S. Pasadena Hopeful on Placing Leg of Freeway

City officials are guardedly optimistic that they can block or slow down selection of the Meridian Variation as the last link of the Long Beach Freeway, even though state bureaucratic wheels continue to grind toward that choice.

Recent developments have given the City Council new hope that the state Department of Transportation may be forced to conduct lengthy new studies, including consideration of a city-proposed westerly route that uses land in the Arroyo Seco. Among the developments:

The Federal Highway Administration, which must ultimately approve the route, has implicitly raised the issue of whether Caltrans has sufficiently considered all the feasible routes for the freeway by questioning the applicability of a state law protecting the Arroyo Seco.

The state Supreme Court has ruled in an unrelated case that there must be wide-ranging environmental impact reports, examining all of the possible alternatives, before major projects are begun.

A panel that advises the federal government on the historic implications of major public works projects is questioning whether state planners have done enough to avoid historic structures.

“I’d hate to say I’m more optimistic now,” said City Councilman James Hodge. “I don’t want to sound cocky. But I personally feel there’s a good chance of overturning the Meridian route.”

Meanwhile, the route selection process, reportedly on a fast track since the beginning of the year, continues.

Caltrans is polishing its final environmental impact study on the Meridian Variation, recommending that the San Bernardino, Foothill and Pasadena freeways be connected by an eight-lane link running through the center of the city. The route would roughly follow Meridian Avenue, though veering around some historic homes in the northern part of the city.

The Federal Highway Administration, which will provide 86% of the funding for the $425-million project and must ultimately approve the report, has made its own suggestions on fine-tuning it. But officials of the agency would not comment on them.

Working Full Time

“Federal lawyers have been working at it full time, and there have been a lot of requests for clarification,” said a transportation official who asked not to be named. “They’re extremely nervous about it.”

But, he said, Caltrans “is putting a lot of pressure on the feds to clear the environmental report.” The state agency has “just about run out of patience” with federal hesitancy, said the county official.

The plan could become final, federal officials say, when the federal agency endorses the environmental report and, 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, issues a “record of decision.”

South Pasadena officials have openly espoused the Plan B route as a less damaging alternative to the Meridian Variation. Plan B would shunt the freeway away from the center of the city, skirting the Los Angeles city line and cutting into the Arroyo Seco before swinging north.

Council Criticized

The City Council has taken considerable heat from residents of South Pasadena’s west side, who have bitterly criticized city efforts to reroute the freeway to their neighborhood.

The picture is clearly looking brighter for Plan B since state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) appeared to pull the carpet out from under the city three weeks ago by declining to introduce legislation that would have permitted Plan B to encroach on the Arroyo Seco, the dry riverbed that skirts South Pasadena’s western edge.

The legislation was to have been the linchpin in the city’s attempts to stop Caltrans from placing the freeway along Meridian Avenue. The bill would have eliminated state restrictions on building new freeways in the Arroyo, removing a major barrier to Plan B.

But since then, a Federal Highway Administration lawyer has raised questions about Caltrans’ reasons for excluding the Plan B route from consideration, suggesting that the federal agency could build in the Arroyo despite state law.

Plan B Dismissed

Until Caltrans performed preliminary studies last month, the state agency had maintained that there was no reason to consider the Plan B route because state law prohibited the use of Arroyo Seco land for freeway purposes.

“There are two problems with that alignment,” said Jack Hallin, Caltrans’ chief of project development for the region, “state law and federal law.”

But David G. Ortez , regional counsel for the Federal Highway Administration, said last week that federal law has precedence over any state constraints. The applicable federal law in this case, the Transportation Act of 1966, prohibiting the construction of federal projects on parkland unless “there is no feasible or prudent alternative,” also protects historic properties, he said.

Ortez said that if the federal agency determines that protecting historic homes in the Meridian Variation’s path is more prudent than protecting a swath of Arroyo Seco land needed to build the Plan B route, “then state law has got to give.”

As Ortez was informing city representatives that federal highway officials could conceivably select a freeway route such as Plan B “that under state law cannot be built,” the state Supreme Court ruling provided further support for the city.

A Key Ruling

That case was brought by a group of San Francisco residents who challenged the University of California’s choice of their neighborhood to conduct potentially hazardous biomedical research. The court, applying a strict reading of the 28-year-old California Environmental Quality Act, ruled that the university should be required to consider other sites, not just assert that its chosen alternative was safe.

“The ruling is applicable here, because Caltrans, in order to meet the requirements of the California Environmental Quality Act, should have to do comprehensive studies of all the reasonable alternatives,” contended Ralph Ochoa, South Pasadena’s Sacramento-based lobbyist.

The city has maintained that Caltrans’ environmental study is flawed because it did not consider all reasonable alternatives, including the Plan B route .

Historical Properties

Adding to the Federal Highway Administration’s worries is the continuing concern about the Meridian Variation’s effects on historical properties. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, which advises the federal government on the historic implications of major public works projects, has urged more study before the Meridian Variation is approved.

Despite Caltrans’ remapping of the Meridian route two years ago to protect some historic properties, the Meridian Variation would still damage or destroy 69 of the stately architectural gems in the city’s Buena Vista district, noted representatives of the advisory council.

“You certainly can’t take anything for granted,” said Councilman Hodge guardedly, “but there’s so much weight of evidence indicating that (the Meridian Variation) is not a proper route, that it’s a very destructive route.”

According to all official accounts, the environmental process required by both state and federal law in selecting a freeway route is drawing to a close.

‘Final Touches’

“We’re putting the final touches on the environmental document,” Hallin said.

Once the Federal Highway Administration reviews the final document and the report is published in the Federal Register and a record of decision is endorsed, said Hallin, the environmental process is over--”short of a court case, of course.”

South Pasadena has already announced it will challenge Caltrans’ efforts to lift a longstanding federal injunction, imposed 15 years ago after an action brought in federal district court in Los Angeles by a group of plaintiffs that included South Pasadena and the Sierra Club.

But even if the injunction is lifted, said Bruce Cannon, California administrator for the federal highways agency, the route choice could be “re-evaluated” by the federal bureaucracy. “You can always open up an environmental document and re-evaluate it and possibly select another alignment, based on changed conditions,” Cannon said.

Two weeks ago, the City Council suggested for the first time that it may consider rejecting any extension of the freeway through South Pasadena. City officials await new developments deadpan, like poker players holding an ace or two.

“What’s next?” said City Manager John Bernardi. “That’s the $64,000 question.”