I wouldn't normally recommend a government document to anyone as a good read, this report from the Transportation Corridors Agencies (TCA) in Orange County is a refreshing exception.

The report was released last week by the TCA in response to the California Coastal Commission's state-of-fear staff report that blasted the TCA's plans to complete its 241 tollroad as hastening the destruction of all life on Earth. OK, I exaggerate the alarmism of the Coastal Commission report -- but not by much.

The opening paragraphs will give you a flavor of this scathing response:

Our review of the Staff Report has discovered factual errors, misrepresentations, distortions, baseless conclusions, and egregiously misleading statements in such numbers and of such extraordinary proportions as to require our response to be stated with an unusual degree of candor. The staff's analysis is further undermined by reliance on zealous non-staff opponents for information. In addition, staff has cited faulty science and weak "engineering" studies that the preparers have acknowledged are flawed.

Faced with a wall of inconvenient truths, the Staff Report attempts to scale it with a hodgepodge of supposition, speculation, hypotheticals, urban legend and anecdotal observations. It is charitable to conclude that the Coastal Staff Report concerning the consistency certification for the completion of SR-241 (also called Foothill Transportation Corridor South, or "FTC-S") presents an inaccurate, one-sided analysis of the project and of the two decade-long federal/state environmental process that resulted in the adoption of the Green Alternative as the least environmentally damaging alternative.

It's a joy to read, and I strongly encourage all readers to do so -- as well as to contact the Coastal Commission

The Coastal Commission staff report is worth reading, as well, because it is an example par excellence of scare 'em school of environmental advocacy masquerading as analysis. The section dealing with widening Interstate 5 as an alternative to completing the 241 makes chillingly clear that to the Coastal Commission staff, the needs of critters matter more than people: in support of completing the 241.