BONSALL ---- Caltrans released the first draft of a key environmental impact report Friday with an "e-mail blast" and a flurry of links to online files offering lengthy descriptions of how the last phase of Highway 76 road construction will affect the area's wildlife.
More than 400 pages in the report are devoted to explaining how construction will affect the environment along the last five miles of the highway remaining to be widened ---- the portion between South Mission Road and Interstate 15.
Formally known as the project's "Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement," the document contains the information necessary for the public and a variety of agencies to scrutinize the vast road improvement project at hand, said Caltrans project manager Mark Phelan.
In addition to online access at www.keepsandiegomoving.com, Caltrans has posted hard copies at the libraries in Vista, Oceanside and Fallbrook, and has begun mailing digital versions on disk to those who request them.
"There's many things that are covered ---- biology impacts, visual impacts, noise impacts, community character, conformance with local plans, traffic," Phelan said, listing a handful of the approximately 30 topics explored in the report.
Various alignments were originally considered for the future four-lane segment of highway that covers the most rural terrain along the 76 corridor west of I-15.
Today, only two possible routes remain, Phelan said ---- the so-called "existing alternative," which would roughly follow the course plotted by the current two-lane road; and the southern alignment, which would cross to the south side of the San Luis Rey near Mission and curve back up to the current route about 1 1/2 miles west of I-15.
To widen and improve the existing route would cost an estimated $200 million, whereas the southern alternative is estimated at $320 million because Caltrans may need to buy the 450-acre Vessels Stallion Farm and pay to have the farm relocated, Phelan said.
Nevertheless, 4,500 people have reportedly signed a petition asking the California Department of Transportation to approve the southern alignment. Most local officials say that they also support the more costly southern route, because the creation of a divided highway on the existing route would restrict emergency access to several southeast Fallbrook neighborhoods.
Phelan said Caltrans hopes to address those concerns and others during the 60-day window of public review that began with the document's publication Friday.
Written comments will be accepted by fax, at 619-688-3695; by mail, addressed to Debra Soifer, MS-242, 4050 Taylor St., San Diego, 92110; or online at www.dot.ca.gov/dist11.
Additionally, a public forum-style meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. Sept. 23 at the Bonsall Community Center, 31505 Old River Road.
While a key task of the report is to determine which route is ultimately preferable, Phelan said the environmental details dominate the study because the highway is within sensitive river habitat.
The document spends the most time on biological effects, he said ---- specifically, how the San Luis Rey River valley's four endangered species could be affected.
Those species ---- the arroyo toad, Southwestern willow flycatcher, least Bell's vireo and coastal California gnatcatcher ---- share what Phelan called "associated habitat."
"The vireo lives in the wetland, the gnatcatcher and flycatcher live in the coastal sage scrub, and the arroyo toad lives between the two ---- they go from wetland to upland to breed," he said.
Two-thirds of the way through the environmental report, scientists listed three other federally protected species that may cross the area: the golden eagle and the Swainson's hawk, and the Stephens' kangaroo rat, which "was not detected but was determined to have a high probability to occur."
Phelan said the study released Friday comes after extensive biological research in the river valley, most recently as the basis for a similar report that preceded the highway construction now under way between Mission and Melrose Drive.
"We have been conducting studies out there for more than 10 years," he said.
Construction on the final segment of 76 is scheduled to begin in early 2012 and wrap up in 2015, but before any of that happens, Caltrans is required to make sure it has considered every good idea and its consequences, Phelan said.
"That is what this process is about ---- having people look at the document and give us substantive comments, saying, 'Did you forget about this? Did you think about that?'"
