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paving Paradise--the Spokesman Review articles

The Spokesman-Review published two articles on 10/27 about the new Highway 95 roadway over the shoulder of Paradise Ridge.
The articles are reprinted below...BL
 
 
>Tiny patches may be prairie's last remnants
>Benjamin Shors
>Staff writer
>MOSCOW, Idaho _ The Palouse Prairie once covered 18,000 square miles, a
>fresco of wildflowers, bluebunch wheatgrass and fescue.
>The prairie's soil provided some of the best dryland wheat yields in the
>world, and during the past 125 years, virtually all of it has disappeared
>under the till.
>A 1995 U.S. Geological Survey study found that 99.9 percent of the Palouse
>Prairie has been lost to agriculture. What remains exists mostly in tiny
>patches called "eyebrows" that sit up against ridges too steep or too
>rocky to farm. Paradise Ridge contains "some of the best remaining stands
>of Palouse Grassland in Idaho," according to a report from an Idaho
>Transportation Department consultant.
>Matt Finer, a Washington State University doctoral student studying the
>prairie, said the remaining patches have more than just a "museum-like" value.
>"We are finding some pretty remarkable diversity," Finer said.
>Finer is the conservation chairman for the Sierra Club's Palouse office.
>He believes pollinating insects move from patch to patch, allowing plants
>such as Palouse Goldenweed, which is imperiled, to reproduce.
>But the value -- and authenticity -- of these remnants have been
>contested. Some residents believe even on the ridgetop prairie,
>homesteaders ran cattle and grew hay.
>Even prairie activists like Bill French, who helped start the Palouse
>Prairie Foundation last year, admit that it's difficult to discern what
>land has been altered by ranching or agriculture.
>"So much of what was Palouse Prairie has been converted to agriculture,
>it's hard to know for sure if any of the remnants are undisturbed," he
>said. "That doesn't mean efforts shouldn't be made to preserve what little
>fragments are left."
>The land on Paradise Ridge is privately held, though Finer said
>environmental groups have quickly set up a search for backers to buy the
>remnants. Under ITD's highway construction plan, the department would buy
>60 to 80 acres of Paradise Ridge, a figure Finer said only adds "injury to
>insult."
>He suggests 500 acres, in line with Idaho Department of Fish and Game's
>recommended mitigation for the highway construction.
>But Fish and Game's recommendations are just that -- non-binding advice.
>One state regulator familiar with ITD projects said the department
>"frequently blows off" Fish and Game recommendations.
>"The mitigation proposed is somewhat of a negotiation," said David Kuisti,
>the project's development engineer who acknowledges that ITD did not
>independently assess habitat loss. "It's not mandated that we take (Fish
>and Game's) exact acreage."
>In fact, by law, ITD is only required to mitigate for damage to wetlands,
>which it plans to do on the Paradise Ridge route. There is no such
>requirement for endangered prairie.
>Despite ITD's mitigation, state and federal reports suggest it will be
>difficult to protect the prairie.
>A Bureau of Land Management report identified road-building and invasive
>species as the two greatest threats to the remaining Palouse Prairie. A
>state Fish and Game report found that the highway will "produce growing
>conditions that favor weedy or invasive species, such as reed canarygrass,
>over native species."
>Finer argued that it's next to impossible to mitigate for land that exists
>almost nowhere else in the country.
>"Nature," Finer insisted, "is really not nature next to a four-lane highway."
>###
>
>http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=102702&ID=s1242250
>
>Paving Paradise
>
>``The state wants a highway here? It's unimaginable.'' - Matt Finer, a WSU
>doctoral candidate studying the prairie
>MOSCOW, Idaho _ Tucked against Paradise Ridge, the small patch of low
>shrubs and bunchgrass appears unremarkable.
>Yet this 10-acre parcel south of Moscow is one of the last, best remnants
>of the Palouse Prairie, one of the most endangered ecosystems in North
>America.
>It is here that the Idaho Transportation Department plans to build a $17
>million, four-lane stretch of highway, past the hawthorn bushes and wild rose.
>"There's really no Palouse Prairie left," said Matt Finer, a Washington
>State University doctoral candidate studying the prairie. "Paradise Ridge
>is one of the last good spots. And the state wants a highway here? It's
>unimaginable."
>But it is the route chosen by the Idaho Transportation Board last week
>over the objections of the state Department of Fish and Game,
>conservationists and local homeowners.
>The department's plan to re-route a curvy section of U.S. Highway 95 moves
>the road over Paradise Ridge, a popular landmark south of Moscow.
>Opponents accuse ITD of ignoring public comments, sacrificing endangered
>prairie to protect some of the most fertile farmland in the country, and
>failing to conduct a safety study of the proposed route.
>A Spokesman-Review examination of the plan also found that:
>•Although Idaho Fish and Game stated that the road would destroy 465 acres
>of wildlife habitat, ITD proposed only 60 to 80 acres of mitigation. But,
>in reaching its decision, the department did not independently analyze how
>many acres of habitat would be destroyed. Rather, ITD's proposal was based on
>the length and width of the paved road.
>•A focus group selected by ITD chose a route that will force the state to
>buy 130 acres from a relative of one of the focus group members. The
>property owner, a longtime Palouse farmer, concedes the 130 acres have
>little agricultural value and other routes would have "really divided my
>farm up." Two members of the focus group stood to lose homes if the
>existing highway were expanded -- the other alternative ITD offered.
>•ITD has not studied the weather conditions on Paradise Ridge, despite
>testimony from homeowners and environmental groups that the area receives
>significantly more snow, more days in fog and more ice. Instead, ITD
>relied on the observations of a maintenance foreman to compare the weather
>conditions.
>•ITD charged residents $126 for copies of the plan. The plan was not
>provided on cheaper compact discs -- like many other state and federal
>documents -- nor posted on the department's Web site, or available in
>public libraries. The department held public meetings after its focus
>group had chosen the route.
>•The four-lane highway will run through one of two remaining low-elevation
>stands of ponderosa pine between Moscow and Lewiston. The forest contains
>pygmy nuthatches, great horned owls, two species of woodpeckers and
>red-tailed hawks. According to Fish and Game, 89 percent of ponderosa pine
>habitat in Latah County has been lost.
>On Oct. 18, the transportation board approved the plan.
>On paper, its argument was simple: the Paradise Ridge route provides a
>straight shot south to Lewiston.
>"It's shorter, and we use less farmland," said Bruce Sweeney, the board's
>District 2 representative. "Also, we don't destroy any houses."
>Of the environmental concerns, Sweeney said: "If everybody wanted that to
>be a preserve, well, that's something that should have happened 15 years ago."
>But conservationists say there is a growing respect for the prairie. Last
>year, the Palouse Prairie Foundation formed. It called ITD's mitigation
>"blatantly inadequate."
>"We don't have any shortage of farmland," said Bill French, a Moscow
>optometrist who has fought the highway. "What we don't have much of is
>Palouse Prairie, ponderosa pine and places like Paradise Ridge.
>"It's like the transportation department picked the stupidest thing they
>could do, then went with it."
>Critics say the proposed expansion is the latest environmental debacle for
>ITD, which has been repeatedly sanctioned by state and federal regulators
>for sloppy construction and poor planning over the last decade.
>This spring, state environmental regulators fined ITD $70,000 for
>discharging massive amounts of sediment into Lake Coeur d'Alene during
>construction on a separate Highway 95 project. After issuing repeated
>warnings, a state Department of Environmental Quality regulator wrote that
>ITD appeared to be "deliberately delaying mitigation."
>The Environmental Protection Agency followed up with 17 federal
>violations, chastising the transportation department to "get its act
>together."
>"If this were a private company they'd either be in jail, or socked with
>such a large penalty it'd catch their attention," said Coeur d'Alene
>attorney Scott Reed, who has sued ITD numerous times in the past 20 years.
>"They're acting with an arrogance that I think is incredible."
>But others argue that concerns about the Palouse Prairie are overblown.
>Bob Clyde, whose family began farming on the Palouse in 1877, said
>untouched remnants were "a notion that exists in the minds of
>environmentalists."
>The highway over Paradise Ridge will take 130 acres of his worst farmland.
>The rocky soil is of such poor quality, Clyde said, it has been out of
>production for more than a decade. ITD provided a preliminary estimate on
>how much it will cost to purchase Clyde's land: $156,000.
>"This was the best of the alternatives," said Clyde, standing in a field
>of tall wheatgrass near the proposed path of the highway. "Those others
>really divided my farm up."
>Clyde said he "doesn't have the power" to shape where the highway is built.
>But his cousin Sherman Clyde, a district highway commissioner, did.
>Sherman Clyde, who stood to lose a home if the existing Highway 95 was
>widened, sat on an ITD focus group that chose the route.
>The focus group, chosen by ITD following interviews, included a second
>property owner whose home would have been lost if Highway 95 were
>expanded. Other group members included a representative of the trucking
>industry, an ITD representative, a second highway district commissioner,
>and representatives of the city of Moscow and Latah County.
>"It bothers me quite a bit when they start talking about Palouse Prairie
>and one thing and another, when we've got people getting killed on this
>road," he said. "Along Paradise Ridge is the only way for it to go."
>ITD reported 115 accidents from Moscow south to Reisenhour Hill in the
>last five years -- about 23 accidents per year.
>"Is that a high number?" asked Ken Helm, the project's transportation
>planner, rhetorically. "I don't know."
>The focus group made its decision nearly two years ago, according to
>Clyde. But because federal money will pay for the road, ITD was required
>to have a second option.
>Moscow Mayor Marshall Comstock said the city told ITD it favored "almost
>any" alternative that didn't expand the existing Highway 95 corridor,
>which would wipe out homes and businesses.
>ITD responded with two choices: expand the existing Highway 95 route or go
>over Paradise Ridge.
>"It's our position that of the two options presented, the (Paradise Ridge)
>option is the best," Comstock said.
>He downplayed the environmental concerns, stating that most people would
>be unable to discern original Palouse Prairie from surrounding disturbed
>grassland anyway.
>"For the novice, they could not tell which area that is compared to very
>similar-looking areas along the ridge," he said.
>Opponents, who have collected more than 700 signatures opposing the
>Paradise Ridge path, are threatening to sue the agency if it moves forward
>with the plan. Many favor re-routing the road to the west, through
>farmland, where it would more easily tie into a proposed bypass of Moscow.
>"I can't understand why all of the western routes were eliminated without
>any justification or explanation," said John Holup, a retired University
>of Idaho business professor who lives near the ridge. "We've never been
>able to go to a meeting and have an official, on the record, answer a
>question of any kind."
>But the focus group rejected the western routes. Helm, the transportation
>planner, said western routes would have required paving of several access
>roads.
>"The focus group was really pinpointed to two areas -- Paradise Ridge and
>the existing highway," he said.
>ITD did not assess whether routes to the west would have had fewer or less
>significant environmental impacts.
>"I don't think anybody knows what the environmental concerns would be on
>the western route," said David Kuisti, the project development engineer.
>"We can't analyze them all. In a given time frame, we picked what we felt
>were the best choices."
>Zach Funkhouser, ITD's senior environmental planner, agrees.
>"It's almost impossible to answer that without a study," he said. "You
>don't know what you're going to find until you go out there."
>Nor did ITD conduct any study of weather conditions on the ridge, despite
>homeowners' testimony that Paradise Ridge receives more fog, more snow and
>more ice than the existing low-elevation route.
>Instead, the agency relied on the daily observations of a maintenance
>foreman who lives nearby. Those observations did not measure temperature
>or snowpack. Visibility was based on the foreman's observations.
>Additionally, Idaho Fish and Game predicts that the road through deer, elk
>and moose habitat will likely cause "a number of big game/vehicle
>collisions in the future."
>ITD plans to put up a fence to keep wildlife off the road.
>"We've got a lot of other miles that our district engineers have seen,"
>said Kuisti. "I guess we don't expect anything out of the ordinary on that
>hill."
>###
>http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=102702&ID=s1242303
>
>
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