Tunnel Study Money Coveted

To the frustration of some Orange County transportation officials, a group of regional water boards is trying to get $15 million in federal money to study a proposed 11-mile road and water pipeline tunnel through the Santa Ana Mountains to Riverside County.

News of the effort by the Riverside Orange Corridor Authority, formed in May, came after the group held its first meeting last month. It was formed to take advantage of federal money that Caltrans will allocate for study of such a tunnel as an alternative to the congested Riverside Freeway.

The water boards want the tunnel because otherwise they would have to run a pipeline 32 miles around the mountains.

On Monday, some members of the Orange County Transportation Authority expressed surprise at the speed with which the group worked.

“It concerns me this agency is going to get this $15 million carte blanche,” said Lake Forest Mayor Richard Dixon, who is on the OCTA board.

Fellow board member and Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle said he wanted the OCTA staff to “be more aggressive” in its reaction to the new group’s formation.

“They seized this,” Pringle said. “They wanted it, and we may miss out on transportation dollars.”

But the new group’s chairman, Brett Barbre, a board member of the Municipal Water District of Orange County, said it was all a misunderstanding. He said Pringle, Dixon and other OCTA officials had been informed of the group’s progress all along and that his group wanted OCTA to join.

Barbre said formal invitations to join the group were mailed Friday to OCTA, the Riverside County Transportation Commission and Orange County’s Transportation Corridor Agencies.

In addition to Barbre’s agency, the new group includes the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the Western Municipal Water District in Riverside County.

In other business, OCTA authorized its staff to negotiate an agreement with six cities along the Euclid Street corridor from Fountain Valley to La Habra to ease traffic flow by synchronizing about 60 traffic lights. Completion of the $585,000 project is expected next year and could spawn similar projects in the county if successful.