Activists Launch TV Fight Against Toll Roads : Transportation: ‘Infomercial’ primarily attacks San Joaquin Hills project. Tollway officials say broadcasts aren’t much of a threat.

On the eve of grand opening ceremonies for the Foothill tollway, anti-toll road activists have launched a television blitz aimed at building public pressure against such highways.

A 30-minute “infomercial” that juxtaposes scenes of congestion and rioting against postcard views of unspoiled canyons and beaches was aired on public access channels by Citizens Against the Tollroads in the Irvine and Laguna Beach areas Thursday evening and was to be shown in Newport Beach on Friday night, today and Sunday. Other airings were scheduled next week.

Produced at a cost of about $1,000 with mostly donated work and materials, according to anti-toll road activists, the video accuses public officials of ignoring public opposition to the highways and going along with developers in building the roads in return for campaign contributions.

With an on-screen title “Paradise About to Be Lost,” the video mixes images of bulldozers ripping through canyons and of a beach riot in Huntington Beach several years ago with a narrator saying: “We’re facing issues that will shape and reshape the Southern California area. . . . What’s at stake here is the fate of democracy.”

The theme is that the new roads will serve only new development that benefits the rich, not existing residents or traffic. “Some would call this welfare for the wealthy,” it says.

The video primarily attacks the San Joaquin Hills tollway, a portion of which has been blocked at least temporarily by a court injunction.

But tollway officials said they don’t consider the broadcasts much of a threat.

The video is a “mishmash that tries to link every urban ill in Orange County to the tollways,” said Mike Stockstill, spokesman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies. “Of course that’s ridiculous.”

Stockstill said he saw the video on an Irvine cable channel and concluded that virtually everyone featured in it was associated with the slow-growth ballot initiative defeated by Orange County voters in 1988.

During the 30-minute video, former Orange County Republican Central Committee Chairman Tom Rogers, a San Juan Capistrano rancher, accuses Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) of arranging $40 million in state financing for the San Joaquin Hills tollway’s interchange at Interstate 5 in return for Orange County developers’ support of his ill-fated mayoral campaign in Los Angeles earlier this year.

Katz couldn’t be reached for comment Friday. However, financing for the interchange was committed by state officials as early as 1988, long before it was known that Tom Bradley would step down as Los Angeles’ mayor this year.

“This goes beyond hyperbole into the realm of fantasy,” said Stan Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority, which led the effort to secure state funding for the interchange in 1988. “I can state categorically that what they’re alleging simply isn’t true at all.”

The county is planning a total of five toll roads.

The grand opening ceremonies for the first 3.2 miles of the 30-mile Foothill tollway are scheduled today, in Foothill Ranch.