Toll Road Runoff Allegedly Fouls Bay

State water officials announced Wednesday that they are investigating whether polluted runoff from Orange County’s Eastern toll road is flowing unimpeded into tributaries of environmentally fragile Newport Bay.

“It would be of great concern,” said Kurt Berchtold, assistant executive officer of the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, the state agency based in Riverside that enforces the federal Clean Water Act in northern and central Orange County.

Newport Bay “is a sensitive water body,” he said. “It has existing water-quality problems that we’ve been working hard to solve.”

The investigation follows separate actions by state water officials ordering Caltrans to stop polluted runoff from flowing off the San Joaquin Hills toll road and a stretch of East Coast Highway.

A formal complaint filed this week by South County environmental activist Michael Hazzard prompted the investigation, Berchtold said. Hazzard accused Caltrans, which maintains the Eastern toll road, of violating statewide storm-water rules that require the agency to control runoff to the “maximum extent practicable.”

Hazzard contends that storm drains along certain parts of the highway allow the runoff to flow directly into creeks without passing through marshes and retention basins built to help cleanse the water.

The road was designed, built and financed by the Transportation Corridor Agencies, a joint-powers authority responsible for building and operating the Foothill Eastern and the San Joaquin toll roads.

“We want to debunk the Transportation Corridor Agencies’ claim that toll roads are environmentally friendly,” Hazzard said, “and to prevent the TCA from building the south section of the 241 across San Mateo Creek, where we have steelhead trout that were once thought to be extinct.”

Stopping the so-called Foothill South extension is a top priority for some environmental groups, including the Sierra Club.

State environmental regulations require Caltrans to minimize pollution from roadways by using the best available technology. Runoff from highways contains oil, gasoline, copper dust from brake pads and other pollutants.

Berchtold said the water board will review the storm-water management plan for the road, visit the site, look at what systems are in place and try to determine how well they work. Water agency officials also will meet with Caltrans in about two weeks to discuss Hazzard’s concerns.

Board officials will decide by month’s end whether any enforcement actions are necessary.

Caltrans spokeswoman Beth Beeman declined to comment until after the meeting with state water officials. However, there appeared to be some confusion as to whether Caltrans was fully responsible for the runoff control, or whether the Transportation Corridor Agencies have some liability.

Activists were angered that while TCA collects the tolls, Caltrans is forced to pay the bills for maintenance.

“By far, the biggest outrage is the fact that TCA does nothing for maintaining these roads,” said Andrew Wetzler, a staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Those costs are borne by Caltrans, which means these costs are borne by taxpayers. It belies the myth of a privately financed toll road. The truth is there are always financial costs, along with environmental costs.”

TCA spokeswoman Lisa Telles said the agency took on the financial burden of building the roads when the state couldn’t afford it.

“The reason we have toll roads here is because the state didn’t have funds to build,” she said. “The tolls collected go to paying back the construction cost of building the toll road. Maintaining the road is the responsibility of the state, just as it would be if” the state had built the road.