OP-ED: Public Safety Before Protected Species

The following Letter to the Editor was submitted for publication by Lake Elsinore Councilman Robert Magee:

Early one morning in April 2004 a school teacher at Butterfield Elementary pulled out onto Highway 74 and was t-boned by a dump truck. The impact fatally injured a 9-year-old girl who the teacher was taking to school.

News of the tragedy spread quickly through the Lake Elsinore Valley and my wife who ran the Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) was contacted to bring her people to the school site. Over the course of the next two days, TIP counseled more than 400 students, teachers and administrators who had been rocked by this event. When I came home that night I found my wife praying in the living room with our neighbor, a substitute teacher and his youngest son who was a student at the school. The event had a profound effect on our community and my wife made me promise that I would work to make a change.

The change my wife insisted on was a re-design to the historically dangerous intersection at Gunnerson Avenue & Highway 74. The intersection was not at a 90-degree angle and was proceeded by a sharp blind turn further obscured by dense foliage (i.e. habitat). At a high rate of speed, a driver would not have enough time to stop if a slow-moving or stalled vehicle were to enter the intersection and that is what had occurred.

So, I began to reach out, first to my City staff, then to the Riverside County Transportation Commission, then Caltrans, County Flood Control, the Army Corp of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife, our State Assembly member and on and on.

It seemed that this intersection was adjacent to some habitat for protected species. The area had been preserved by the Army Corp in cooperation with County Flood and Fish and Wildlife, and none of them were interested in providing additional land (i.e. habitat) to make the road safer. Our, then, State Assembly member Kevin Jeffries passed legislation to allow Caltrans to relinquish responsibility of this stretch of road.

But, Caltrans would only agree to give us the liability and was unwilling to help fund and physically correct the unsafe situation. And, no one would grant us environmental clearance.

It was true there was no quick, easy or cheap fix here, but as the years dragged on and the excuses continued so did the accidents including two more fatalities. Then, I met Basem Muallem, the 6th Caltrans Director I had lobbied. Over the period of nearly two years I hounded him, and he listened. He promised me that he and Caltrans would find a solution since it is a State Highway.

In 2015 Basem, true to his word found a solution. He set aside money from the State Highway Operation and Protection Program to construct acceleration and deceleration shoulders and a protected left turn lane. The environmental analysis still had to be done (for a third time), but the money had been safely earmarked.

In May, 14 years later, the Hwy 74/Gunnerson Avenue Safety project was finally completed, with all of the environmental safeguards in place. As I sat there studying the final product I couldn’t help but wonder if the massive guardrail structures had been placed there to protect the humans or the habitat.

At some point, we need to take back our government and remind the bureaucrats that the safety of the public should trump the safety of a bird or a bug. Sadly, Basem has since retired, who will step up next?

Robert "Bob" Magee
Lake Elsinore
City Councilman