LAGUNA BEACH : Marchers to Protest Planned Toll Road

Demonstrators are scheduled to march along Laguna Canyon Road this morning to focus attention on the potential environmental impact that one of the county’s proposed toll roads would have on undeveloped Laguna Canyon.

The protest is a forerunner of Toll Road Awareness Day, set for Feb. 29. That rally has been subtitled “The Great Laguna Canyon Cover-Up” because demonstrators will spread blankets and bedsheets across the canyon to illustrate the proposed width of the highway.

As planned, the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road would cut through Laguna Canyon as it stretches from Newport Beach to San Juan Capistrano.

Today’s demonstration is scheduled to last from 7 to 8:30 a.m.

Laguna Beach Councilwoman Lida Lenney, who said she will be among the demonstrators, said Toll Road Awareness Day will educate people about what she calls “total misconceptions” about the road.

Lenney said people are misinformed about how money is being raised for the road and about the effect the road will have on the landscape, air quality and traffic. Toll road opponents say they will address all these issues at the rally.

“The public at large thinks, ‘Oh, we’re going to get traffic relief and the developers are paying for it,’ ” Lenney said, “and that’s a total misconception.”

Gene Felder, vice president of Laguna Canyon Conservancy, one of the environmental groups sponsoring the demonstrations, said people should bring bedsheets and “hard questions” to the rally later this month.

“We’re asking everybody to bring a sheet or a blanket to the event on Feb. 29,” Felder said. “We will stretch the sheets 1,200 feet wide so we can show with an aerial photograph what the magnitude of this is.”

An official from the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the organization charged with building the road, declined to comment on the protests.