Tollway Foes to Blanket Canyon : Demonstration: Opponents of six-lane road hope for as big a turnout Saturday as one for 1989 Laguna Canyon march. Highway backers accuse foes of distorting plan’s dimensions.

Organizers of a weekend rally to protest plans for a six-lane toll road through scenic Laguna Canyon say they are hoping against the odds to match their wildly successful demonstration a few years ago to “save the canyon.”

That protest march down Laguna Canyon Road in November, 1989, drew 8,000 participants, a showing that local environmental groups credit with persuading the Irvine Co. to give up plans to develop a sprawling housing tract in the canyon.

Now comes Saturday’s Toll Road Awareness Day, an ambitious effort by the Laguna Canyon Conservancy to alert the public about the San Joaquin Hills tollway, a 15-mile highway that would stretch from Newport Beach to San Juan Capistrano and be an alternative to the commuter-jammed San Diego Freeway and Interstate 5.

“The purpose is to educate not only the people in Laguna Beach, but throughout the area . . . about (the tollway’s) impact on the environment and land-use,” said Robert F. Gentry, mayor of Laguna Beach, which has been fighting to block the tollway.

Rally organizers ask participants to bring bedsheets that will be stretched end to end to cover the landscape designated for the highway.

“We want enough sheets to show what 1,200 feet wide is,” said Gene Felder, the conservancy’s media coordinator.

Helicopter rides will be provided, he said, to give the news media a bird’s-eye view of the dimensions of the grading that would be needed for the proposed road.

Such tactics anger Mike Stockstill, spokesman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, a coalition of city and county representatives planning the San Joaquin and two other county tollways.

He contended that the 1,200-foot-wide swath of sheets will be “absolutely misleading” because the grading for San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor would be that wide in just one spot: where cloverleaf ramps would lead to Laguna Canyon Road. Elsewhere, he said, the corridor would be just 240 feet wide.

Such salvos illustrate the public relations battle being fought. Consider the boiling controversy over the event’s keynote speaker, David Foreman, founder of Earth First!, a radical environmental group. Foreman made headlines last year when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a plot to sabotage nuclear facilities in three states. As part of a plea bargain, his sentencing has been delayed for five years, after which his crime will be reduced to a misdemeanor, he said.

Stockstill blasted the Laguna Canyon Conservancy’s decision to showcase Foreman at the rally. “Here is a guy who is a convicted criminal from perhaps the most radical environmental group in the world,” he said. “I question their judgment in associating with this kind of a person.”

Laguna Canyon Conservancy officials, who consider the Transportation Corridor Agencies “the source of all our problems,” said they do not condone illegal activities. But they said they welcome the chance to hear Foreman, who is also scheduled to deliver a public lecture Friday night at UC Irvine.

Michael Phillips, the conservancy’s executive director, acknowledged that the group “took a calculated risk in inviting Foreman in that we would get criticized by the road builders who want to destroy natural habitat.”

He said Foreman was nonetheless selected as keynote speaker because “he is an individual who speaks with urgency and passion.”

Interviewed by telephone in Tucson, where he lives, Foreman said he is trying to educate grass-roots organizations about the need to establish larger natural preserves to protect species that cannot live in smaller park fragments.

“The toll road, as I understand it,” he said, “is just one more unnecessary development that will fragment a remnant habitat and lead to the unraveling of an area that is absolutely essential for the California gnatcatcher . . . and other birds that are in peril in Southern California.”

Tollway supporters, meanwhile, take exception to such statements. Stockstill dubbed as “fallacious” the conservancy’s argument that the corridor is designed to serve future development and is not needed for current county residents.

“This road has been planned for 15 years,” he said, adding that “much of the development that has taken place in South County over that time was built under the assumption that the road would be built.”

He also said it is unfair for the conservancy to call Laguna Canyon a wilderness because it has long been used for cattle grazing and is “crisscrossed with fire roads.” And he noted that the canyon already is “fragmented” by Laguna Canyon Road.

Tollway critics contend that the $778 million needed to build the road would be better used for increasing local bus service, providing incentives for car and van commuter pools, building car-pool and bus lanes on freeways and providing new forms of mass transit.

Rally organizers said they specifically timed the event to come on the heels of a Wednesday hearing in Orange County Superior Court on the tollway. In a ruling that event organizers expected, Judge James P. Gray gave the tollway a go-ahead.

“The court decision may make more people think the toll road is a done deal,” Felder said, “so we are planning a dramatic demonstration that we are not giving up, and we will be appealing to higher courts.”

Saturday’s demonstration will convene at 10 a.m. in Sycamore Hills, which is about three-quarters of a mile east of the El Toro Road junction on Laguna Canyon Road. Buses will provide free transportation from the Festival of the Arts grounds in Laguna Beach to the rally, which will last until 1 p.m.

Controversial Crossing Through Laguna Canyon

Opponents of the proposed San Joaquin Hills Tollway say it will spoil views, threaten wildlife and destroy Laguna Canyon’s peaceful nature. Officials and supporters say that without the tollway, South County will be paralyzed by traffic.

Cutting through the hills

The 15-mile, six-lane tollway will cross through canyon areas, requiring extensive grading work.

Laguna Laurel

Public outcry helped kill major housing project. It will become a park.

Tollway Pros and Cons

What supporters, opponents say the tollway will do.

Pro:

* Help keep traffic from getting worse.

* Reduce air pollution by keeping cars moving efficiently.

* Open up sweeping vistas previously unseen by the public.

* Wetlands will be rebuilt, plants will be relocated and undercrossings built to protect animal movement.

Con:

* Encourage growth across southern Orange County.

* Induce more cars and smog.

* Displace sensitive birds and plants, alter wetlands, cut unattractive, deep gorges in untouched hillsides.

* Cause more runoff into Laguna Canyon, increasing flooding danger.

Hillside impact: Hillsides will be cut back and terraced. Terrace “steps” will be rounded-off, and native vegetation replanted.

No cloverleaf: To minimize land use, ramps will be located in only two corners of the interchange, rather than in four corners, as with a typical “cloverleaf” design.

Animal crossing: A path will allow animals to pass under the highway. Three other crossings will be located in key areas along the tollway.

Source: Transportation Corridor Agency and tollway opponents .

Researched by DANNY SULLIVAN and ERIC BAILEY / Los Angeles Times