Way Cleared for Tollway Work by Year’s End

After more than a decade of often rancorous debate, the agency planning the 15-mile San Joaquin Hills tollway on Thursday approved a key environmental document that could allow construction to begin on the landmark highway by year’s end.

In one of a series of lopsided votes on the $680-million project, the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency also selected a controversial elevated freeway connection on the tollway’s southern end that has rankled San Juan Capistrano residents.

Tollway opponents blasted the decisions, with one Laguna Beach woman rising to her feet near the end of the hourlong meeting at the Santa Ana City Council Chambers and shouting in anger at the startled agency officials.

“I would like to speak for the children of Orange County!” Elsa Brizzi yelled as tollway agency Chairman John C. Cox Jr. pleaded with her to sit down. “What you’re doing will directly affect your grandchildren!”

After the meeting, other foes of the highway promised they would soon go to court to block construction of the pay-to-use highway.

“The Orange County Valdez is ready to sail,” said Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher who has fought the highway since it was first proposed in the mid-1970s. “It’s fully loaded and it’s got no compass. But it’s not over yet. We’ve still got to get the attorneys.”

Beth Leeds, an opponent organizing a Saturday protest rally in Laguna Canyon against the highway, said most foes were hardly surprised by the votes.

“It’s the typical rubber stamping going on,” the Laguna Beach woman said. “This should be named the San Joaquin Hills railroad because it’s being shoved down people’s throats.”

Aside from the anticipated legal challenges, the project must also navigate a nettlesome course through the federal regulatory process, including opposition from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Although the project’s environmental review suggests that the highway would ease traffic in the region and thus curb air pollution, officials at the EPA are concerned that it would spark more growth, resulting in additional automobile trips and serious air pollution problems.

In addition, federal wildlife officials have expressed concerns about several threatened bird and plant species in the road’s path. A single male least Bell’s vireo, a tiny songbird on the federal endangered species list, has been sighted in the area. Moreover, the pristine canyons along the highway’s route between San Juan Capistrano and Newport Beach play host to the California gnatcatcher, another threatened bird.

But tollway officials said they have laid the groundwork to ease such environmental effects and expressed hope that the federal government will approve the project by August. In addition, they contend that the highway’s environmental documents have been adequately fortified to withstand any assault by opponents.

“I think we’ve gone that extra mile,” declared William C. Woollett Jr., the tollway agency’s executive director. “I’m not at all concerned with our ability to defend it.”

Cox agreed, saying the project’s environmental documents are “one of the finest” he has ever seen and suggested that “no project has had the scrutiny that this one has.”

“Today’s action represents a major milestone,” Cox said, adding, “to bring this to a close allows everything else to move forward.”

Approval of the environmental impact report, which came on a 10-1 vote with San Juan Capistrano Mayor Kenneth E. Friess dissenting, opens the door for the tollway agency to begin courting bids from construction companies that would build the highway.

In another vote, the board unanimously agreed that the highway should consist of three lanes of traffic in each direction, retaining an 88-foot-wide center median that in future years could be used for car-pool lanes or rail transit.

The most troublesome decision for the board involved choosing between two proposed means of linking the south end of the tollway with Interstate 5 at the boundary between Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano.

In recent months, merchants in Laguna Niguel fought against a version of the connector road, dubbed Alternative 2, that would displace 19 businesses in the city. Instead they favored Alternative 1, a massive, bridge-like connector that would uproot only six firms and cost $82 million less.

Residents of San Juan Capistrano, however, balked at that idea, saying the connector road being pushed by Laguna Niguel would dump more traffic on their streets and did not include provisions to ease congestion on Avery Parkway. In addition, the overpass would be far more unsightly, they argued.

In the end, the board sided with Laguna Niguel.