SAN CLEMENTE : Foothill Corridor Changes Proposed

A new proposal for the southernmost section of the Foothill Transportation Corridor lured a mixed bag of interested parties to an off-road, fact-finding field trip to the city’s backcountry Wednesday.

The new alignment attempts to mitigate environmental concerns about the corridor section that skirts the city limits and moves south across a section of Camp Pendleton and San Onofre State Park to an interchange with Interstate 5.

Staff members of the Transportation Corridor Agency led a group of environmentalists, engineers, Marine Corps representatives, state Department of Parks and Recreation officials, the City Council and staff members, and several residents in four-wheel drive vehicles on a tour of the area proposed for the new alignment.

The alignment was developed in response to about 150 “letters of comment” from San Clemente residents concerned with the draft environmental impact report for the corridor that was published last summer, said Laura Eisenberg, a Transportation Corridor Agency staff member.

The proposed changes include:

* Extending the distance between the corridor and homes from 300 feet to about 740 feet, and digging the corridor deeper into the ground as it passes east of Avenida Santa Margarita.

* Designing split levels for the northbound and southbound lanes, which would allow the roadway to act as a noise buffer.

* Building the corridor so that it crosses beneath Cristianitos Road.

* Lessening the impact on San Onofre State Park by building the roadway through about 230 acres of the park instead of 250 acres.

While both corridor proposals steer clear of an Indian burial ground, an archeological site and Southern California Edison facilities in the backcountry area, the newer proposal calls for excavation of an extra million cubic yards of dirt--from 6 million cubic yards to 7 million--to increase grading, and would require about 710 acres of Marine Corps land at Camp Pendleton instead of 650 acres, according to a Transportation Corridor Agency report.

The new proposal would also impact about an acre of a wetlands area in the backcountry, a small increase from the earlier alignment, according to the report.

Construction has already begun on the northern leg of the Foothill Transportation Corridor, as it runs from the Eastern Transportation Corridor near El Toro to Oso Parkway in Mission Viejo.