slide was interrupted when Coastal Commissioner
Dorill Wright was struck by a truck and suffered mild injury as a group
of commissioners crossed the highway near Pacifica's Shamrock Ranch.
At the meeting that followed, the commission deadlocked 6-6, which meant
the bypass was denied.
Opponents like Nancy Maule and Olive Mayer, who had fought the bypass
for 15 years were jubilant. But the next month the commission changed
its mind. voting 7-5 to allow a rare reconsideration of previous action.
At issue was the vote against the bypass by alternate Commissioner Mike
Gotch. Commissioner David Malcolm had missed the June meeting, enabling
his alternate, Gotch, to vote.
Malcolm said he favored the bypass and would swing the tide back in favor
of it when the matter was reconsidered.
Given his vote to rehear the issue and his public pronouncements of support
for the bypass, newspapers trumpeted the September hearing as a fait accompli.
CalTrans was so confident that it began bulldozing land to make roads
in anticipation of geological testing for the bypass - without getting
a permit from the county.
So bypass supporters were stunned when Malcolm voted against the bypass,
making the commission's vote 6-6 again.
"This is incomprehensible," said a bewildered Jan McClure, of Montara,
chairwoman of Coastsiders for the Bypass.
The commission's denial threw Devil's Slide back to the Board of Supervisors
with the Sept. 30, 1986, emergency funding deadline still looming.
Martini Creek option
Less than a month after the Coastal Commission scuttled the Adopted Alignment,
CalTrans was back before the county pushing for its other bypass alternative,
the 4.5-mile Martini Creek bypass.
And on Feb. 16, 1986, in yet another lengthy and emotional Coastal Commission
hearing, the commission voted 7-5, this time in favor of the 4.5-mile
bypass.
CalTrans followed two months later with approval of the Final Environmental
Impact Statement, the document that had been absent from the project 14
years earlier.
The shorter Martini Creek bypass followed the path of the Adopted Alignment
across San Pedro Mountain, but rejoined Highway 1 near the mouth of Martini
Creek, just north of the Chart House instead of taking the new road farther
south to the Half Moon Bay Airport.
The Martini Creek bypass was designed as two lanes, plus a continual
uphill passing lane on each side of San Pedro Mountain extending past
the summit in each direction and creating for about a half a mile a four-lane
road.
The plans also included "recovery/retention" areas on the downhill sides
and across four bridges.
Although the width of the road would vary from 79 to as much as 100 feet
wide, each of the four bridges would be just 56 feet wide.
Construction of the road would entail seven cuts into the mountains greater
than 150 feet deep and from 350 to 2,100 feet long.
The largest cut at the saddle between San Pedro and Montara mountains
would measure 250 feet deep. Canyons and depressions in the terrain up
to 250 feet deep would be filled in.
CalTrans sought to muffle complaints by promising to re-vegetate the
hillsides, but a judge later said that those efforts were not expected
to be very successful.
A coalition of environmentalists immediately marched into court to halt
the project.
One pair of plaintiffs in the suit, Dana Denman and Tyler Ahlgren, stood
to be impacted by the bypass more than anyone else.
The couple own Shamrock Ranch, a 300-acre ranch that includes pet and
horse boarding, animal feed sales, row crops and cattle. It has been in
Denman's family for more than 70 years.
Either of CalTrans' bypass proposals would take 70 acres of the ranch
and bisect it almost in half, threatening the viability of the ranch.
Other plaintiffs in the suit included the Sierra Club, led by influential
activist Olive Mayer; the Committee for the Permanent Repair of Highway
1, a group of Coastsiders that had been fighting the bypass for more than
a decade, led by a doggedly determined Nancy Maule; and the Committee
for Green Foothills, led by Lennie Roberts, a powerful environmental advocate
throughout San Mateo County.
(Although no action has been taken on the suit in several years, it is
still alive and will remain so until final approval for another alternative,
presumably the tunnel, is secured.)
On Sept. 3, 1986, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Peckham granted a
temporary restraining order against the bypass. Four months later he halted
the bypass completely.
Peckham ruled that a trial was warranted on environmentalists' assertion
that the bypass violated Section 4(f) of the Transportation Act of 1966,
prohibiting any transportation project from using public parkland if there
is an alternative, and unless all possible planning to minimize harm to
the park has been undertaken.
Although environmentalists wound up losing on most of the claims in the
lawsuit, legal maneuvering and a seriously flawed noise element in the
environmental study bought them time.
By the time of the next milestone in the Devil's Slide saga - almost
a decade later - a new cadre of activists brandishing an old idea that
had been passed over 25 years earlier were waiting in the wings to lead
the story to yet another chapter.
Next week, environmentalists regroup, CalTrans gets belligerent, and
the longest road closure yet strains the coast and galvanizes public opinion
for a tunnel.
Read the first article in this series, "Tunnel
dreams-How developers with grandoise plans plotted to build a Devil's
Slide bypass"
Read the third article in this series, "Devil's
Slide - a crisis and a bombshell."
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