State Fears ‘Large-Scale’ Tollway Cost to Wetlands

State environmental officials have warned that the proposed San Joaquin Hills tollway would cause “large-scale disruption” of wetlands near Newport Beach, and that county planners have not outlined adequate measures to compensate for the damage.

The 15-mile highway would run by the Bonita Reservoir, a marsh south of the UC Irvine campus, and would fill and realign part of Bonita Creek. The areas contain riparian woodlands, an extremely depleted mix of willows and plants that is home to about 100 species of waterfowl.

The County Transportation Corridor Agencies has proposed ways to compensate for the damage. But in written comments mailed this week, staffs of the state Department of Fish and Game and the Coastal Commission say the protective measures are inadequate.

“It doesn’t address nearly enough,” said Kim McKee, an environmental specialist for Fish and Game. “We are not comfortable that enough mitigation would occur.”

The strongest criticism came from the Coastal Commission staff, which told the tollway agency that its plan to realign about a mile and a half of Bonita Creek “appears to generate massive impacts to coastal resources” and causes “large-scale disruption of this environmentally sensitive” area, according to a letter dated Wednesday.

Tollway planners strongly disagree, saying that avoiding harm to wetlands has been a high priority in designing the road. Its route has already been altered slightly at the request of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency so that it would avoid cutting off a corner of Bonita Canyon Reservoir, noted Steve Letterly, the tollway agency’s environmental-impact manager.

“We have gone above and beyond the requirements for wetlands mitigation. I feel this plan is more than adequate to address it,” Letterly said.

Letterly stressed that the wetlands plan is in the early stages of review by the environmental agencies, adding that their concerns will be addressed. A meeting to work out some of the issues was held Wednesday among tollway officials, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the EPA and transportation agencies.

“This is all part of the process, to get their comments, work with them and put these plans together,” Letterly said. “We’re going out of our way to get the comments from these agencies far in advance of going in and asking for the permits.”

County tollway planners hope to begin construction early next year on the $778-million highway, which would cut across the hills and coastal canyons between the freeways and the coast. But first, various state and federal agencies that regulate wetlands must approve the project, including the state Coastal Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers, which will decide whether to grant permits after hearing from the EPA and Fish and Wildlife Service.

The federal government has strict laws protecting wetlands, requiring “no net loss” of the resource. That means for every acre filled or damaged, another acre of the same quality must be restored or improved.

About 95% of Southern California’s wetlands have been filled, drained or paved, so the remaining ones are considered invaluable to waterfowl and marsh birds, which feed and nest in the willows and other plants that grow there.

Letterly said 15 acres of wetlands would be disturbed by the highway, and as compensation the county agency will re-create or improve 25 nearby acres.

But the Coastal Commission staff maintains that tollway planners have underestimated the acreage of wetlands damaged because they did not compensate for nearby watersheds and buffer areas that are damaged or fragmented.

The agency’s staff also said that tollway officials are proposing to replace existing wetlands in relatively isolated spots with man-made ones of potentially less value in noisy, heavily traveled areas near John Wayne Airport.

Letterly said that the Coastal Commission fails to note that the creek has already been substantially damaged by current grading for another project, Pelican Hills Road.

“Perhaps if the Coastal Commission staff would . . . actually go out to the site, they would realize Bonita Creek is highly disturbed and does not exist as it did previously,” he said.

Gerry Chalmers, a Coastal Commission official assisting with review of the tollway, said that the staff is well-acquainted with the area and aware of the grading, but that the cumulative impacts must be considered.

“We are not disagreeing that it is a disturbed area,” he said. “But what you have (with the tollway) is a rechanneling of a stream course. What they’re talking about is a major alteration of the whole thing. They will be wiping out a certain amount of natural willow woodland that endangered species may use.”

Tollway planners say there is no way to avoid harming Bonita Creek because of land ownership and engineering issues, so they are proposing to fill much of it and re-create it a few hundred feet to the west.

“We’re actually improving the creek,” Letterly said. “We’re providing a natural creek with riparian plantings, and all streets that cross it will be on bridges, so wildlife can cross. That’s quite an improvement over what you have out there today.”

Environmental officials said that man-made, restored wetlands often are not as good for wildlife as original ones. In environmental circles, they are often dubbed the “loser’s prize.”

Bonita Canyon Reservoir is a now-abandoned irrigation area created by the Irvine Ranch decades ago. But wetlands are protected by law regardless of whether they are man-made or natural.

Officials from the EPA, the main federal agency responsible for protecting wetlands, were unavailable for comment Thursday. Letterly said an EPA representative “told us (Wednesday) that she thought we had avoided those resources to the extent possible.”

Mark Delaplaine, a Coastal Commission supervisor overseeing the tollway review, said the comments are advisory, recommending that tollway officials resolve the issues before seeking permission from the commission.

“All we’re saying is by the time it gets to us, we want a consensus that it will provide adequate mitigation,” Delaplaine said. “The tone of our statements is that there’s a lot of work that they still have to do.”

Several environmental agencies also said in their written comments that the tollway planners need to address the risk to endangered species that live in the wetlands. A single least Bell’s vireo, a small marsh bird that nests beneath stream-side willows, was found this spring at Bonita Reservoir. The bird has been a federal endangered species since 1986.

Although the tollway would not be built directly on the vireo’s habitat, it would run nearby, and “sound is very important to these animals,” McKee said.

Letterly said he is confident that the vireos will not be impacted, but added that those issues will be addressed in a separate plan.

“We are not taking the habitat. I repeat, we are not taking the habitat of the least Bell’s vireo,” he said. “We specifically designed the corridor away from it, and we’re also providing noise mitigation.”

Impact of the San Joaquin Hills Tollway The proposed San Joaquin Hills tollway would impact Bonita Creek and run adjacent to Bonita Reservoir, which are wetlands areas that are home to waterfowl. Tollway officials plan to fill the creek and re-create it nearby, as well as restore other wetlands in the area. State officials, however, say the county’s mitigation plans, which are in early stages, are inadequate.