ITD caught with its hand in the cookie jar

Last Friday, ITD received their draft Section 404 permit from the Corps for the bypass project. The part of the story that has yet to be told is that, in the process, they have been caught with their hand in the cookie jar. By this I speak to the fact that ITD management deliberately conspired (hint, I've got the letters) to submit a significantly inflated estimate ($267 million - $425 million) for a 3,900-foot long tunnel alternative to the Corps of Engineers when we had been actively advocating the study of a 1,200-foot tunnel alternative understood to be in the range of $100 million to $125 million.

This is exactly the sequence of events that transpired in California in the 90s on the highly controversial Devil's Side Bypass project along the coast south of San Francisco. Though a public records request a gentleman named Mitch Reed uncovered a Caltrans internal memo revealing that the a deliberately inflated tunnel estimate was used by Caltrans to rule out the tunnel alternative in favor of their preferred inland bypass. Having uncovered this information, the Federal Highway Administration stepped in, ordering Caltrans to re-evaluate the tunnel alternative. The upshot of this story is that just last week construction begin to mine two 4,100-foot long tunnel bores through Montera Mountain along a stunningly beautiful stretch of the California Coast.

It is clear that ITD completely lacks ethical values and that this story is far from being told.

STEVE POTTER

Sandpoint

Citizens for the

Sandpoint Tunnel