14 DAY TRIAL // Companies and organizations that disrupt the natural balance of certain regions should pay for their actions. This path will be followed by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans).
Caltrans is a government department in the U.S. state of California which took care of the construction and the maintenance of Highway 1, a route crossing Presidio of San Francisco, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems.
Presidio is an amazing park on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula in San Francisco, California, within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Caltrans has to take $10 Million (€7,386 million) out of its pockets to cure Presidio’s Mountain Lake and to reposition Highway 1's drainage system, in order to avoid future contamination, reports the Environment News Service. Progress is sometimes achieved at the environment's expense, and the new highway does not make an exception. The United States dragged the department to court, after experts established that the area was severely affected by pollution.
The judge decided Caltrans should pay for clean-up operations, as Mountain Lake's sediments revealed the presence of abnormal levels of lead, copper, zinc and other compounds.
As a consequence, the department will have to come up with $5.5 million(€4.062 million) to minimize its impact upon the ecosystem, other $4 million(€2,954 million) to divert the entire project so that Mountain Lake could be protected from all sources of pollution and $500,000(€368,150) representing a part of the legal costs.
Officials from the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the Department of Justice consider that justice has been made and hope that this legal framework will change the fate of the biodiverse ecosystem that has been threated by human activities for decades. According to the Department of Justice, the total settlement is worth $13.5 million.
Presidio, located on San Francisco Bay, was used for 218 years as an army post. At this point in time, it has a significant historical, cultural and recreational value. It attracts thousands of tourists every year and it represents the natural home of over 200 different species of birds, due to its combination of various surfaces, such as grasslands, forests, marshes and coastal scrub.
The representatives who will take care of the clean-up operations hope to be able to restore the territory's balance in less than two years.
“The Trust is working closely with regulators to ensure that the cleanup of Mountain Lake is protective of human health and the environment.This settlement with Caltrans will allow us to stay on schedule and complete the remediation of lake sediment by 2013,” stated Eileen Fanelli, environmental remediation manager for the Presidio Trust.
Caltrans is responsible for the state's highway system, including the California Freeway and Expressway System). Its main goal is to ensure mobility across the state, but the Mountain Lake incident proves that public transportation is not always on the right path to sustainability.