Corona Official Joins Chorus of Criticism on Study of Jail Sites

Orange County’s environmental analysis for a new 6,191-bed jail at any of four sites has drawn blistering criticism from wide-ranging sources, documents released Friday show.

Corona City Councilman Bill Miller complained that his city did not receive a copy of the report until June 18, two weeks after it was released and two weeks before the close of the comment period.

“Corona is very much concerned about issues that your consultant has sniffed at as so much trash,” Miller said, citing social and economic concerns. He said the report says “superciliously” that Orange County has investigated some issues but would not provide the evidence on which it had reached conclusions.

“Isn’t that neat?” Miller wrote. “You’ve created a closed system saying that we didn’t have to hear you, Corona; we studied it (but won’t show it to you); and, trust us, there is no reason for your concern. Tea flowed in Boston Harbor in the wake of the same superior attitude.”

One of the proposed sites, Gypsum-Coal Canyon, is near the border with Riverside County and not far from Corona. The other sites are Fremont Canyon and Irvine Lake, east of the City of Orange, and Chiquita Canyon, off the Ortega Highway in southern Orange County.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to pick one of the four sites next Wednesday for the “remote” jail designed to meet the county’s jail needs through the year 2000.

The Irvine-based firm of LSA Associates Inc. prepared both the environmental impact report and the responses to comments generated by the report on behalf of the county Environmental Management Agency.

EMA responded to the various comments by noting them, saying they fell outside the scope of an environmental impact report, or by explaining proposals to ease adverse effects.

The Irvine Co., which owns Gypsum and Fremont canyons and Irvine Lake, said in its response that the environmental report did not adequately address a general plan study being drawn up for East Orange.

“The goals of this study call for resort and commercial recreation uses in the vicinity of Irvine Lake surrounded by a major residential community,” company vice president Monica Florian said in her response. “The Irvine Lake jail site would preclude achieving these goals.”

Even schools joined the fray. The Capistrano Unified School District opposed the Chiquita Canyon site. Rancho Santiago College opposed all the sites except Chiquita Canyon.

Yorba Linda officials said it was “absolutely incredible” that the report ignored the impact of a Gypsum-Coal Canyon jail on their city.

Orange officials said the report was “so deficient in both its scope and content” that any decision on a jail site should be postponed.

The Friends of the Tecate Cypress said the 1,000-acre cypress forest would have to be protected if Gypsum-Coal Canyon is chosen, a concern echoed by the California Native Plant Society and the Natural History Foundation of Orange County.

A Marine Corps official said there were “no comments at this time,” but “thank you for the opportunity to review.”