Toll Roads Will Traffic in Destruction

I have been a resident of Irvine for the past 27 years, and I have watched our open lands turned ever more quickly into shopping malls, housing tracts and roads.

Now, it seems, I will have to watch some of the very last of these lands, Laguna Canyon and the UC Irvine Ecological Preserve, fall prey to Orange County’s developers. The San Joaquin Hills toll road will cut through both of these places and ruin the beauty of them.

The sale of a part of the UCI Ecological Preserve for this toll road will not benefit the students of UCI or the residents of Irvine. The students will not see the money from this sale as added scholarships or reduced tuition fees; the sale means the loss of an important educational resource and the loss of a clean and quiet campus.

I don’t expect the developers of Orange County to care about such quality-of-life and educational issues, but as a graduate of UCI, I am deeply disappointed to know that UCI administrators are so far removed from the interests of their students and community.

PIER SIRCELLO

Irvine