Orange County Toll Roads--Flying on a Wing and a Prayer

A small bird long on instinct but short on that what we humans call intelligence is sending a message to all of us, including the county Transportation Corridor Agencies and their experts who prepared the environmental impact report.

The bird is the least Bell’s vireo, a federally protected rare bird whose existence is threatened by the construction of several miles of tollways that can be expected to generate several hundred thousand car excursions daily in South Orange County, along with tons of lung irritants, 24-hour noise emissions and elevated human stress.

This little bird speaks no words, lacks a college education and never even went to grade school, yet its very existence has exposed the environmental impact report for the corridor as inadequate and misleading with major errors and misrepresentations about wildlife in the area, according to federal officials interviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

In effect, an environmental ignorance report.

In my own review of the San Joaquin Hills Corridor environmental impact report, I found the report seriously flawed in its assessment of the mule deer and the air pollution to be generated by vehicular traffic.

Ambient air quality, the report stated, would not be adversely affected by emissions from an estimated 130,000 cars per day if a comparison were made with the same number of cars moving helter skelter without the corridor.

Moreover, nary a tree was to be planted along the corridor even though trees have the natural system for combatting at least one of the toxic emissions cars generate. This fact was communicated to the corridor agencies during the public comment period with a request that mammoth tree planting be a part of the corridor process.

The least Bell’s vireo has no lobby to plead for its life. It has no voice to urge a torrent of mail in the unmistakable language elected officials and our bureaucracy can translate into action--the voice of concerned voters.

Since the small bird is unable to speak, let me say what it might say with the gift of speech:

“The same Creator that created me created you. Only you were given dominion over life on earth with the power of life and death over me and my kind. We do not want to disappear forever from the earth, yet you and your kind are killing us. Never forget, however, that when we go, you and your kind will not be far behind.

“Do not cry for us if we go. Cry for yourselves.”

AL NASSER, Irvine