1 Focus, 2 Sides in Tollway Fight

One of the last free-flowing rivers in California runs through it. Steelhead trout thought to be extinct in the region splashed through its waters last winter. Seven endangered species call the area home.

With all its ecological bona fides, the popular San Onofre State Beach has become the focal point for preservation efforts that go far beyond its boundaries.

A proposed toll road that would bisect the narrow 3,036-acre park lengthwise also would cut a swath through a mammoth expanse of untamed land in Orange County, threatening an area teeming with ecological significance.

Both sides of the issue--environmentalists and toll road planners--are mounting major battles that eerily bear many similarities.

No deadline for final approval is in sight, but the two camps have set up shop in San Clemente, sent out about 20,000 slick brochures each and used the same rallying cry to pull people to their side: quality of life.

After losing other land-use fights to road builders, environmentalists aren’t uttering lofty words about saving diminishing wildlife. Instead, they are focusing on the park to get people to care. This is about recreation, they say.

“Wildlife issues don’t move them. Quality of life issues do,” said Laura Cohen, who runs a nature preserve in Orange County. So, environmentalists are telling people to save the park for themselves--for its recreational value, as breathing space, as an antidote to suburban sprawl.

But their rallying cry is a two-edged sword. An Orange County agency has won widespread support for its Foothill South toll road by raising other quality-of-life issues that play well to motorists on Southern California’s crowded freeways.

The Transportation Corridor Agencies is telling area residents that the toll road will save people from gridlock, from frustration, from frittering away precious time stuck in traffic on the ever more congested Interstate 5.

“What we’re hearing people say who use our [other] toll roads is that they are less stressed,” said Lisa Telles, spokeswoman for the agency. The toll road “saves them time and lets them get home to their families quicker. It has made a difference in their lives.”

The clash between the two sides is well underway, even though approval of the $644-million toll road is a long way off and faces major environmental hurdles.

From their offices in San Clemente, which borders the proposed road, they are waging their war of words to muster public support. And in case it can’t push through its favored route through the park, the toll road agency has an alternate path through an undeveloped corridor in San Clemente.

The Sierra Club has made protection of the park one of its national priorities and is galvanizing support though a coalition called Friends of the Foothills. The environmental group won’t say how much it will spend on the fight, though it did acknowledge paying $10,000 on 20,000 mailers.

The toll road agency is paying a marketing firm $450,000 this year to sell the project, plus an additional $307,500 to run the San Clemente office for 2 1/2 years. It paid $11,000 for printing and mailing the 18,000 brochures.

Parks are inviting sites for road builders because as open public land they are, literally, the path of least resistance.

“There’s a long history of problems with road builders viewing parks as free land for highway construction,” said Mary Nichols, secretary of resources for Gov. Gray Davis. “Those of us who are park advocates are in favor of trying to keep the parks safe from any such consideration.”

A bill in the state Senate would make it more difficult for highway agencies to push their projects through parklands. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), awaits a vote in the full Senate.

The legislation would immediately affect state parks where roads are in various planning stages. But no highway is further along in the process than the toll road that would go through San Onofre State Beach, and the park has become the focal point as well in the legislative battle over the bill.

San Onofre State Beach is the 10th most visited park in the state system, drawing 1.2 million visitors annually to its family campgrounds and renowned surfing beach, Trestles.

It is situated just over the border in San Diego County on leased Camp Pendleton land. The lease was approved in 1971 by then-President Richard Nixon, whose Western White House was nearby on the San Clemente bluffs.

The lease expires in 2021. The state would like to extend it, but officials say it’s too early for negotiations.

The Marines have agreed to “consider” a road through the park but are adamantly opposed to an alternative proposed by state Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) to route the toll road through agricultural land on the base, off the eastern border of the park.

“If we had a choice, we do not want any road going through our base,” Major Tom Peery said.

Because the parkland still belongs to the federal government, toll road builders have to meet national environmental standards.

So far, federal agencies have agreed that south Orange County has a traffic problem, but they have not decided yet that a road is the solution, said Dave Carlson, a scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency.

The toll road agency’s preferred alignment of the road through the open lands and the park faces more hurdles than most projects.

“To have seven endangered species in an area where a road is planned is unheard of,” Carlson said. “I’ve never dealt with so many environmental issues.”

If the steelhead trout found in the area last winter turn out to be strong enough to survive there, another endangered species would be added to the list. The seven species now on the list are the arroyo southwestern toad, the California gnatcatcher, the Pacific pocket mouse, the least Bell’s vireo, the southwestern willow flycatcher, the tidewater goby and the California red-legged frog.

Aside from protecting the ecosystems, environmentalists join with South County residents in fearing that a highway would encourage development northeast of the park in a wilderness area they would like to see preserved.

“This to us seems like a wonderful piece of wild Orange County,” said Jim Blomquist, who is heading the Sierra Club campaign.

But even without any new development, the impending traffic problems flowing through South County to San Diego County would be substantial.

By 2020, an additional 70,000 cars are expected to be crossing the county line and heading south on Interstate 5, said John Standiford, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“There’s pretty significant growth pressure on the I-5 with development that is approved now,” he said.

The toll road would help alleviate the increased traffic from that growth, its proponents say.

“Traffic is going to increase,” Telles said. “Another regional highway is needed there. . . . We need to look forward to make sure the county remains a good place to live.”