An Exemption to Protect Whose Turf? : * Effort to Encourage More Parkland Is Really a Plan to Aid Proposed Toll Road

In some sort of twisted logic, California’s two senators, Alan Cranston and John Seymour, recently wrote to a Senate committee asking it to exempt Orange County from a federal transportation rule that was passed to protect the environment. The reason given for the exemption ostensibly was to protect the environment by making it easier to dedicate public parklands.

The letter prompted a quick and angry reaction from environmentalists, including several national groups such as the Sierra Club, that resulted in Cranston’s changing his mind and withdrawing his support for the exemption. That, and the obvious folly of granting piecemeal exemptions to a national policy, all probably led to the exemption’s failure.

Whatever the reason, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee wisely did not waive the rule that since 1968 has limited the construction and federal funding of highways on public parkland or environmentally sensitive areas. The rule permits a road project only when the secretary of transportation determines that there are no “feasible and prudent alternatives” to such “use” and when the project includes all possible planning to minimize harm to the property.

But the issue is not dead. Now reportedly being pushed by Seymour, the Irvine Co. and the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies is an amendment to the Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 which, if passed by Congress, would be the first major overhaul of the federal aid program for highways and mass transit in 35 years. The key behind Orange County’s heavy lobbying for an amendment is the controversial $680-million San Joaquin Hills Corridor and the opposition being raised to its construction.

Amendment proponents contend that the federal rule discourages developers from dedicating public parklands. The county environmentalists don’t see the effort to relax the rule as an environmental issue to encourage more public parkland. They view it as a move to build more roads and diminish their ability to stop construction of the proposed toll road that runs through Laguna Canyon.

If wording can be found for an amendment that will prompt more public parkland without weakening environmental protections, well and good. But Congress must not compromise the federal policy that calls for a “special effort” to preserve the natural beauty of the countryside, public recreation lands and environmentally sensitive areas--not only in Orange County but nationwide.