Bypass proposal sparks grazing issue

Mendocino County landowners have learned through meetings with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has eliminated grazing on most of the land managed for wetland mitigation as part of a Highway 101 bypass project around the town of Willits. This comes as a surprise to Mendocino County ranchers John and Charline Ford of Willits, who say the sale of their land to Caltrans included the assurance that they would be able to lease back the land for grazing. "This project was presented to us by Caltrans as including grazing. What upsets me about this is that it is not the same as what they presented to us last year," Ford said. Ford indicated that they probably would not have sold their property if they knew there would be no grazing. While the California Water Board and the California Department of Fish and Game were in favor of grazing the land last spring, Dave Kelley, Willits Bypass project manager for Caltrans, said by November he learned that the Army Corps would not issue Caltrans a (Clean Water Act) Section 404 permit for the construction of the bypass until the mitigation plan eliminated grazing on the majority of the mitigation property...more

This is the kind of thing that never shows up in an ESA cost study. $16 million and still counting, but it's from the state budget, not the federal.

Here you have a state agency who doesn't comply with a federal rule and who pays the cost? The private citizen.

This also demonstrates what the CWA can do to grazing.