Suit Seeks to Halt Jackson Drive Spur Through Park : Traffic: Opponents of road extension say there wasn’t adequate review of the environmental impact report, which they also claim was improperly prepared.

Throwing a legal roadblock into the city of San Diego’s traffic-control plans, environmental and neighborhood activists sued the city Thursday, seeking to halt the four-lane extension of Jackson Drive through an urban park.

Although the City Council voted Nov. 27 to approve the 2.4-mile link through Mission Trails Regional Park to California 52, the city did not properly prepare the environmental impact report that state law requires for the project, the suit filed in Superior Court alleges.

In addition, the suit contends, the council vote came after it sneaked the measure onto its docket, depriving the public of adequate review of the project’s environmental impact report.

The suit, filed against the city and City Council, was brought by a neighborhood group called Citizens Against the Jackson Drive Extension; by the founder of that group, San Diego State University professor Peter Andersen; and by the Mountain Defense League, a group of local environmentalists.

The suit asks a judge to order a halt to the project and to award costs and lawyers’ fees to the activists. No initial hearing date was set.

“I think that it is apparent to anyone (who) watched the process that surrounded this whole issue that things have gone astray and that, from all appearances, politics took precedence over reason,” said April Boling, spokeswoman for the citizens’ group. Andersen was unavailable for comment.

The council’s 5-4 vote on Nov. 27 came after Councilman Bob Filner voted for the roadway without explaining his views.

Boling, 40, a certified public accountant, said the group is confident that the suit will stop the project. The extension, which would give residents in the city’s eastern neighborhoods a north-south connector route and has been part of the city’s General Plan for 31 years, must also earn several state and federal permits before construction can begin.

“When you know something smells rotten, you have a pretty good feeling you should be able to get some legal remedies that will put things to right,” Boling said.

Judy McCarty, the 7th District councilwoman who has championed the project in her district since her first campaign for office in 1985, said the suit was full of empty charges. The council carefully and properly considered the roadway, she said.

“I’m not surprised,” she said, since environmental groups had threatened to file a suit immediately after the Nov. 27 hearing. But, she said, “I am disappointed.”

As approved, the project, which would run north from Jackson Drive’s existing terminus at Mission Gorge Road north to a yet-to-be built east extension of California 52, would require a 1,600-foot bridge across the San Diego River and shorter bridges over smaller canyons.

It has drawn the backing of some homeowners in San Diego’s Grantville, San Carlos, Allied Gardens and Del Cerro neighborhoods, who want relief from cars that cut through their communities on the way to Interstates 8 and 15.

Opponents in those neighborhoods, however, have maintained that the traffic benefits would be minimal when weighed against the project’s cost (which the suit pegged at $50 million and which other estimates have put as high as $85 million) and the potential environmental and aesthetic damage to the park.

The extension would slice through the western section of the 5,740-acre park. Though surrounded by San Diego, Santee and La Mesa, the park supports deer, coyote and mountain lions, the suit said.

According to the suit, the project’s final environmental impact report is dated Nov. 23, the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. The council vote came on Nov. 27, meaning the report was available for only one business day--the next Monday, Nov. 26--in between, the suit said.

Meantime, the suit said, on Nov. 19, when the report was not even available for public review, the City Council directed the city attorney’s office to prepare a resolution certifying the report.

Hundreds of people turned out for the spirited Nov. 27 meeting on the project. That, McCarty said, proves that the council did not engage in deception.

“It was not snuck in,” McCarty said. “Everyone in the community knew when, where, why--the whole ritual.”

The suit claims that the final report contained “substantial changes” to the roadway and added “cumulative impacts” to consider from the proposal put forth in a draft report, and that those changes had to have been separately documented before approval.

For instance, the draft report put the length of the main bridge over the river at 1,300 feet, the suit said. The final report increased the length by 23%, to 1,600 feet.