County Pushing Antonio Parkway Extension

The Board of Supervisors calls it the county’s most important capital improvement still on the drawing boards: a 4 1/2-mile boulevard designed to alleviate South County traffic congestion and create a crucial north-south alternative to Interstate 5.

The $45-million Antonio Parkway extension is the county’s largest road project in several years. But more importantly, it’s a project dictated as much by the county’s bankruptcy as by traffic studies and development plans.

The fast-track project is an outgrowth of a county plan to earn more than $200 million for its bankruptcy recovery effort over the next 20 years by importing garbage from San Diego and Los Angeles counties.

Some of the trash would be dumped at a county landfill in San Juan Capistrano, where city officials agreed to the plan in exchange for the county’s pledge to have the parkway extension opened by 1999.

Trash importation to the landfill will cease if the county misses the deadline--a scenario that could jeopardize the county’s carefully crafted bankruptcy recovery plans.

“This is a very critical link to trash importation and the whole recovery,” Supervisor Marian Bergeson said after a Tuesday meeting at which the board was updated about the project’s progress.

“We’ve calculated precise dollar amounts that are needed for the recovery,” she said.

Sensitive to the deadline, county officials plan to build the parkway extension in about half the time it usually takes to construct such a road.

The project also marks a departure in the way it is being funded. Usually, the county builds roads using money collected from developers in the area. But in the case of Antonio Parkway, officials can’t wait for developer fees to accumulate, so they are covering the costs of the project up front and seeking reimbursements from builders.

The county hopes to speed up the process by awarding contracts for early grading work before the final design work on other portions of the road is completed.

“By incrementally awarding pieces of the contract, we get the grading done early and get construction done early,” said Ken R. Smith, the county’s director of transportation.

The road poses several challenges. Because it runs through relatively rough terrain, workers will need to grade about 10 million cubic yards of dirt. Plans also call for the construction of a bridge over a wilderness canyon that will allow wildlife to navigate the area, Smith said.

A project of this scale would normally take about five years to plan and build. The county hopes to have Antonio Parkway completed by the end of 1998. The Santa Margarita Co., which owns the land and is building the 8,100-home Ladera community nearby, has already granted all the county’s right-of-way requests, Smith said.

Working ahead of schedule is important, he added, because heavy rains could push back the completion date.

“Time is the key,” Smith said. “If we don’t meet the timeline conditions, we must halt all importation to the Prima Deshecha landfill” in San Juan Capistrano.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about how the road and the proposed Ladera development will affect wildlife and plant life in the area.

“This is one of the largest open grassland areas left in the county,” said Pete DeSimone, a conservationist with the Sea and Sage chapter of the Audubon Society, who has fought the development for years. DeSimone also questioned whether the county will have the money it needs to service both the road and the community once they are built.

But South County business leaders and many city officials support the extension, hoping it will relieve traffic jams and give people driving on the east side of Interstate 5 an alternative route.

“We certainly need the road,” said John Ben, president of the South Orange County Chamber of Commerce. “Businesses need to deliver their goods and need people to get to their businesses.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Another Avenue

The extension of Antonio Parkway from Oso Parkway to Ortega Highway is expected to reduce South County traffic congestion and provide a new north- south alternative to Interstate 5. Design work is underway and officials hope the $45- million project will be finished by 1999.