13 Officials to Study Transit Systems in Europe : Travel: A former Orange County supervisor and a Yorba Linda councilman are among those going on the trip.

Two Orange County men will be among 13 of the state’s most influential transportation and environmental officials who will leave today on an all-expenses-paid, 12-day trip to Europe to study high-speed railroads, high-tech automobiles and highways and exotic alternative fuel systems.

Former Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, a vice president of Costa Mesa-based Arnel Development Co. and a member of the California Transportation Commission, is among the globe-trotters, as well as Yorba Linda Councilman Henry W. Wedaa, a member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District board.

The trip to Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and other cities is being sponsored by two California business organizations that say they try to preserve a cautious “environmental balance” while combatting environmental extremists.

The California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, an offshoot of the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, will pay all expenses on the $4,000-a-person trip that are not picked up by European industrial hosts, according to foundation director Pat Mason.

Serving as staff for the trip will be two officials of the California Institute for Technology Exchange, Don Camph and Yvonne Ryzak. Mason and Camph said in separate interviews that far from being a junket, this and other annual trips the foundation has sponsored in recent years have been hard-working looks, in Mason’s words, “at how other countries have dealt with technological-environmental issues.”

“I wonder when I’m going to get a nap,” said Mason of the forthcoming trip.

Said Camph: “Our premise is that one of the ways public policy is formed and facilitated is direct exposure of policy makers to what is going on in various societies. . . . I’m not going to tell you we’re not going to have some fun. But it’s basically work.”

He noted that the group will fly economy class and stay in moderately priced hotels.

Among those scheduled to go are three state transportation commissioners who have been skeptical of expenditures for rail right-of-way acquisitions and commuter rail projects, commission Chairman W. E. (Bill) Leonard and members Nestande and Joe Duffel.

Nestande said, “We have a very jammed schedule. . . . We are in Berlin for less than a day.”

The four legislators are Republican state Sen. Becky Morgan, vice chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee; Republican state Sen. Bill Leonard, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus; Assemblyman Jim Costa, a Democrat, and Democratic Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin. Costa recently sponsored legislation authorizing Caltrans to help privately funded rail and road projects with gifts of public rights of way. Easton is a member of both the Assembly Transportation and Toxic Materials committees.

Others going include retired Senate President Pro Tem James Mills, now chairman of the San Diego Metro Transit Development Board; Norton Younglove, a Riverside County supervisor who is chairman of the managing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District; Chris Reed, a Santa Monica city councilwoman who is chairman of the Southern California Assn. of Governments; Wedaa, who is vice chairman of AQMD; Rod Dierdon, a Santa Clara County supervisor who is chairman of the San Jose area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and Nello Bianco, chairman of BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system.

Also going are two businessmen, Jack Coffey, manager of state affairs for Chevron, and Steve Baum, senior vice president and general counsel for San Diego Gas & Electric Co.