Bridgeport’s new Main Street.

Painting the Town in Bridgeport

A new striping scheme was applied to fresh overlay pavement on Bridgeport’s Main Street/US 395 just eight short weeks after the Main Street Revitalization Design Fair concluded at the end of August. Drivers traveling through the community of Bridgeport should no longer expect to pass that slow RV in front of them in the middle of town. Instead, the new street design features two travel lanes, a center turn lane, bike lanes, and a mix of back-in angle and parallel parking that invites travelers to slow down and perhaps stop and explore Bridgeport’s historic town site.

The change was developed and vetted during an intensive and well-attended Design Fair consisting of multiple community workshops. Dan Burden, a nationally recognized walkability authority, and the Local Government Commission (LGC) led a Design Team that included Michael Moule, a traffic engineer from Nelson\Nygaard, and several designers/planners from Opticos Design to explore options for enhancing Main Street. 78 people attended the final workshop, where the overwhelming consensus was to reduce the number of vehicle lanes to two with a colorized center turn lane. A majority of participants also supported back-in angle parking and curb extensions.

Immediately after the Design Fair, local outreach by Bridgeport Valley Regional Planning Advisory Committee (RPAC) members and Main Street business owners, Bob Peters and Steve Noble in particular, built additional consensus on the location of back-in angle parking.

The project, funded by a Caltrans planning grant to build upon recent regional corridor planning efforts, was initiated by former County planner Tony Dublino with the assistance of Caltrans’ Forest Becket and LGC’s Steve Tracy. With Dublino’s promotion within the County, Wendy Sugimura stepped up as project staff and implemented the work program.

Casa Diablo IV EIS/EIR review

The Bureau of Land Management recently issued a Draft Joint Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report (Draft EIS/EIR) analyzing a proposal to develop additional geothermal resources near Mammoth Lakes in Mono County, California.

A 60-day public comment runs through Jan. 15, 2013. Public meetings will be held Dec. 5 at the Mammoth Lakes Community Center and Dec. 6, at the Crowley Lake Community Center. Both meetings run from 6 to 8 p.m.

The proposed 33-megawatt Casa Diablo IV Geothermal Development Project would be built on the Inyo National Forest within existing federal geothermal leases and private lands. It would include construction of a new geothermal power plant and substation, up to 16 new production/injection wells, multiple pipelines and access roads. A 650-ft long transmission line is proposed to interconnect the new power plant to the existing Southern California Edison substation at Substation Road. The proposed Casa Diablo IV plant, substation, access roads, well pads, pipelines and transmission line would occupy approximately 80 acres.

The agency preferred Alternative 3 differs from the applicant’s proposal in pipeline alignments and the location of one well.

The Draft EIS/EIR may be reviewed at the BLM Bishop Field Office at 351 Pacu Lane, Suite 100, Bishop, CA 93514, and the Mono County Library at 400 Sierra Park Road, Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546. Additionally, CD-ROM versions of the Draft EIS/EIR may be obtained by contacting the Bishop Field Office. The document is also available on the Internet at: http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/bishop.html.