Bill Would Put Brake on Toll Road Through State Park

The final link in Orange County’s massive toll-road system may face a major roadblock if a bill introduced last month by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) passes this spring.

The proposed law would make illegal new roads and other development in state parks, unless the project is approved by a two-thirds vote in both houses of the California Legislature. Builders’ preferred plans for the $644-million, 16-mile Foothill South toll road call for it to run through San Onofre State Beach--a proposal that the road’s backers fear the new law would kill.

A lobbyist for O.C.’s toll roads approached Hayden’s office asking that the Foothill South project be exempted from the bill, which goes to committee April 13.

“We said no,” said Kate Neiswender, a consultant for Hayden on the Senate Natural Resources and Wildlife Committee. “If you start running roads through the middle of these things, it will undermine the purpose of the entire biodiversity district.”

The bill, while not specifically targeted at the Foothill South project, is the latest shot in an increasingly contentious battle between toll-road officials and environmental advocates. The groups bitterly disagree about the impact of a major thoroughfare through some of the last pristine coastal land in Southern California.

“Many laws on the books [deal] with the impact of building in parks, and we’re following all of those rules,” said Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which has built 51 miles of toll roads in the county.

Hayden, chairman of the natural resources committee, said he believes a principle is at stake.

Said Hayden: “Should a county be able to come along and destroy the park because it is inconvenient for moving cars through the area? That way we’ll be turning state parks into state parking lots.”

Susan Withrow, a TCA board member and Mission Viejo councilwoman, said such legislation is shortsighted and potentially harmful to local projects, she said.

“This turns the process upside down,” Withrow said. “They sit up there in their ivory towers in Sacramento and pass legislation that affects real people. It is critical to Mission Viejo and South County that this road get built. The traffic demand is already there.”

About 75% of trips through the corridor will be by those whose commutes take them outside the county, said Telles, who said that, without the new road, the brunt of growth in South County will be felt by communities such as San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano.

Three routes are proposed to connect Oso Parkway with the San Diego Freeway near San Clemente. Toll-road officials’ preferred route is the one that cuts through the state park, the state’s 10th most visited and the home of seven federally protected endangered species.

The environmental impact of the proposed routes is being evaluated. Toll-road officials hope to start construction on the Foothill South segment in 2003.

Environmentalists say they object to the road regardless of route. Still, a law that would prevent it from going through San Onofre State Park, which is in San Diego County just south of San Clemente, would be considered a victory, said Dan Silver of the L.A.-based Endangered Habitats League.

“There is no way to mitigate for the damage this road would do,” Silver said.