SAN CLEMENTE : Council Delays Vote on Tollway’s Impact

After a packed, four-hour public hearing, the City Council this week postponed its decision on whether to approve the environmental review for the planned San Joaquin Hills tollway.

Council members voted 5-0 to delay deciding their position on the adequacy of environmental documentation for the tollway until the start of a 1 p.m. budget workshop on Wednesday--just one day before the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency’s board of directors is scheduled to decide whether to accept the project’s environmental impact statement.

The board will include one representative from the San Clemente City Council, Councilman Joseph Anderson.

“I don’t see how it is possible to take a firm, irrevocable position tonight,” Anderson said during the public hearing Wednesday.

“I think you (the council) should provide me with your concerns between now and March 14, and I will represent them the best I can,” he said.

Anderson is the alternate to the board’s regular city representative, Mayor Scott Diehl, who was forced to abstain from Wednesday’s public hearing and send an alternate for the tollway agency vote because of a conflict of interest.

Diehl said he holds an interest of less than 3% in a veterinary clinic on Camino Capistrano that could be forced to relocate if one of two potential tollway routes is chosen.

Wednesday’s hearing, attended by nearly 120 people, included a 45-minute presentation by Transportation Corridor Agency officials, who said the tollway’s adverse environmental impacts will be offset by its ability to move area commuters more quickly, reducing air pollution created by snarled traffic.

The 15-mile tollway is planned as an extension of the Corona Del Mar Freeway that will link Newport Beach with Interstate 5 near San Juan Capistrano.

During the hearing, San Juan Capistrano Mayor Kenneth E. Friess supported one design for the proposed interchange at Interstate 5 that would eliminate some businesses in Laguna Niguel. But Laguna Niguel City Manager Tim Casey asked the San Clemente council to support another design that would place the interchange closer to San Juan Capistrano.

San Juan Capistrano Councilman Jeff Vasquez noted that his council recently voted to reject the draft environmental impact report as inadequate, and he asked San Clemente to do the same.

After Wednesday’s hearing, San Clemente Councilman Thomas Lorch’s attempt to have his colleagues take the same action immediately died without support from other council members.

About 40 residents from San Clemente, Laguna Beach and San Juan Capistrano spoke, mostly supporting Vasquez’s plea to declare the environmental documentation to be inadequate. They said the report does not properly address the impact of future development along the route and also questioned funding sources, the claimed air pollution benefits and the tollway’s ability to accommodate electric-powered cars of the future.

Others supported the tollway, calling it a needed addition to the county’s road system and an extra “escape route” for San Clemente residents in a disaster.