Tollway Panel Must Play Fair, Be Open : Why Push for Grading Before Gnatcatcher Decision?

The latest salvo fired in the war between environmentalists opposed to the San Joaquin Hills tollway and the Transportation Corridor Agencies came in the form of a request from the former for emergency federal protection for the California gnatcatcher. The spokesman for the county agency responsible for planning the Orange County’s quasi-public tollways responded predictably--to the effect that this latest action was “a hysterical attempt to create fact from fiction.”

So it goes. The complicated question of listing for the gnatcatcher has been argued very publicly in recent years in a not-so-subtle war of wills between developers and environmental groups in Southern California. As it now stands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is due to decide within a matter of weeks whether to list the tiny songbird as endangered. Two years ago, it rejected a similar request for emergency listing. But since that time, at least 2,000 acres of coastal sage scrub have been graded. And top officials of the service have told The Times that they plan to declare the bird endangered, most likely sometime just before their deadline in the middle of next month. A listing would require any projects in habitat to proceed only with federal agency approval.

The question of listing matters greatly to road planners, because they have said previously that they want to begin grading sometime “by the end of the first quarter” of this year. According to a consulting firm hired by Orange County, the 17.5-mile tollway would damage about 150 acres of coastal sage scrub that has about 40 gnatcatchers. Nor have tollway planners enrolled any of that particular land in the voluntary moratorium being engineered by the state Resources Agency.

The agency argues that it already has received county, state and federal approval for the road, and that it has agreed to spend $21 million on ecological improvements to try to compensate for the San Joaquin Hills tollway’s damage, and that includes creating some new coastal sage scrub. That may well be, but the Army Corps of Engineers, mindful of plans for preliminary grading, has warned that its special conditions concerning downstream runoff from the tollway must be answered satisfactorily before any construction begins. And one big question about grading is, why right now? Why now in sloppy season, on the eve of a gnatcatcher decision?

The gnatcatcher issue is properly a matter for the federal officials to decide on merits. But the tollway agency has not helped its own public relations cause much in recent weeks. In response to inquiries about when grading would begin, the agency has simply refused to answer. This clearly is an unacceptable approach for a public agency that has every duty to be forthcoming about its intentions for public land with public funds.

Last week, the federal government indicated the agencies had agreed to give 10 days’ notice before grading. No public word from the agency, and the question remains why there should be grading within weeks of a gnatcatcher decision.

Obviously, grading is an irreversible solution to the continuing battle between road planners and opponents. Once the sage scrub is gone it is irretrievable, and the argument is effectively over. Mind you, this is the same agency that has played hardball elsewhere in recent weeks by seeking from Caltrans the elimination of any other other potentially competing transportation routes.

The tollway agency must play fair and it must know its place as a proponent of one transportation alternative among others. It must proceed openly, as this is, after all, the public’s business.