San Joaquin Tollway Goes to Panel for Key OK

Twenty years in the making, the $1-billion San Joaquin Hills tollway goes before the California Coastal Commission today for one of the final permits needed to build the 17.5-mile project.

And that puts Huntington Beach City Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson on the spot.

Moulton-Patterson is the only Orange County resident on the 12-member panel, which rarely goes against a member on matters affecting her home turf.

And though she’s a self-described environmentalist, Moulton-Patterson said she sees merit in the much-debated project and wouldn’t make up her mind until today’s hearing in Santa Monica.

“I’m approaching it with an open mind,” she said in a recent interview. “I consider myself an environmentalist, but I’m also concerned about the economy and jobs.”

The commission’s staff report, released last week, urged the commission to reject the tollway because the Coastal Act prohibits new roads in coastal wetlands. Tollway officials argue that the tollway needs to cross San Diego Creek near Upper Newport Bay in order to connect with the existing Corona del Mar Freeway (State Route 73). For two decades, the tollway has been planned as an extension of the state highway.

Tollway officials also have offered to offset any damage to the creek by creating a new marsh nearby.

For her part, Moulton-Patterson said commissioners may give her analysis of the project more weight than others because she is the hometown commissioner, but she does not expect to control the outcome on a project as big as the tollway.

“The commissioners will take very seriously what I have to say with anything having to do with Orange County,” she said, “as I would do for them. . . . But they will make up their own minds.”

Moulton-Patterson is being watched carefully by both sides in the road dispute in part because she’s interested in succeeding the retiring Harriett M. Wieder on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, as is her cross-town rival, Assemblyman Tom Mays (R-Huntington Beach).

Her vote today will anger either her environmentalist friends or developers who support the road and are a major source of campaign contributions to county supervisors.

A Democrat appointed to the Coastal Commission by the Senate Rules Committee in July, 1991, Moulton-Patterson said she hasn’t been lobbied much either way on the toll road, and campaign contributions aren’t on her mind.

“I will listen very carefully to what people have to say during the public hearing,” she said. “I can truly say I have not made up my mind.”

A former school board president, Moulton-Patterson has studiously avoided the controversy for weeks. For example, she attended a Friends of the Irvine Coast meeting last week but declined to answer questions related to the tollway.

“It’ll be crucial to have her support in order to carry this thing,” said Michael Phillips, director of the Laguna Canyon Conservancy, a group strongly opposed to the tollway. Patterson was instrumental in the commission’s recent vote to kill the controversial Pierside development in Huntington Beach. The coastal panel had previously approved Pierside.

“It should be an easy case--the law is clear that you can’t put a new road in a wetlands--but when you have people bringing in issues that don’t have anything do with the law,” said Phillips, “it’s another matter.”

Phillips was referring to commission members who may talk about the need to preserve jobs and reduce traffic congestion.

For example, commission member William Rick of San Diego, who also was briefed by the tollway agency, said: “From what I hear of (the project), I’m surprised that the staff would recommend against it. . . . Having driven the (congested) Coast Highway, I have somewhat of a bias. (Traffic) was already bad enough when I went to college.”

Phillips and other environmentalists argue that the Coastal Act doesn’t allow consideration of the economy or traffic factors--only what’s best for the Coastal Zone.

To make their case, a busload of environmental activists will attend today’s meeting. Representatives from the Laguna Greenbelt, Natural Resources Defense Council and Audubon Society are expected to address the panel.

If the Coastal Commission approves the tollway project, one more permit is needed from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for wetlands grading farther south in Orange County. A public hearing on that permit request is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Dec. 8 at El Toro High School.