12 Arrested in Second Day of Tollway Protest : Environment: Some opponents of the project lock themselves to bulldozers. Workers still manage to clear 45 more acres of Laguna Canyon.

Twelve environmental activists, some of whom locked themselves to bulldozers, were arrested by Orange County sheriff’s deputies Wednesday during a second day of protests aimed at halting the grading of Laguna Canyon for a 17-mile tollway.

Protesters arrived at the site before dawn and, in a symbolic gesture, five tethered themselves to heavy earth-moving equipment with string, forcing authorities to arrest them. Deputies also arrested four others who secured themselves to bulldozers with bicycle locks and three more who clambered aboard equipment as workers began grading the land.

“This means a lot to me, it really does,” said Max Brown, 36, a Laguna Hills resident who spent five hours in jail Wednesday and was back at the site later in the afternoon. He said it was the first time he had been arrested.

“I did it pretty much spontaneously. It was a hard decision,” Brown said.

The protest, which involved 50 demonstrators in all, snarled early-morning commuter traffic on Laguna Canyon Road.

Even as the earth-moving resumed Wednesday, there was more action in the courts. U.S. District Judge Linda H. McLaughlin in Santa Ana denied a request for a temporary restraining order sought by Laguna Greenbelt Inc. as a last-ditch effort to stop the grading.

Greenbelt attorneys then filed an appeal of McLaughlin’s decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal with a request for an emergency injunction to stop the bulldozing immediately.

“Our appeal says that the judge should have granted our motion because of the Endangered Species Act,” said Joel R. Reynolds, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles and the attorney for Laguna Greenbelt.

But Lisa Telles, spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, said McLaughlin’s ruling “means we can continue with the grading. Yesterday they cleared about 17 acres and they will continue working to clear about 175 acres between Newport Coast Drive and El Toro Road.”

Workers estimated that bulldozers had cleared about 45 acres on both sides of Laguna Canyon Road by about 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Late Wednesday afternoon Superior Court Judge Leonard Goldstein denied another request for a last-ditch injunction filed by protester Beth Leeds, who was among the demonstrators at Wednesday morning’s protest.

The arrests came a day after a federal appeals panel dissolved an injunction that had halted construction of the San Joaquin Hills tollway for the past 15 months, except for a single day’s work in June, when the ban was briefly lifted. The tollway, being built by the Transportation Corridor Agencies to handle increased commuter traffic caused by population growth, will slice a wide swath through the environmentally sensitive canyon and seven cities in south Orange County.

Environmentalists have fought the tollway for years, noting that Laguna Canyon is a habitat for the threatened California gnatcatcher and one of the last remaining pristine areas of the county.

Seven men and five women--some of whom had received civil disobedience training--were arrested Wednesday morning for trespassing and placed in a waiting Sheriff’s Department bus with their hands tied or handcuffed behind them.

Once freed from the bulldozers, the 12 demonstrators were given the chance to leave without being arrested, but refused, said sheriff’s Sgt. K. Lovelady.

“They said they’d just as soon go to jail and make a statement,” Lovelady said. “We’re accommodating them.”

The arrested demonstrators were taken to the Sheriff’s Intake Release Center in Santa Ana, where they were booked, cited for trespassing and released, according to Lt. Tom McCarthy. The maximum penalty for misdemeanor trespass is six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

At least three of the arrested demonstrators were back at the site Wednesday afternoon.

Patrick Mitchell, an Earth First! member who has been a regular at the ongoing demonstrations against the tollway, continued to predict victory for his side Wednesday morning, even as the bulldozers that had cleared oak trees and shrubbery from the hillsides the previous day began eating into the hills themselves.

“We’re going to stop this road and then we’re going to move to the Foothill and Eastern and stop those,” Mitchell said, referring to two other planned Orange County tollways.

Ann Christoph, who earlier this month relinquished her seat as Laguna Beach mayor after being defeated in the November election, looked on grimly as bulldozers gnawed at the hillsides.

“I felt I should be here,” she said.

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Bulldozer Face-off Grading resumed on a 4.6-mile section of the San Joaquin Hills tollway. This stretch of the 17-mile-long road cuts through Laguna Canyon. Several environmental groups oppose its construction.