Photo: Surfrider.org
You may have heard about the odd, pretzel logic is being applied in the most recent chapter of the Save Trestles fight.
Think of this in real life examples.
If you’re given a piece of cake and trying to stay on a diet, cutting it into thirds won’t make it make it have less calories.
If you rob a bank performing the heist in three separate heists that doesn’t somehow make it OK or more legal.
Maxing out a $10,000 limit on three individual credit cards isn’t less damaging than one card with a $30,000 limit.
The above examples make sense to us. They are logical. They are simple. They build on the simple lessons our parents taught us.
Yet this is exactly what the TCA, the company still trying to build a road through a California State Park, is doing.
The TCA exists to build one road, a toll road, which was deemed illegal by the California Coastal Commission and the Bush Administration.
Under longstanding state and federal legal precedent, building the first 4-mile section of the 241 extension would constitute an illegal segmentation of the project.
The very act of starting to build the road necessarily prejudices any later consideration of adding new segments.
This project is dead, and there are no feasible alternatives on the horizon.
Clearly, this segment doesn’t have any purpose other than to be the first part of the longer road. In fact, the only purpose of this exercise is to get the project so far down the road that all alternatives to TCA’s preferred route are foreclosed.
This is clearly just a desperate move to try to salvage a project that’s dead in the water. It is a waste of time, resources, and money.
We will never stop fighting to protect our coastal open spaces, including State Parks which belong to all of us.
