Board Reaffirms Support of San Joaquin Hills Tollway : Environment: Foes of $778-million highway project dispute findings in report and say they’ll return to court.

Bowing to a judge’s order, promoters of the San Joaquin Hills tollway on Thursday took a second look at the highway’s expected environmental effects and decided they liked what they saw, voting to reaffirm their support for the 15-mile road.

The unanimous decision by the Transportation Corridor Agencies board came despite the pleas of opponents challenging the $778-million project in court.

Although the tollway agency produced reports saying the highway will actually improve air quality and have a minimal effect on streams and other wetlands, foes say they are dubious and plan to push the matter back into the courtroom of Orange County Superior Court Judge James P. Gray.

Last October, Gray heard a lawsuit brought by the opponents and ordered the agency to reconsider wetlands and air quality issues because several key reports were not in hand when the tollway promoters approved the highway’s environmental review earlier in the year.

The result was Thursday’s three-hour hearing, which mostly trod over old ground covered during the agency’s initial environmental impact meetings last winter.

“This is a project whose time has come and gone,” declared Bob King, president of Save Our San Juan, which is among a trio of local groups battling the tollway in court. “This board needs a President Gorbachev. We need someone with vision. . . . There are viable alternatives to this project.”

But tollway supporters in the business community argued that the project will help boost the county’s economic vitality by easing traffic congestion and improving air quality.

A report commissioned by the tollway agency found that air quality would improve if the road is built because highway speeds would increase, resulting in fewer pollution-inducing traffic jams. Carbon monoxide emissions, for instance, would decrease by upward of 4%, according to the study.

The wetlands plan details steps to mitigate the road’s effects on Bonita Reservoir, Aliso Creek and other water courses.

But an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental organization handling the legal challenge, said the reports amounted to “fiction” and “wishful thinking.”

The air quality analysis, he said, used assumptions that counted on a “best-case scenario” rather than “the real world,” said Michael Fitts. The wetlands plan, meanwhile, assumes that every acre of land destroyed by the highway can be replaced by an equal-size parcel enhanced by man, even though experts contend a 3-to-1 ratio is usually necessary to guarantee success, Fitts said.

But tollway officials countered that their wetlands plan closely follows federal guidelines and the air quality study was based on assumptions supplied by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Undeterred, opponents said they plan to challenge the agency’s decision by pressing ahead with a Feb. 26 showdown in Gray’s courtroom.

“Sadly, the board did exactly what I expected,” said Michael Phillips, executive director of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., one of the groups pressing the lawsuit. “But the judge is a reasonable man and I suspect he’ll weigh the evidence a lot more carefully than the board did.”

Tollway officials, meanwhile, remain certain their decision will stand up in court.

“It’s the judge’s call,” said John Cox, agency chairman. “ . . . The documents clearly show improved air quality and we’ve got a very impressive (wetlands) mitigation plan.”