Protect our Puget Sound prairie
The Cross-Base Highway is a destructive, expensive, and unnecessary new freeway through some of the best remaining oak woodland prairie habitat in the Puget Sound. A bad idea in 2007, it remains a bad idea today.
Please email the Puget Sound Regional Council today so they hear loud and strong that the Cross-Base Highway is unwanted. Urge the council to remove the Cross-Base Highway from their preferred alternative project list. It does not belong in our region's plans for responsible transportation.
The Cross-Base Highway is a destructive, expensive, and unnecessary new freeway through some of the best remaining oak woodland prairie habitat in the Puget Sound. It was a bad idea in 2007 and remains a bad idea today. Here are some of the reasons why:
- Only 3% of our state's oak woodland prairies remain. The Cross-Base Highway would flatten 162 acres and fragment 1,600 acres of habitat that Pierce county considers "the most biologically and ecologically rich areas remaining in the lower elevations of Pierce County."
- People don't want it! In a 2003 public poll on regional transportation planning and projects contracted by the Regional Transportation Investment District, the Cross-Base Highway ranked last of all proposed Pierce County projects. Only 10% of those polled stated it was a project of importance to the region.
- It conflicts with new Washington Department of Transportation policies to analyze and reduce our transportation system's contributions to climate change and to protect and restore biodiversity.
- Construction of the Cross-Base highway would impact prime habitat for 19 plants and animals facing extinction, including streaked horned lark, water howellia, Mazama pocket gopher, and Taylor's checkerspot butterfly.
- We should fix existing roads and invest in new modes of transportation before building any new highways.
