news story / By Heidi Walters

O, Eucalyptus!

Should they stay or should they go?

(Jan. 8, 2009)  We pause now to interrogate a couple hundred of our longest-enduring residents. Experts tell us these old-timers are in the way. Creaky old limbs. Messy. And, besides, they’re not really from around these parts, are they? Australia, actually. And, though they do smell rather nice and get lovelier with each passing year, the fact is many of those eucalyptus trees lining the 101 corridor between Eureka and Arcata are in the way of progress. Out with the old, you know.

So, Eucalyptus globulus, what’s your purpose? Why should we keep you around? What good are you?

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Well, of course, the trees can’t answer. All they can do is rustle those long, silvery-green leaves, peel off a dappled shred of bark, drop some pungent nuts. Or, if they want to make the case for their own removal, they could chunk a limb down on somebody.

Instead, the interrogation turns to us, the other residents of the Humboldt Bay region. What do we think about Caltrans’ proposal to cut about half of the eucalyptus on the Eureka-Arcata 101 corridor? The chop-down would be part of a bigger project, long in the works, to make the expressway safer by bringing it up to modern transportation standards, according to Caltrans. Caltrans is considering different scenarios for the stretch, from doing nothing to closing the six at-grade median crossings, long considered hazardous, adding strategic lanes and signals and either putting in turnaround points or an interchange at Indianola. Some of the alternatives would include construction of acceleration and deceleration lanes, including for the California Redwood Company’s mill on the west side of the expressway so that slow-moving trucks coming in and out of the mill no longer clog the travel lane. Tree removal also would make space for the required 30-foot “clear recovery zone” — room to careen in an accident, basically.

According to Caltrans’ environmental impact report on the project, about 300 eucalyptus, of a total 600-some in the entire corridor row, would be removed. Some people, like history buff Ron Kuhnel of Eureka, say the count is too high — that there are really only about 450 trees, which are multiple-trunked in some cases, and so only about 150 to 200 would be cut. Regardless, the visual effect would be the same — roughly half the row gone.

Caltrans has been working on the corridor improvement project for eight years. In the fall of 2007, when Caltrans finished the draft EIR for it, the tree cutting proposal raised some ire. A coalition of groups, from Keep Eureka Beautiful to Green Wheels to the Northcoast Environmental Center, complained that the EIR lacked some key considerations — like a separate bike path, for instance — and that cutting the trees was a bad idea. But it wasn’t until late 2008, when a Times-Standard story came out about the eucalyptus trees, that the real stink over them began, says Caltrans’ Kim Floyd, project manager for the corridor improvement project.

“Since [that article], we have received quite a bit more comments on the eucalyptus trees than we ever did in the draft EIR circulation,” Floyd said. “At the Dec. 3 public hearing [at the Wharfinger], we had close to triple the amount of people attend than were at previous public hearings.”

In Caltrans’ draft EIR, the historical assessment declares that the trees have no significant historical value and suggests that the trees probably were planted by the state highway commission (the precursor to Caltrans), or perhaps by a private landowner in cooperation with the commission. Lots of people were planting eucalyptus in those days as windbreaks and light barriers, and the state started a nursery program in 1920 to grow them and other trees.

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