Toll Road Opponents Concede Court Order Not Violated : Construction: Workers carefully avoid a segment of San Joaquin Hills tollway declared off-limits by judge. Environmentalists remain on alert with cameras.

Environmental activists who had considered taking legal action instead conceded Tuesday that the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Agency is not violating a judge’s order by resuming work here on a segment of a controversial toll road project.

“We’ve got people with cameras out there photographing the site and running to the nearest Fotomat,” said Robert King, a spokesman for the environmental group Save Our San Juan, also known as SOS. “We brought the pictures to our attorney who advised us not to take any action in court.”

Tollway officials said they have been grading the site since Friday, but maintain that off-limit areas established by Orange County Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein last month have been carefully avoided.

“These are two small parcels, a total of maybe one acre” covered by Goldstein’s court order, said TCA spokesman Michael Stockstill. “We are not conducting any grading activities on those sites.”

The judge’s prohibition affects an area near Rancho Viejo Road, which the transportation agency is clearing to help make way for the 17-mile toll road that will stretch from the Corona del Mar Freeway in Newport Beach and pass through Laguna Niguel before intersecting with the Interstate 5 in San Juan Capistrano near Avery Parkway.

Last month, SOS successfully petitioned the court to temporarily halt construction in San Juan Capistrano, saying environmental studies of the area were not complete.

Goldstein ordered work stopped temporarily and told the transportation agency to come up with a study showing whether new, previously unknown environmental impacts were being caused by tollway construction in north San Juan Capistrano.

The judge’s decision was the first of two victories for tollway opponents in June, preceding a U.S. appeals court injunction that halted construction along a 4.4-mile section of planned tollway running through the environmentally sensitive Laguna Greenbelt.

King said that SOS will discuss whether to hire a surveyor to determine whether the toll road agency is encroaching on restricted land in San Juan Capistrano. The disputed area is also the site of many expensive hillside homes that border large expanses of open wilderness near the 40,000-acre Rancho Mission Viejo in northeast San Juan Capistrano.

Community activists claim that the current route brushes too close to their neighborhoods, creating noise and destroying the natural beauty of the terrain.

The San Juan Capistrano City Council recently voted not to challenge the planned tollway in exchange for $2.5 million in road improvements.