By the end of my third day of living high in the wick drain stitcher in the northern construction area of the CalTrans Willits Bypass (Saturday, June 22nd), I felt as though in the throes…
Posts published by “Will Parrish”
The first time I saw one of the Big Blue Towers, I was perched about seventy feet above it, albeit more than a half-mile to its north. It was this past Friday, May 17th, and I was sitting in a four-by-eight platform suspended from the crotch of a several-hundred-year-old valley oak tree, which stands like a sentinel on the edge of an Oregon ash grove north of Willits, adjacent to Highway 101.
Since late-May, opponents of CalTrans' Willits Bypass have conducted four occupations of the wetlands area where Big Orange's construction contractors are installing 80-foot drainage tubes, or "wick drains." The initial three of these non-violent direct…
Tanya Ridino ran the Mendocino County Courthouse Self-Help Center for five years. Last week, she scaled a valley oak that CalTrans intends to cut to build the Willits Bypass
A few weeks ago, Julia French released a concise, well-crafted video called “How CalTrans Sold the Willits Bypass” that focuses on the ways in which the project is based from top to bottom on misinformation.
On May 14th, I ascended roughly 70 feet into a 100-foot tall valley oak that stands in the path of the California Department of Transportation's proposed six-mile freeway (“The Willits Bypass”) through Little Lake Valley.…
In Little Lake Valley, aka the Willits Valley, CalTrans is preparing to destroy the largest area of wetlands as part of any Northern California construction project since at least 1977. That was the year the…
On May 7th, Caltrans goes hat-in-hand to the California Transportation Commission (CTC), which allocates funding for California transportation infrastructure projects, to request $30.986 million for the wetlands and riparian areas “mitigation” plans that I describe…