CoastWatcher

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tollway29sep29,0,107150,full.story?coll=la-headlines-california
From the Los Angeles Times
Proposed O.C. tollway would violate environmental laws, report says
A Coastal Commission staff analysis recommends denying certification of the Foothill South project that would pass through San Onofre State Beach.
By Dan Weikel and David Reyes
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

September 29, 2007

Building a six-lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach near San Clemente would cause widespread violations of state environmental laws by threatening endangered species, marring natural resources and compromising recreational opportunities, according to a California Coastal Commission report released Friday.

The 236-page analysis conflicts with claims by the Transportation Corridor Agencies that the proposed route for the Foothill South tollway is the least harmful to the popular coastal park out of eight alternatives considered by the Irvine-based agency.

Estimated to cost $875 million, the 16-mile tollway is billed as the final link in Orange County’s network of toll roads, allowing drivers to bypass clogged Interstate 5 in the southern part of the county. It would begin at Oso Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita, pass through the state park north of the beach and connect with I-5 at Basilone Road south of San Clemente.

“It’s difficult to imagine a more environmentally damaging alternative location,” the commission’s staff concluded. “No measures exist that would enable the proposed alignment to be found consistent with the California Coastal Act.”
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“Formatively the experience I had, where I found the beginning of the map to figure out how to feel my own life, would have come from surfing as a kid.  My wilderness is the ocean, and my experience with risk and conquering fear was the ocean.”

-Sean Penn, Time Magazine, September 24, 2007

On October 10, 2007 the California Coastal Commission will review a proposal by Home Depot representatives to construct a massive commercial retail center on the Los Cerritos wetlands, one the largest and most degraded and threatened wetlands in Southern California.

For the Coastal Commission analysis of the destructive project, go to http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2007/10/W14a-10-2007.pdf

For the latest news story, keep reading…..

Home Depot Teeters
By Harry Saltzgaver
Executive Editor
http://www.gazettes.com/homedepot09272007.html
State Coastal Commission staff has presented a 45-page argument against allowing construction of a Home Depot Design Center on Studebaker Road near Loynes Drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Coastal Commission staff has just released their analysis of the proposed OC Toll Road and has found the project ‘fundamentally inconsistent’ with the letter and the spirit of the California Coastal Act.

Read the report at http://documents.coastal.ca.gov/reports/2007/10/Th19a-10-2007.pdf 

On October 11 the California Coastal Commission will deliberate the fate of a plan by Orange County real estate speculators to build a 17-mile toll road freeway through San Onofre State Park and a nature preserve in order to construct thousands of new homes in some of the last undeveloped open space left in Southern California.  The new road would terminate at Interstate Highway 5 just south of San Clemente, causing even worse traffic along the already congested I-5 OC-San Diego corridor.  Hundreds of coastal activists are going to attend the meeting to insure the Coastal Commission denies the proposal.  The meeting is at Crowne Plaza Los Angeles Harbor Hotel, located at 601 S. Palos Verdes Street in San Pedro, CA (Tel: (310) 519-8200).  For the Coastal Commission staff report and more information, go to www.coastal.ca.gov.

For the latest news of local governments opposing the project, see below:

San Diego Joins Local Communities Against Toll Road Freeway That Would Destroy San Onofre State Park

Council reverses itself, opposes San Onofre plan
By Terry Rodgers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 26, 2007
SAN DIEGO – Reversing its position from a year ago, the San Diego City Council yesterday voted to oppose a proposed toll road that would cut across San Onofre State Beach and a nature preserve in Orange County.

The 17-mile extension of state Route 241 would link Oso Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita to Basilone Road at Interstate 5, along the northern edge of Camp Pendleton. Read the rest of this entry »