Tollway Opponents Rally : Environment: At least 2,000 gather in Laguna Canyon to protest road that would bisect the rugged green area.

Declaring that the power of the people will prevail, several thousand people who oppose the planned San Joaquin Hills tollway descended on Laguna Canyon on Saturday in a rally spiced with both idealism and anger.

The event, resembling a festival as much as a protest, drew youngsters and senior citizens, babies and dogs, American Indians and doctors, baby boomers in tie-dye and teen-agers in surf shirts, full-fledged environmentalists and neophyte nature-lovers.

Coming from about 30 cities and four counties, they all seemed to share the love of the rugged green canyon that isolates Laguna Beach from the rest of Orange County, and most said they had no ambivalence in their opposition to the road that would bisect it.

“This is our public hearing,” said Richard Henrickson, a member of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, which organized the event called the Great Laguna Canyon Cover-Up. “The decision to build this road was not a democracy by any stretch of the imagination. We have supervisors who get a majority of their campaign funds from developers. Let’s see if they can get this many people in one place.”

Estimates varied greatly on the size of the crowd, which gathered at 10 a.m. at the grassy point known as Sycamore Hills, where the 240-foot-wide toll road would cross Laguna Canyon Road. Police estimated a crowd of 2,000, while the Laguna Canyon Conservancy organizers said their sign-up sheets and aerial views showed the total was perhaps closer to 3,000 or more.

Toll road supporters on Saturday called the group a vocal but small minority. They say the vast majority of Orange County residents welcome the 15-mile toll road because it would provide congestion relief in South County.

Mike Stockstill, spokesman for the county’s Transportation Corridor Agencies, said Saturday that the rally would not alter the toll road agency’s resolve to build the project, which has been planned for almost 15 years.

“I understand the passion that exists for Laguna Canyon. But it is a passion that ignores the needs of everything else,” Stockstill said.

“Just over the hill, there are thousands of people who bought homes and paid corridor fees and are waiting for the thing to be built. What about their needs? Aren’t they equal? All you have to do is go to the intersection of the (San Diego and Santa Ana freeways) in the morning and see there is tremendous pent-up demand to use these facilities.”

Conservancy volunteers said they collected an estimated several thousand signatures on Saturday from people promising to boycott the toll road if it is built.

“The toll road would run right from my front door to my desk, but I don’t support it,” said Jim Ackleson, 36, an engineer who lives in Aliso Viejo and works in Newport Beach. “All it is going to do is just get as congested as” the nearby freeways.

Saturday’s three-hour protest was staged by the conservancy to draw attention to the toll road and to raise popular and financial support. Conservancy leaders hope the event will motivate a wave of public opinion that dooms the project.

“I want to come back when you drive the last nail in the coffin of this toll road that will never be built,” David Foreman, co-founder of the radical environmental group Earth First! told the cheering crowd.

The rally brought comparisons to a 1989 protest in Laguna Canyon, known as the Walk-In, the largest environmental event in Orange County history. A crowd of 8,000 gathered in the canyon to stop a 3,200-home Irvine Co. development named Laguna Laurel, prompting the company to agree to sell the land to the city and county for $78 million for preservation as a park.

Event organizers said they weren’t disappointed by the turnout, since they said they never expected to rival the size of the Walk-In. They also said galvanizing people against a major road is more difficult than gathering opposition to a housing development and that they spent less time promoting it. The conservancy said it spent about $2,000 on radio advertisements, while all other services were donated.

About 500 people hiked from Top of the World, at the southern tip of Laguna Beach, and snaked through the canyon until they appeared at the top of the ridge overlooking the scenic meeting place--the point where the toll road would descend into view in Laguna Beach. Some with dogs and baby strollers, the hikers followed the route of the planned toll road. By 10:30 a.m., a steady stream of people was flowing down the hill, and many said they felt united in their walk by a strong feeling of camaraderie.

“It looks like an army, it looks great,” said Sandra Kebbler, 33, of El Toro as she searched for her husband among the descending hikers.

Volunteers posted signs proclaiming “Mass Transit, not Mass Destruction,” “Billion-Dollar Boondoggle,” “Stop Developer-Controlled Government” and “Don’t Pave Paradise.”

“I wanted to show my son, who’s now 10, what’s worth fighting for,” said Rosemary Alonso, 30, an office manager who lives in Santa Ana. “When my son and I have nothing to do, we sometimes come here. There aren’t a lot of places where you can see green, natural environment.”

Laguna Beach Police Chief Neil J. Purcell Jr., who attended Saturday’s rally with 10 officers to oversee traffic control, said the crowd was orderly, with no problems or arrests. Laguna Canyon Road remained open and there were no traffic tie-ups. He recalled that the brushy spot was the same place where 10,000 people gathered 21 years ago for a locally infamous event called the Christmas Happening. At that rock music festival, seven babies were born and planes dropped postcards holding LSD tablets.

Saturday’s mood was mostly upbeat, like a pep rally, and at times it seemed like a ‘90s-style, drug-free version of Woodstock. A band played Bob Dylan songs, and people sat on haystacks enjoying the music.

Children lined up to have “Save the Canyon” painted on their faces in green and white dyes. Bare-chested men in running shorts and Reeboks mingled with women in halter tops and straw hats and backpacks. A white-haired man in a tie-dye outfit and feathered hat danced to the music near the stage.

Most of the people, however, looked more like baby-boomer couples and parents attending a county fair than stereotypical environmentalists. They gathered up brochures from various groups and studied drawings of the toll road’s route.

At the end of the speeches, several hundred protesters took white sheets and lined up along the canyon, trying to symbolize the width of the clover leaf of the planned toll road with their “canyon cover-up.”

Foreman of Earth First! told the audience that saving Laguna Canyon from the toll road is of equal importance to saving rain forests, since the canyon is one of the “last scraps” of natural beauty and wildlife habitat in the area.

“Laguna Canyon doesn’t have a price. It has a value,” Foreman said. “And our job is to fight the people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. What is at stake here is our souls and the integrity of this land. It is our holy duty to preserve the landscape.”

Foreman is known for advocating “monkey wrenching,” acts of protest to stop development projects, ranging from pulling up surveyor’s stakes on roads to spiking trees. He gave no such advice to the crowd in his speech, although he urged them not to compromise.

“We are in an emergency room right now. . . . We don’t have time to be nice. We don’t have time to compromise. We have to stop the bleeding and restore the Earth,” he said.

Foreman finished with “Stop the road!” jutting his fist into the air as the audience did the same.

Laguna Beach Mayor Robert F. Gentry spoke to the crowd, wearing a face mask to symbolize the air pollution the opponents say will occur if the road is built. Toll road supporters, however, maintain that the road will help air quality by relieving the fumes from idling cars.

Game booths named “Toll Road Toilet Toss” and “Dart the ‘Dozers” drew adults as well as children.

At one, people paid $1 to throw beanbags marked “developer dollars” into three toilet seats, each named for one of three proposed toll roads. At the other, people threw darts at a painting of bulldozers rolling across a green landscape.

Eva-Maria Swedlow, 63, tossed three darts, laughing when she missed the targets. Swedlow has never been a member of an environmental group, but said she avidly supports the cause.

“I have lived in Mission Viejo for 20 years and I just love this canyon. Most people just see it from the outside, just rushing by,” she said. “I’m absolutely, very much against the toll road. I’m afraid for the wildlife. I remember years ago when deer came up right to the side of the road. They don’t do that anymore, even now.”

The road-building agency estimates that 70,000 cars per day would use the toll road at first, rising to 120,000 by the year 2010. It is designed to mostly serve areas of Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel, Irvine and the new Newport Coast development.

Toll road agency spokesman Stockstill stressed that three-quarters of the canyon will remain untouched for parkland. Formerly with the Irvine Co., Stockstill said the company never would have sold the canyon land to the city last year if prohibiting the toll road was part of the deal, and that city officials and local environmentalists knew that when they signed the agreement.

“There is very, very substantial public and government support for this corridor,” he said. “It has the support of the county, of 10 local governments, and it’s a demonstration project at the federal level.”

Federal approval from environmental agencies is still pending. The agency, however, has hired contractors, is lining up financing and plans to begin construction this summer, possibly in July, on the road’s first stretch. Officials plan to open the stretch from Interstate 5 to Laguna Canyon Road within three years of the start of construction.

“We plan to forge ahead with this,” Stockstill said.

Most in the crowd, however, seemed confident their cause would prevail.

“As long as people get informed and involved, it can be stopped,” said Anna Dominguez, a Chapman University junior.

“Absolutely, absolutely we can win,” said Phil Trautmann, 61, of Laguna Beach. “We (the taxpayers) paid for this land and its ours.”

Toll road opponents said the Laguna Laurel development also seemed imminent when the Irvine Co. was persuaded to sell the land, although some admitted the road builders may be a tougher opponent.

“It does seem all the wheels are in motion,” Henrickson said. “But it was that same fait accompli when we tried to stop that housing development from being built. We said nuts to that and we put 8,000 people in the canyon.”