Intense, wiry, and conspicuously devoid of any facial hair, Judge Thomas Anderle can in no way be mistaken for Santa Claus, but for critics of Caltrans’s proposal to widen Highway 101 from Santa Barbara to Carpinteria, Anderle’s ruling this week qualified as an early Christmas present.
In a strongly worded, 76-page decision, Anderle found the environmental analysis conducted by Caltrans to be “legally flawed” and “defective,” ruling that the report “utterly failed” to address the increased congestion the freeway-widening project will generate for nine Santa Barbara intersections — 15 when looking at the cumulative impacts.
Anderle concluded “there is no evidence” Caltrans ever considered the actual impacts to the intersections in question but, even so, that the state highway-building agency consistently concluded “the overall benefits” of the project far outweighed any potential problems. “It was an abdication of Caltrans’ responsibility,” Anderle concluded, “to consider and resolve every fair argument that can be made about the possible significant environmental effects of the project.”