IRVINE : Regents Sued Over Tollway Route at UCI

The Natural Resources Defense Council and environmentalists filed a lawsuit Thursday claiming that the UC Board of Regents broke environmental laws and a longstanding promise when they approved the sale of 25 acres of UC Irvine for a six-lane toll road.

“The toll road would destroy a unique and beautiful reserve by requiring massive amounts of grading and destroy the largest hill on the campus, rich with different species of life,” said Michael D. Fitts, a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney.

The suit, filed in Alameda Superior Court, was announced at a news conference at the UC Irvine campus. In attendance were several of the plaintiffs, including those of the Open Space Coalition; Sea and Sage Audubon Society; Richard MacMillen, professor emeritus of biological sciences at UCI; and Joie Jones, a UCI radiology professor.

The suit seeks to void the $10.5-million sale of the land to the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency. About $2.7 million will be used to mitigate noise from traffic on the proposed $1-billion toll road.

About 18 of the 25 acres sold is expected to be restored as a coastal sage scrub habitat, at least half of which will be at a location designated by the university.

UC spokesman Michael Alva said the regents office “cannot comment on the lawsuit because we haven’t seen it. But we believe we acted appropriately and within the law.”

Mike Stockstill, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies, called the lawsuit “unnecessary” and said it would “divert desperately needed funds from the classroom” to pay the cost of defending suit.

Stockstill said it was an attempt by the New York-based National Resources Defense Council to spend “hundreds of thousands” of dollars to stop a road that will provide traffic relief to Orange County drivers.

Some of the 25 acres are within a 60-acre reserve on the south side of the campus. MacMillen, who retired last year after 24 years as a campus biology professor, said the open space reserve had served for a quarter of a century as the “ideal teaching laboratory.”

“Absolutely, no place else is like it for instruction. You leave your classroom, walk across Berkeley Avenue and conduct-in-the-field lectures,” MacMillen said.

In addition to scrub and sage, the preserve includes a pair of nesting gnatcatchers, which are expected to be added to the federal endangered species list this year, MacMillen said. For years, the reserve has also been used for field lectures by UCI students and Irvine public schools, he said.

Susan L. Durbin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said the sale was approved at a “closed-door session” of the UC Board of Regents in San Francisco on Dec. 10.

She claimed that no analysis of the state’s Environmental Quality Act was done. Also, she said regents broke their promise to reserve the open space made years ago during the tenure of former UCI Chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich, who was a former professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

UC Irvine officials have said that both campus and county growth plans recognized the tollway’s path in official planning documents years ago.

Peter DeSimone, from the Sea and Sage Audubon Society, said the toll road would jeopardize an annual bird count that has occurred at the reserve for 40 years, as well as disrupt the ecosystem of the San Joaquin marsh.