Dispute Over How Much to Cover : Plan to Extend I-15 Gains Amid Debate

A San Diego City Council committee approved an agreement Wednesday to extend Interstate 15 through East San Diego with only one block covered, despite the objections of the city Planning Department and appeals by some residents to have an eight-block stretch covered.

The committee voted unanimously to direct the city manager to sign an agreement with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) for construction of the $82-million project, which includes $12 million to cover the freeway between Polk and Orange avenues and build parks in adjacent neighborhoods.

However, the Planning Department and several residents of Kensington, Normal Heights and City Heights opposed the agreement, arguing that a longer segment of the 2.2-mile freeway extension should be covered to cut noise and air pollution and maintain the “cohesiveness” of the three communities.

“The form, the character and the cohesiveness of the mid-city community would be severed (by the freeway’s construction),” planner Allen Jones said. “A bare minimum of two blocks (of cover) is necessary to satisfactorily reknit the community.”

Jones said that to cover only one block would not satisfy the provisions of the state Environmental Quality Act, while members of the Normal Heights Community Development Assn. claimed that an eight-block cover was mandated in the Mid-City Community Plan, passed by the City Council in December.

Although committee members said they would prefer to have eight blocks of coverage, the issue, they said, is money: Each block of coverage would cost about $12 million. Stressing that Caltrans’ offer to fund one block of coverage was unprecedented, Tom Hawthorne of the California Transportation Commission told the committee that money for any additional coverage would have to be raised elsewhere.

The other limitation facing the committee was time, since the city has to reach an agreement with Caltrans by July 1 or risk having the funds for Interstate 15 diverted to another project.

“I firmly believe that covering (the entire eight blocks of the) freeway is the best way to go, but at some point you have to look at reality,” said Councilwoman Gloria McColl, whose district includes the freeway extension. “I’m very confident that we’re going to find the funds for at least one more cover.”

McColl moved for approval of the agreement, promising residents the city would try over the next three years to get enough money from state and federal agencies and the private sector to pay to cover more blocks of freeway. However, committee chairman Uvaldo Martinez said this promise was not enough.

“I don’t think that it provides the community with any assurance that we would pursue additional coverage wherever feasible,” Martinez said. He then proposed an amendment to the agreement guaranteeing the coverage of at least two additional blocks “if funding is secured.”

The amendment satisfied committee members McColl and Mike Gotch, who had been hesitant in their support of the original agreement. Councilman Bill Mitchell, who was highly critical of the proposal, was not present for the final vote. The matter will go before the full council May 7.

But while both the committee and Caltrans were happy with Martinez’s compromise, opponents of the uncovered freeway were not.

“It isn’t as bad as it could have been, but that doesn’t mean that it’s good,” said Normal Heights resident Dorothea Edmiston, co-chairwoman of Save Our Canyons. She said the committee is considering legal action against Caltrans to require funding of additional freeway covers.