pudge's Journal: Gregoire Blames Environmentalists For Viaduct Delays

On Up Front with Robert Mak, Governor Gregoire was asked if the replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct is the biggest public safety threat in Seattle, why has nothing been done for the last seven years, including three years with her as governor?

Gregoire said, yes, it is the most threat, and that there were two reasons why it's not been fixed yet: first, because Transportation was not reporting directly to her until 2005, and second, because if they didn't do environmental impact studies, they'd get sued.

Unfortunately, she does not take the next logical step and say that our current environmental impact study process is clearly doing more potential harm than good. So we'll continue to waste time and money and, potentially, lives, by bowing to the altar of Gaia. Of course, that's not to say that we should completely ignore the environment. But we clearly take it way too far, often doubling the time and cost of projects, for no clear benefit whatsoever.

Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.

Bah.. Environmental Impact Reports..

[Miguelito]

I'm on my local planning group board, and the amount of time and money that has to be wasted on massive EIRs is insane. There's a new project that wants to go in where there's currently a quarry (aptly going to be named Quarry Falls) that's actually a very well designed project. It has a ton of park land, is mixed use (being touted by city people as a great example of the "city of villages" concept being talked about) isn't super dense, etc. They got to the draft EIR stage a month ago.. the thing is massive. I have a PDF of it and it's 556 pages! There's also a seperate appendix with detailed info on the traffic studies and such that's 638 pages!!

You should hear all the "all development[*] suX0rs!!!11!!ONE!" crowd too. I mean yeesh.. you'd think this was a project to kill puppies or something.

Can see the plan online even if you want here [quarryfalls.com]. The developer has had a rep at every planning group and community council meeting for over 3 years now.. and 90+% of the opponents to the project never came to a single meeting to get detailed info or give feedback before the drafe EIR came out.

[*]Except that which built their home of course. Most of the opponents live in the valley (Mission Valley, this is San Diego.. this is just down the road from Qualcomm Stadium) and the VAST majority of them live in housing built in the last 2 decades at most. Funny how their developments were ok.