Bid to Halt Work on San Joaquin Tollway Fails : Courts: Judge refuses to modify order allowing construction at both ends of road but not in environmentally sensitive middle section.

With one toll road opening to traffic in Foothill Ranch this weekend, environmentalists Thursday lost a bid to immediately halt construction of a second one.

U.S. District Judge Linda A. McLaughlin turned down a request from the Natural Resources Defense Council to modify her Sept. 7 decision allowing construction to begin at both ends of the 17.5-mile San Joaquin Hills toll road, but keeping the bulldozers away from an ecologically sensitive, mid-route greenbelt.

The $1.1-billion San Joaquin Hills project would connect the terminus of the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach with Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano.

In her September ruling, McLaughlin issued an injunction barring construction roughly between El Toro Road on the south and Newport Coast Drive on the north. But, at the same time, she found that both ends of the San Joaquin Hills project were viable as separate, unconnected roads and allowed construction to begin there.

The NRDC argued in court papers filed last week, however, that McLaughlin had received no evidence on the viability of the two end segments. It said her finding raised the possibility that tollway officials might eventually argue successfully that a connection is necessary to fulfill the legal and financial rationale for the road.

NRDC attorney Joel Reynolds said another concern is that the judge’s finding would prejudice future consideration of alternatives to the tollway if the project is ultimately found deficient.

Norm Grossman of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., one of the plaintiffs, said: “We want to stop the whole project.”

Grossman acknowledged that environmentalists were pleased with McLaughlin’s ruling on Sept. 7. But the plaintiffs remain particularly interested in stopping construction throughout the route, except in Aliso Viejo, where damage caused by intensive grading is a fait accompli, he said.

But in a two-page ruling issued Thursday, McLaughlin canceled a court hearing scheduled for Monday afternoon and said she was dismissing the NRDC’s request.

McLaughlin wrote that, contrary to the NRDC’s contention, she doesn’t have to base her finding on evidence that the two end segments would fulfill the tollway’s original goals. Instead, she said, her ruling can rest on her belief that both segments can serve some “significant purpose.”

Had environmentalists prevailed at a hearing on Monday, tollway officials said they may have been ordered to supply evidence to support the judge’s finding that both ends of the project are viable as separate roads.

A full hearing on the merits of the NRDC’s lawsuit attacking the adequacy of the project’s environmental impact statement is scheduled for Jan. 15.

The lawsuit also contends that the project violates provisions of the federal Clean Air Act and a federal statute barring use of federal funds for highways built through parklands.