South Pasadena Vows to Continue Long Battle Against Freeway

Federal officials have signaled that they may support the Long Beach Freeway extension, but to proceed, the project will have to plow through the opposition of South Pasadena, the small city positioned within the last gap in the Los Angeles freeway system.

The affluent community called a news conference Wednesday to vow that it will not budge in its three-decade fight against the freeway extension.

The city may also mount what would no doubt be a lengthy and costly legal battle if the federal government decides to put the highway through the city as planned.

“If we don’t resolve it over the weekend,” said South Pasadena City Councilman Harry Knapp, referring to a Friday meeting with federal transportation officials about the freeway, “we’ll be in court.”

The face-off between the town of fewer than 30,000 and supporters of the extension escalated this week when The Times disclosed that a draft Federal Highway Administration report supports completion of the controversial 6.2-mile project.

The highway administration will present its pro-freeway report to officials from South Pasadena, Pasadena, Alhambra and Los Angeles on Friday in Washington.

South Pasadena is alone among those cities in opposing the extension, and city officials said there are no conditions under which they will back the planned link between the San Bernardino and Foothill freeways.

A South Pasadena lawsuit would probably focus on the freeway’s environmental impact statement and could delay the project for years, said Antonio Rossmann, a San Francisco lawyer who is South Pasadena’s freeway counsel.

Federal officials have said no final decision will be made at Friday’s meeting, at which views will be gathered from local officials.

But South Pasadena officials, joined by about a dozen local residents as well as Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Altadena) and state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) called Wednesday’s news conference to denounce the project.

Standing on the athletic field of South Pasadena High School, which would abut the freeway, South Pasadena Mayor Paul Zee called the extension “totally unacceptable.”

Those attending the news conference waved posters reading “Death of a City,” with a gloomy picture of a bulldozer plowing through bungalows, palm trees and a picket fence.

For decades, South Pasadena residents have been the fiercest opponents of the freeway project, which would run through several historic districts, displace more than 900 homes and destroy more than 6,000 trees.

Unlike his City Council colleague Knapp, Zee stopped short of saying the city would take legal action if federal officials proceed with the freeway extension. Zee said a lawsuit “is clearly one option.”

The mayor said he believes South Pasadena residents will support spending city funds to fight the freeway because there “wouldn’t be a more important use of city resources.”

Knapp said that if necessary, the city would seek donations from residents to cover legal expenses.

Lawyer Rossmann said any possible suit by South Pasadena would seek to show that the California Department of Transportation, which oversees the project, erred in its environmental assessments and deliberately misstated information to gain advantage.

“We have only seen the surface of the deception by Caltrans in their environmental analysis,” Rossmann said.

Although there have been numerous Caltrans environmental reviews, much of the data originates from reports dating back to the 1970s, he alleged. “Some of the air quality modeling dates to 1973,” Rossmann said.

He said litigation could also examine the levels of compensation made to the South Pasadena Unified School District, which would lose students as the number of households dropped.

Ron Kosinski, Caltrans’ chief environmental planner, said the agency is undaunted by the threat of a South Pasadena lawsuit. “We will be more than happy to go over this in court,” he said, and described the city’s talk of a lawsuit as “grasping for straws.”