San Joaquin Tollway Foes Sue to Block Construction : Transportation: Four South County groups contend the project’s environmental impact report does not meet state standards and should not have been approved.

Opponents of the long-debated San Joaquin Hills tollway filed suit Friday to block construction of the 15-mile highway, saying the road’s promoters had violated state law and behaved in a “prejudicial abuse of discretion” in approving a key environmental document last month.

The lawsuit claims the environmental review of the $680-million link between Newport Beach and San Juan Capistrano was inadequate, incomplete and does not meet state environmental standards.

“The (environmental impact report) is nothing more than a puff piece for this project,” Joel R. Reynolds, senior staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said during a news conference Friday at the County Hall of Administration.

But backers of the project remained resolute after learning of the lawsuit.

Robert Thornton, attorney for the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, said officials were disappointed the lawsuit was filed, but they remain “confident the environmental document is adequate” and will “vigorously defend the position of the agency.”

The lawsuit was filed by four South County organizations: Laguna Greenbelt Inc., Laguna Canyon Conservancy, Stop Polluting Our Newport and Save Our San Juan. The groups pooled their resources to hire the San Francisco law firm of Shute, Mihaly & Weinberger, which will work with attorneys from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental advocacy group with offices in Los Angeles, to battle the tollway agency in court.

In outlining the lawsuit, attorney Mark Weinberger said he would attempt to prove that the environmental document approved by the tollway agency March 14 does not adequately describe the project or the environmental effects it will have on air and water quality, as well as coastal wetlands and habitat areas.

The highway, environmentalists contend, would generate growth and damage the natural beauty of one of the last undeveloped coastal canyons in Southern California.

Laguna Greenbelt board member Norm Grossman said the groups had little choice but to file the lawsuit after the toll road board ignored lengthy criticisms of the project and numerous calls for a new study.

He guessed that the board certified the environmental review and pressed forward on the assumption that the tollway agency would be sued no matter what it did, and could ultimately work out any differences in court.

“I think the mistake in that is that they approved a very bad document, and they did not consider the chance that this whole document would be rejected and they would have to start again,” Grossman said. “And I think it was a shortsighted decision on their part, and a very cynical one too.”

Transportation officials responded to the lawsuit by releasing a letter that Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies Executive Director William C. Woollett Jr. had dispatched to board members of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency.

In the letter, Woollett said he did not expect the court fight to delay the project’s timetable, which calls for groundbreaking later this year.

“The possibility of a legal challenge was built into both our financial and construction schedules,” the letter states.

“We remain open to negotiation with all interested parties--although the lawsuit obviously has a chilling effect on free and open discussion,” Woollett added.

The transportation official claimed “broad, strong public support” for the project and said the agency is “confident that the EIR is adequate and complies with the law. In fact, the document represents an unprecedented breadth of analysis and involvement by the public for a project of this type.”

But the environmentalists said transportation officials have demonstrated the state environmental report is inadequate, given the fact that they are doing further studies to comply with federal guidelines.

“The fact that they approved the EIR with some things missing is astonishing,” Grossman said.

Coalition members also said that if a similar environmental report for federal agencies is approved later this year, the nonprofit groups can also be expected to legally challenge that document.

“This is not the 1970s where the politicians ran the citizens,” Save Our San Juan President Robert King said. “This is the 1990s where the citizens are now beginning to realize they can start running the politicians.”