Federal case against Caltrans is awarded injunction until July 2011 in which project bidding may commence unless Caltrans is found to have violated environmental regulations. Which they have, in the Richardson Grove "Improvement" Project(RIP) Environmental Impact Report(EIR).
Bidding for the RIP cannot commence until July 2011 and any type of road work, vegetation removal, etc. for the RIP until after 30 days after the project goes to bid.
Many thanks to EPIC, CATS and The Center for Biological Diversity for their hard work on this very important matter. Please help support the Federal case against Caltrans by donating to these well respected non-profit environmental organizations.
It is very important to continue to put pressure on Caltrans with direct action to stop this project...
Just a technical note, as I understand it... CalTrans 'agreed' not to begin advertising the bidding on the Richardson Grove project until July 1, 2011. The parties in the lawsuit made this agreement, called a stipulation. The difference between that and an injunction, as I understand it, is that with an injunction, the court (the judge) would have made the decision to stop something from happening (ie the bidding) based on the court finding that imminent harm was likely to happen if it went forward. So, the difference here is that the parties in the lawsuit created this stipulation (agreement), but the court has not yet made a determination of that harm, and the court has not ordered an injunction. (Horrible system we have) It's great that the lawyers fighting the project got CalTrans' lawyers to put it off until July 1st! And of course, like Jeff said, its important that we keep the pressure on! We all have lots of work to do.
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