Officials Caused Road’s Troubles

The headline on your Jan. 20 story “Canyon Growth Turns Byway Into ‘Road of Death’ ” misrepresents the causes behind the problems on Santiago Canyon Road.

The long overburdened roadway has not suffered due to canyon growths. For decades, we’ve grown by as few as zero and as “many” as 13 homes annually.

The blame for the problems on Santiago Canyon Road rests squarely upon the Orange County Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. Between 1986 and 1996, these bodies approved tens of thousands of homes and tens of millions of square feet of commercial and industrial development. Santiago Canyon Road was at peak hour capacity in 1988.

Over a dozen development environmental impact reports, without logical justification, magically concluded one of two things: New residents of these huge developments “would not use” Santiago Canyon Road or the projected new traffic mysteriously “disappearing” at the mouth of the canyons. Every year, as we continued to point out the sheer stupidity and dishonesty of this “study” system, protesting each approval and often taking the county to court, the traffic on Santiago Canyon Road worsened.

Those of us who fought hard to defend our communities were ignored by those elected and paid to do the job we as citizens ended up having to do. Not only were we impacted, we were politically disenfranchised.

The upshot? The public was right, and, to no one’s surprise, the land developer-paid “experts” and the county were wrong. Because California environmental laws allow the county to approve development with or without mitigation for impacts, the health and safety of the public is routinely manipulated, downplayed, overlooked or ignored.

As long as the public is included properly in each project environmental study process, the courts generally uphold the “just can’t say no” decisions of county officials.

SHERRY LEE MEDDICK, Silverado