COUNTYWIDE : Hearing to Address San Joaquin Tollway

A public hearing tonight will focus on the environmental failings and merits of the proposed San Joaquin Hills tollway, which would cut through some of Orange County’s most ecologically sensitive terrain but also promises to help ease the region’s pressing traffic woes.

Several groups opposed to the project say they will attend the hearing and some promise to picket the meeting.

The $667-million tollway has drawn fire from environmentalists and homeowners near the route, which branches off Interstate 5 at the southern end of Mission Viejo and meanders northwest to end at the Corona del Mar Freeway in Irvine.

But officials with the Orange County agency devoted to building the tollway say they are working hard to address any concerns and remain resolute that the highway will be built.

Wetlands that are paved over by the road will be re-created elsewhere, they say. The highway will also be built to accommodate the migratory paths of deer and other animals by creating passageways beneath the pavement.

In addition, the tollway will be carved through the canyons so a minimal amount of earth has to be removed from hillsides, creating a road that will be picturesque, they say.

“We have been straightforward with our intentions,” said William C. Woollett Jr., executive director of the tollways agency. “We have modified (the tollway) and are still willing to modify it, but we’re going to build it.”

However, residents of communities from Laguna Beach to Leisure World are concerned about the highway’s potential effect on everything from pollution to property values. Others complain that the tollway would only help spark a development boom in an area already choked with houses.

Environmentalists are concerned that the highway would trample one of the last remaining vestiges of Orange County’s bucolic past, pushing a ribbon of asphalt through land that ultimately is expected to become a wilderness park.

“We don’t want to see this thing built,” said Michael Phillips, executive director of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., a group opposed to the tollway. “We’re going to try very hard to stop it.”

The hearing is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Laguna Hills High School, 25401 Paseo de Valencia.