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Published on Saturday, October 01, 2011
By BY DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
Highland will pay $1.5 million for habitat conservation in order to reconstruct the heavily traveled Boulder Avenue bridge.
The City Council voted last week to pay the money, most of which would come from federal grant funds, as one of the final hurdles to rebuilding a bridge connecting the south end of town with the Base Line commercial district.
The money pays for the equivalent of six acres of habitat for the endangered Stephen's kangaroo rat and the Santa Ana River Woolly Star, a flowering sage scrub that relies on fresh river-bottom sand to sprout.
Highland had been planning for five years to replace the two-lane bridge, which connects the four-lane portion of Boulder on its north side with the four-lane section about a quarter mile south of the bridge.
That plan became more pressing Dec. 22, when a portion of the bridge collapsed in a rainstorm so severe that it created a bigger flood than Highland could have expected once in 100 years, according to Roni Edis, staff analyst for the San Bernardino County Department of Public Works.
The storm also forced the evacuation of 200 Highland residents and left two dozen homes at least temporarily uninhabitable.
Since then, the road has been closed, generating complaints from businesses whose customers have to detour along Webster Street to reach them
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