It’s time to get behind a plan six decades in the making, to improve Stanislaus County
Issuing an opinion on the future Highway 132 expressway west of downtown Modesto without offending a whole bunch of people would be impossible.
But here goes: The new Highway 132 route will be good for Modesto and Stanislaus County.
There. I’ve said it.
I didn’t say it will be good for west Modesto and Wood Colony. Some think it will, because a new 4-mile expressway without stops — running just south of Kansas Avenue, from Needham Street to join Maze Boulevard at Dakota Avenue — should attract all the rush-hour traffic now invading neighborhoods, leaving them much calmer.
Still, it’s a major change to have a new freeway just down the block, or around the corner. If I lived there, I wouldn’t be happy either.
I’ve talked to dozens people there, over the years, for articles in The Modesto Bee before taking over the editorial page in March. I scrutinized volumes of reports, attended community meetings and walked door-to-door chatting with neighbors. I quoted scores, took pictures of some and videotaped a few. They are sincere, good people and they have a right to express their fears, and even their anger.
In nine years, I’ve written 79 reports on this project. Twenty, in some form, were about barium-laced dirt in stockpiles dumped there decades ago. Neighbors had valid concerns that the heavy metal might seep down into groundwater, or could be inhaled when construction stirs dust. And a freeway segment is sure to bring noise and disruption.
People were right to voice concerns over the years. Government was right to hear them.
Scientists say no one is getting sick or dying from the barium. Crews will cap the hills with freeway concrete for new bridge footings.
The latest clamor is from a neighborhood northeast of Morse Road and Kansas, whose residents ask for a soundwall between their homes and the expressway. They’re perhaps most vulnerable, because the road will be about level with houses there, as opposed to further east, where the expressway will dip below grade, running under Carpenter Road and Rosemore Avenue.
I sympathize with them. The roadway design does not favor them.
This will sound harsh, but they shouldn’t be living there.
Government leaders have been planning this road for more than six decades. Wisely, they began buying up land for it long ago, saving taxpayers many millions of dollars because they don’t have to buy it now.
Foolishly, however, Modesto leaders saw fit to approve plans for houses almost next to that very route in the late 1980s. What were they thinking? Did they assume, for some reason, that the road never would be built? Or did they just decide that any conflict with neighbors would become a problem for someone else?
It’s not the fault of residents that government failed to plan well.
Neither is it the fault of today’s leaders.
Eight years ago, representatives from Stanislaus County and its nine cities joined in a united effort to move the Highway 132 idea toward the finish line. It was a remarkable thing, seeing leaders from outlying communities, like Newman and Patterson and Waterford and Oakdale, set aside some items on their wish lists in favor of a new road not near them that might boost the economy for everyone.
Some big shots, like Beard industrial tract’s Chris Murphy, had been lobbying for a better link with the Bay Area for their trucks. Eventually, he and other business people won over Denny Jackman, the area’s premier farmland preservation advocate and a former Modesto councilman who was raised and still lives in west Modesto.
Nearly two decades ago, Jackman served alongside former Councilman Bruce Frohman, also a west Modesto resident. Frohman took the other view and has thoroughly and tirelessly criticized the Highway 132 plan, writing opposition pieces for The Bee and at least two other publications. He is an honorable statesman, makes many valid points and has no doubt forced improvements to plans.
And then there is Terry Withrow, the county supervisor whose district includes this stretch of road. No less than three political opponents — Scott Calkins in 2014, and Katherine Borges and Tony Madrigal last year — raised Highway 132 questions among voters in hopes of ousting Withrow. But he stuck to his guns in support of the new expressway, never wavering while absorbing bruising criticism from some of the neighborhoods he represents.
He could be a target yet again at Tuesday’s open house meeting where transportation people will explain how upcoming construction will roll out. It starts at 5 p.m., with a presentation at 5:30, at Modesto Church of the Brethren, 2301 Woodland Ave.
My job makes me among the first to question and criticize officials, sometimes harshly, when The Bee’s Editorial Board feels such criticism is warranted. In this case, it’s not.
A new link toward the Bay Area and its economic powerhouses will help lift our profile. Efficiently moving people and goods is important to the future of our entire region, not just Modesto. Most leaders from throughout the area, whatever their faults, have looked to the future and have seen this freeway as a good thing.
I do, too.
This story was originally published November 17, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
