The California Coastal Commission has given a green light to the Green Bridge replacement in Point Reyes Station—but not without expressing deep concerns about a giant redwood tree whose fate hangs in the balance.
Responding to public outcry, the commissioners instructed Caltrans to exhaust all plausible alternatives to removing the towering redwood before proceeding to cut it down. And first they must lay out their reasoning to the commission’s executive director, who will make the final call.
The town’s green-trussed bridge is nearly a century old and spans Highway 1 just north of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard. It is located within a half-mile of the San Andreas fault.
Caltrans plans to remove the redwood when it replaces the bridge in the summer of 2026. Installing the span, which will be assembled offsite, will require two mammoth cranes and the relocation of power lines along the bay side of the highway.
To make room for the cranes, PG&E plans to reroute the wires across the road and string them to a temporary pole that would require removing the 80-foot tree, which stands between the Point Reyes Animal Hospital and Lagunitas Creek. The tree towers over the creek and an embankment shrouded with willow trees, and it provides shade to the animal clinic.
The debate over the tree dominated the commission’s discussion of the bridge project last Thursday. Larry Bonner, head of Caltrans’ Office of Environmental Analysis, told commissioners that the agency had already considered alternatives to removing the redwood, including the installation of underground utility lines, using taller poles and routing the lines behind the animal hospital.
“While all of these would save the redwood tree,” Mr. Bonner said, “all would result in an increase in impacts to private properties, native riparian vegetation and coastal wetlands.”
Renegotiating the necessary construction easements could delay the project for several years and endanger its funding, he said.
But Mary Whitney, the veterinarian who owns the property on which the tree stands, told commissioners that Caltrans hadn’t given the matter sufficient consideration.
“From the beginning of my involvement in this eminent domain process, it’s been very clear that Caltrans had not done the work to explore the full impact to the environment,” Dr. Whitney said. “I’ve had to request three on-site meetings to learn that the plan was to remove a healthy, majestic redwood tree to make room for a temporary power pole.”
She urged the commissioners to postpone their vote until Caltrans had completed a more thorough study of alternatives.
Dr. Whitney was skeptical that the condition laid down by the commissioners would change the state agency’s plans, saying the wording includes a loophole that would allow the agency to move ahead after presenting “bogus alternatives.”
Several commissioners urged Caltrans to take a closer look, including Dayna Bochco, who said she did not believe there were no feasible alternatives.
“My particular concern here is you’re saying you can’t do something when, in essence, you haven’t really gone the full route to find out if you really could,” she said.
Commissioner Roberto Uranga echoed her concerns.
“I’m not a tree hugger, I’ll be honest,” he said. “But I do believe in life, and trees have life, and we should not consider this in such a perfunctory way.”
The bridge is a gateway to town with visual and cultural importance, said Chris Desser, a Marin County planning commissioner, former coastal commissioner and Point Reyes Station resident who addressed the commission on Zoom.
“Please require Caltrans to find an alternative to killing this tree,” she said. “Too often, Caltrans takes the approach that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is such an example. There is almost always more than one way to solve a problem.”
Many of Dr. Whitney’s supporters sent letters to the commission in advance of the meeting or spoke on Thursday, urging them to save the tree. One of them, Shannon Gray Collier, said she had sat in the center of the tree’s five trunks and experienced its majesty.
“I have felt the immensity of her history, of her deeply grounded existence,” Ms. Collier said. “She is truly worth fighting for.”
When construction commences, traffic on Highway 1 will be closed in both directions for at least three weeks, transforming the 10-minute drive from Inverness to Point Reyes Station into a 25-minute commute through Olema, over Platform Bridge Road and past Black Mountain.
The project has been in the works for years, delayed in part by a 2018 lawsuit filed by locals who regard the bridge as a historic piece of the landscape. They argued that it should have been retrofitted rather than replaced, but two years later a Marin Superior Court judge ruled against them.
The new bridge—a nondescript concrete span—will do away with the green trusses in favor of low steel railings. It will have 5-foot-wide shoulders and a 6-foot sidewalk, widening the current crossing by 6 feet to meet the standards of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The project is expected to take a year and a half to complete. Traffic will be one-way for unspecified periods before and after the three-week total closure.
Since the work will require removing trees along the creek bed, to mitigate environmental impacts, Caltrans will plant new trees and install a walking path on the grassy county-owned lot just up the highway at the corner of B Street.