LOS ANGELES — California's Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Agency failed again to get approvals needed to move ahead on a five-mile extension of one of its toll roads.
The Orange County toll operator scrapped plans in April 2014 to extend the network 16 miles to the San Diego County line on a path that cut too closely to the San Onofre State Beach, one of the state's most well-known surf breaks, for environmental groups and surfers.
At the time, a spokeswoman said, the Foothill/Eastern, which operates 36 miles of toll roads, would focus on the Tesoro extension — a five mile extension that the San Diego County Regional Water Quality Control Board shot down Monday.
The board rejected Foothill/Eastern's application for a waste discharge requirement permit needed to move forward, saying the toll road agency failed to adequately disclose and mitigate the damage the project would cause to water quality and other natural resources.
The 6-1 vote to adopt legal findings explaining why it rejected the toll road project represents the third time the board has denied a permit for the extension project because of environmental concerns.
The toll road agency contends there is no lawful basis for the regional board to deny its application to extend the 241 Toll Road. It had appealed to the State Water Resources Control Board after a June 2013 denial of the permit, after which the state board told the regional board it had to adopt detailed findings providing a legal and factual basis for the denial, according to Foothill/Eastern officials.
The regional board had denied the permit in 2013 saying the full project impacts of the entire road were not disclosed in the application.
The control board's staff recommended in a recent report the board again deny the application; and the board did deny the permit in a 6-0 vote.
"It is disappointing that the regional board is refusing to abide by the State Board's order," Foothill/Eastern official said in a March 11 statement after the
TCA received a second shot at submitting its application after other transit agencies testified that is standard procedure for road projects to be built in phases — only disclosing the impact of the phase in question, according to TCA.
The Save San Onofre Coalition, comprised of environmental advocacy and surfer organizations, supported the water board's decision.
The coalition believes TCA would not stop at the five-mile Tesoro extension if permitted to move ahead, but would return to plans to extend the road an additional 10 miles to the San Diego County line connecting with Interstate 5.
If extended to I-5, the road would bisect San Onofre State Beach.
If that occurred, the state parks department has indicated it will abandon 60% of the state park because of the damage the toll road would cause, according to the coalition.
"The Board responded to the overwhelming evidence that the Tesoro Extension is no more than an attempt to commence construction of a larger, environmentally destructive plan that has been rejected by the board and every other agency that has considered the project to-date," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation. "This project needs to be rethought from the ground up, or abandoned, rather than twisted to accommodate every rejection the TCA experiences."
The TCA has spent more than $300 million in public funding for a project that has been repeatedly turned down, according to the Coalition.
