Costs of Tollway War Continuing to Mount : Transportation: In newest battle phase, environmentalists today will seek court order blocking San Joaquin Hills road construction.

By JEFFREY A. PERLMAN

Aug. 23, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES URBAN AFFAIRS WRITER

LAGUNA BEACH — With construction due to begin soon on the San Joaquin Hills tollway, the cost of the 20-year war waged over it now exceeds $2 million and continues to grow.

For opponents of the new road, their cost--close to half that total--has been worth it.

“We’re trying to show people that they don’t always have to go along with whatever the developers want in this county,” said opponent Judy Davis. “We’re talking about what kind of life our children and grandchildren are going to have here, and quite frankly, that quality is going downhill.”

But transportation official Michael Stockstill, a veteran of the toll road battles in Orange County, said that “if you ask freeway users their opinion about whether the road should have been built 10 years ago, you’ll hear a different story.”

The latest chapter in the battle begins today in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, where environmentalists will seek a temporary restraining order blocking construction of the $1-billion project. The construction, which was supposed to have begun on Saturday, was halted pending today’s hearing.

Here are just some of the costs of the long-fought highway war:

* The San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency, which oversees the massive toll road effort, has spent more than $1 million on legal fees to defend the project in court since 1987, agency officials said. In addition, mailings, brochures and recent advertisements extolling the jobs created by the project cost more than $25,000 a year. The money has come from development fees charged to landowners and Mello-Roos taxes levied on some homeowners and businesses.

* On the other side, the newly created Citizens Against the Tollroads has spent between $40,000 and $50,000 just in the past few months for newspaper ads, flyers, rallies and other activities, and that figure doesn’t include donations of services from advertising and public relations professionals, among others.

* Just since 1991, according to estimates from court records and tollway officials, the Laguna Greenbelt, Laguna Canyon Conservancy, Save Our San Juan, Village Laguna, Friends of the Irvine Coast and other groups have contributed more than $150,000 to the Laguna Greenbelt Legal Defense Fund, which continues to seek donations.

* The Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental organization that has filed lawsuits on behalf of Laguna Greenbelt and the other environmental groups, has received more than $400,000 to battle Orange County’s toll roads, although NRDC won’t specify how much was spent just battling the San Joaquin Hills project.

The hotbed of anti-toll road sentiment has been Laguna Beach, the town that wants to be left alone, according to former Mayor Lida Lenney. For years, a sign posted by the city alongside Laguna Canyon Road has proclaimed the city’s opposition to the toll road, and city officials speak against the project at almost any opportunity.

But the city has spent little of its own money, except on a few legal bills and staff time, despite its opposition.

This is a result, city officials said, of an agreement between the City Council and the Orange County Board of Supervisors two years ago. In that agreement, the council promised not to sue to block the San Joaquin Hills tollway project in return for $10 million from the county to buy adjacent Laguna Laurel parkland.

But Laguna Beach Taxpayers Assn. President Bob Mosier, a toll road supporter, isn’t satisfied.

“City officials are going on television and talking against the toll road as public officials at rallies and on television to the whole city, and that’s wrong,” Mosier said. “They didn’t sign away their First Amendment rights, but they’re not speaking as private citizens. . . . They go to rallies and talk as city officials.”

And Mosier, among other critics of the Laguna Beach council, allege that City Hall has gone to great lengths to disguise its anti-toll road spending, partly by deciding last year in a closed-door session to pay half the cost of a lawsuit against a different toll road--the Eastern Transportation Corridor--which will terminate at the Laguna Freeway in Irvine, nine miles from downtown Laguna Beach.

Laguna Beach council member Robert F. Gentry, who asked the City Council to help pay for the Eastern corridor lawsuit, said: “It’s true that the Eastern corridor is outside Laguna Beach, but it will terminate at the Laguna Freeway, which may result in too much traffic being dumped on Laguna Canyon Road.”

But the San Joaquin Hills tollway, Gentry concedes, is inevitable.

“The facility is funded, it does have approvals and is ready to proceed in a number of places along the route,” Gentry said. “I still have a hope that the environmental concerns for the area around Laguna Canyon will be addressed, and I believe at least some of them will be, because the decision-makers involved are good, solid public officials.”