Committee OKs Bill Blocking Tollway Path

Setting the stage for a battle between environmentalists and Orange County toll-road backers, a state Senate committee Tuesday approved a bill that would ban new construction or widening of roads in state parks.

The bill, passed on a 5-2 vote, would block the route preferred by local officials for the 16-mile Foothill South, the final link in the county’s long-planned 67-mile toll-road system. The $644-million road would bisect San Onofre State Beach, which draws more than 1.2 million visitors a year.

Written by state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), the legislation would make any such road illegal. Hayden, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, declined a toll-road lobbyist’s request to exempt the Orange County road from his proposal.

“Increasingly, roads are being targeted through state parks simply because the state has grown so much,” Hayden said at a hearing Tuesday night in Sacramento.

Claire Schlotterbeck of Brea, who helped create Chino Hills State Park, spoke on behalf of Hayden’s bill. Transportation planners, especially in congested urban areas, view “state parks as empty land, not exceptional land,” Schlotterbeck said.

Opponents of the measure were also plentiful and vociferous, objecting to the bill’s sweeping approach, which they said would cripple road building in the state.

Speaking for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, the joint-powers authority created to build toll roads in Orange County, former state Sen. John Foran said the Hayden bill “was the most far-reaching bill adverse to the transportation-building system in the state of California than any I’ve seen in my career.”

In addition to state parks, the bill would prohibit building roads through state conservancy lands or any land controlled by the Department of Fish and Game.

Aides to Hayden have said that the bill does not target any specific project, but environmentalists pushing for its passage said that defeating the Foothill South is their primary goal. If the bill does not pass during this legislative session, they said, they will bring it back.

“We don’t plan on going away,” said Jim Blomquist, the Southern California representative for the Sierra Club.

The road, which already appears in the Thomas Guide map of the area, would split the park, obliterating about 30% of its inland area and destroying a popular campground. The park is home to seven federally protected endangered species, environmentalists said, and contains some of the last pristine coastal land in Southern California.

Though the bill won committee approval, opponents predict that it will have rougher going from now on.

“It’s making a sweeping policy statement,” said Christopher Jones, chief of staff to Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange), who opposes the bill. Hayden, he said, “is going to have a tough time getting this through.”

Thirteen Orange County cities and the League of California Cities have joined the toll-road agencies in opposing the legislation.

Dennis Carpenter, a lobbyist for Orange County, argued that the bill could have a chilling effect on the creation of parks. “You can never have another park with a road in it, which means you’ll never have another park,” he said.

But Kate Neiswender, a consultant to the Natural Resources Committee, said that internal park roads for visitors would specifically be allowed under the bill. Neiswender denied that the bill was aimed at the Orange County road.

“We wouldn’t have the same kind of statewide support if it was only an Orange County bill,” Neiswender said.

Though the legislation would protect recreational areas, officials for the California Department of Parks and Recreation so far have declined to take a position on it, spokesman Ken Colombini said. State park officials are firmly opposed to the Foothill South, he said, but are not convinced that Hayden’s bill is the way to stop it.

No other road proposed for a state park is as far along in the planning process as the Foothill South. Eventually, the bill could affect long-term plans for Los Angeles and Riverside counties, including the proposed widening of Mulholland Drive and Las Virgenes Road in Malibu Creek State Park.