Caltrans tunnel plan threatens ancient redwoods for landslide-plagued highway

The Last Chance Grade tunnel project embodies a false choice that typifies infrastructure decision-making in the climate era: a single, multi-billion-dollar engineering fix for a highway that is critical for a tsunami-prone town of about 6,000 residents, but which would directly destroy ancient redwoods that have stood for centuries. Caltrans' Final Environmental Impact Report, released in May 2026, acknowledges the project would damage old-growth groves, yet proposes offset credits and off-site restoration as mitigation. Save the Redwoods League argues this is inadequate because no offset can replicate the ecological complexity and carbon storage of a mature redwood forest. The cost has risen from initial baseline estimates of $2.1 billion (in 2031 dollars) to $2.7 billion currently, and construction would take 6–8 years, with no guarantee that the tunnel won't trigger new erosion or hydrological shocks to the surrounding forest.

From a climate-and-public-lands lens, this is a quintessential example of how fossil-era infrastructure investments continue to drive deforestation and carbon emissions, even when justified by safety needs. The highway is the only realistic road linking Crescent City to Humboldt County—not the "only coastal link to Oregon," as sometimes claimed—but the tunnel would still fragment one of the last remaining old-growth redwood corridors in the world. A truly climate-resilient alternative would involve investing in managed retreat, improved evacuation routes, and multimodal connections that avoid sacrificing ancient forests. Taxpayer dollars—already stretched by climate disasters—are being locked into a project that harms a carbon sink while perpetuating car-dependent infrastructure. The core conflict is not safety versus trees; it is a failure to imagine a lower-impact pathway that serves both people and the planet.