A Quiet Campground at a Crossroads

Each year, more than 1.2 million visitors stream into San Onofre State Beach, making it the 10th most popular state park in California. Part of the draw is San Mateo Campground and its 160 campsites, where the rolling hills are still clear of development and the most frequent noise is the whistle of songbirds.

“Between San Diego and Bolsa Chica [State Beach in Huntington Beach] there isn’t another inland campsite that you can get to easily,” said Don Monahan, chief ranger for the California State Parks Orange Coast District.

But if Orange County toll road backers have their way, the last link of the county’s toll road system--the $644-million Foothill South--will run up against the popular campground, splitting the park down the middle and destroying a parking lot used by surfers. The proposed alignment has made the final 16 miles of toll road the most contentious project of the planned 67-mile system in Orange County.

This week, toll road board members are expected to approve $70,000 to study the possible relocation of the campground, a proposal made difficult by the long, narrow shape of the park, which would lose about 30% of its 2,200 inland acres to the road.

The route has enraged environmentalists who say the park contains some of the last untouched coastal land in Southern California. The park is home to seven endangered species.

Plans for the toll road also concern park users and rangers.

Mike Baldi of Inglewood, who has visited the campground with his teenage children four times in the last few years, can’t imagine a busy four-lane toll road 100 yards from where he camps.

“I wouldn’t come here ever again,” Baldi said last week while sitting in front of a campfire. “That little access road [nearby] is bad enough, in my opinion.”

Repeat campers like Baldi have contributed to a 20% jump in attendance at the park this decade. San Mateo Campground attracts about 70,000 campers each year, generating nearly $250,000 in revenue for the parks system, officials said. The potential loss of one of the park’s two campgrounds--the other is a beachfront location--troubles park officials who say there is no room to relocate the inland campground and no way to mitigate for the road running through it.

“You cannot replace that type of a campground,” said Jill Dampier, spokeswoman for the state park rangers. “You cannot make the equivalent. You cannot rebuild a natural area, and that’s the bottom line.”

The 9-year-old campground has 160 campsites, coin-operated showers and camper hookups. State parks officials say the toll road would take out an outdoor amphitheater and sewage station and the campground’s entrance. The campground, which cost nearly $5 million to build, is part of a mitigation project by the nearby San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Although the facilities have been called some of the best in the state, it is the atmosphere, not the buildings, that are irreplaceable, park officials say. In a region booming with people and new housing, such recreational opportunities are quickly disappearing, they say.

Other Options Aren’t Ruled Out

“Is the experience you have here today going to be the same after the roadway comes? There is no way it would be the same,” said Monahan, the chief ranger.

Toll road officials say nobody wants to take parkland, but their extensive studies show the route through the park makes the most sense. And they say the most frequently used portion of the park, the 3 1/2 miles of beachfront access, would remain intact.

Lisa Telles, a spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, said she believes there may be other options for keeping the inland campground intact.

“That’s exactly why there is a study before the board to look at how we can mitigate for it,” Telles said. “We certainly are committed to developing a plan that will keep the park system whole.”

Park officials counter that the campground, which sits on the banks of San Mateo Creek, was never meant to be near a major roadway.

The park’s second campground gives an indication of how San Mateo might look in the future.

Perched high on the bluffs above the beach, it is an asphalt strip backed up against the freeway with space for 220 recreational vehicles. Traffic and passing trains drown out the sound of the ocean. The campground, which has been closed for repairs since November but reopens May 1, is a stark contrast to the inland campground only a mile or so up a gravel trail.

The 16-mile Foothill South toll road is slated for construction in 2001 and would open two years later. The environmental impact review, now underway, is studying the route through San Onofre as well as an alternative route farther to the west and the option of building no toll road at all.

Although transit officials’ preferred alignment for the road already appears in the Thomas Guide map, it is far from a done deal. A state Senate bill introduced last month by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) would make the building of any roads in state parks difficult. Toll road backers in Orange County are gearing up to fight the proposed law.

Park officials, who have voiced support for Hayden’s bill, say they intend to go about business as usual and continue making improvements to the park.

“We have no intention of putting anything on hold,” said park spokesman Ken Colombini. “There really is no reason for a state park not to be used, and we’re going to continue to serve our clients, especially since it’s a road that we hope never gets built.”

For now, the toll road is a common topic of discussion at the campground, said camper John Greer.

The retired Greer has visited nearly all the parks in the state since he and his wife retired in the mid-1980s. Word of the toll road distressed him.

“I think it’s a bunch of bull,” he said. “Why can’t they come around another way? With all that hustle and bustle coming by here, who’d want to come?”

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Campers’ Loss?

One proposed route for the county’s final 16 miles of toll road threatens a popular campground at San Onofre State Beach. The plan would put cars within a hundred yards of the 160 campsites that help make it the 10th most popular park in the state system. A study expected to be approved this week by toll road officials will consider ways to make up for the loss, but critics say the park’s geography may make it difficult to replicate the existing facility.