Site Still Being Sought for Orange County Jail

It is by anyone’s definition a monumental task: finding an acceptable place in Orange County to build a jail.

Sheriff Michael S. Carona knew the pitfalls last year when he pledged to south Orange County residents during his election campaign to do what he could to reverse the county’s plan to expand the 1,100-bed James A. Musick Branch Jail near Lake Forest.

Now, even as Carona met again Monday with elected south county officials searching for new jail sites, roadblocks were apparent.

Carona is operating under a self-imposed March deadline to find a site acceptable to city and county officials and to come up with a plan that won’t cost more than the estimated $50-million expansion of the Musick facility.

In the last two weeks, the mere possibility of three sites being considered adjacent to Orange drew protests from Orange Mayor Joanne Coontz and former county Supervisor William G. Steiner. Both said the city already had done enough by agreeing to the county’s expansion of the Theo Lacy Branch Jail.

The sites are near the Foothill toll road on land owned by the Irvine Co., whose officials have been meeting with committee members.

In light of the swift opposition from Orange, officials from Irvine and Lake Forest, as well as Carona and two anti-Musick county supervisors, were quick to issue assurances to Coontz that nothing had been decided.

But the sites near Orange remained among the leading options when staffers from Irvine and Lake Forest delivered evaluations on 14 sites across the county in their meeting Monday.