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by Steven T. Jones, Staff Writer
Public outrage and a letter from Cal Poly President Warren Baker could succeed in doing what the legal challenges couldn't: change the State Water Project pipeline alignment through campus lands.
Many environmentalists and Cal Poly faculty members object to a proposed pipeline alignment through sensitive wetlands and a grove of ancient oak trees in Poly Canyon. Phil Ashley, a technician in the biology department, put up thousands of dollars of his own money in an unsuccessful legal challenge of the alignment.
Nonetheless, as recently as last month, officials with the Department of Water Resources told New Times that the alignment was a done deal and no changes would be made.
Yet a Feb. 27 letter from Baker prompted top DWR officials in Sacramento to fly down for a long meeting Monday morning. And that meeting yielded a DWR pledge to pursue an alternative route.
"They are now looking at alternatives to the current route," said Frank Lebens, Cal Poly's vice president of administration and finance. "Itwas a direct response to President Baker's letter."
Bob Potter, the deputy DWR director who made the trip to Cal Poly, confirmed that it was Baker's letter to director David Kennedy that prompted the meeting and the department's willingness to be flexible.
The letter pointed out that the sensitive habitat and ancient oaks that would be destroyed are not only intrinsically valuable, they are an important "instructional laboratory" for students in the Biological Sciences and Natural Resource Management programs.
"We hope that we will be able to reach an agreement with the DWR to shift the pipeline route away from these sensitive environmental areas that play a part in the university's educational mission, " Baker wrote.
The university is this month hosting a national "Symposium on Oak Woodlands," featuring the head of the U.S. Forest Service as the keynote speaker. Baker noted this irony in his letter.
"It should be obvious, then, that protecting this land and the oak trees that are part of the university's practical, leam-by-doing academic emphasis is extremely important," Baker wrote.
The Baker letter also demonstrates that the longtime president of the California State University system's top campus has political clout in Sacramento. Baker's letter came at a time when extensive local media coverage of the situation was helping to galvanize the campus and environmental communities.
Just last month, project opponents were few in number. A tour that environmentalist and professor of English Steven Marx gave of the project site drew just 10 participants. On Saturday, March 2, the same tour drew nearly 150 people, including San Luis Obispo Mayor Allen Settle, former mayor and current supervisorial candidate Peg Pinard, two television crews, and a long list of Cal Poly students and faculty members.
Among the tour participants was Norm Pillsbury, head of Cal Poly's Natural Resources Management Department. He said that any student who turned in to him a project like the DWR proposal would have gotten a bad grade.
Pillsbury, who also participated in Monday's meeting with Baker and the DWR officials, said Poly Canyon presents an opportunity to demonstrate innovative ways to thread a pipeline through an environmentally sensitive area.
That sentiment seems to be one held by the entire campus community. "We stand together with the university in opposing the plans as they now exist, " Marx told the crowd on Saturday. "There are real hopeful signs of progress to save these lands."
Potter said the DWR has agreed to consider an alternative route, and he expects a final decision to be made in the next couple weeks. "We are trying to find a more sensitive way through the grove that the campus is concerned about," Potter said. "We were not as sensitive as we could be to the trees at the time [the route was adopted]."
But Potter also expressed frustration with the process, saying the route through Poly Canyon had taken into account myriad concerns from the Department of Fish and Game, while not encroaching on the Southern Pacific railway.
"The route we have is probably the best route as far as the minimum number of stream crossings," Potter said, noting Fish and Game's chief concern.
Yet Ashley of Poly's biology department doesn't agree that the current route is best for streams. True, it minimizes the number of streams crossed, but to do so it crosses streams in areas with sensitive riparian vegetation and bedrock pools. And Ashley worries that with the focus being put exclusively on the trees, the impact on streams will only get worse with the new alignment. "I can see a bad decision coming out of this even though everyone's intentions are good, " he said. "It would be terrible if we create more stream impacts just to minimize the oak impacts." Ashley said simply moving the alignment 50 to 100 yards would avoid sensitive stream area and the oak stand. But he is not being allowed to give input into the DWR decision. "It's hard to know what they're addressing," Ashley said.
Potter said the solution will come from existing environmental documents, rather than any new studies. He noted that a construction contractor has already been hired and is waiting for directions. "Just the fact that we stopped to talk will cost more money," Potter said.
So a change in the project appears likely. What that change will be is still a mystery.
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