The Future of Trestles

(What follows is continued from December 15^th)

Murphy: It shows that their numbers are consistently off by fifty percent. They're probably off even more. They've already admitted that this road will cost the most to build and will have the least people driving on it.

So it makes the least sense financially. Especially considering the financial problems they're already having. Every driver projection they've made has been off. So they said, we'll downsize the road.

CD: Early in the 90's there was actually a plan to build an airport inland from Trestles along the San Mateo River Valley.

Murphy: I heard about that being a theory, but I haven't read anything about it yet. I think it was considered an airport site in '93 or so.

CD: An airport proposal just shows the development pressure on this land is just huge. If the Sierra Club considers this so important, has there been any talk of buying out this land and turning it into a national park or national monument or even a state park?

Murphy: Definitely. In fact, Proposition 50 just passed. Earmarked in that is money to buy RMV. Problem is, we don't have a willing seller in Rancho Mission Viejo.

So we think that yes, we could come up with money through Proposition 50, the National Conservation Trust, the Trust for Public Land and through Federal and State money, we think we could get the funds. But the problem is we don't have a willing seller

Murphy: Right, but then the other thing is that they're going through this NCCP -- National Community Conservation Plan process because of the San Mateo watershed and all the wildlife that lives back there. So, it could turn out that they're not going to be allowed to build all they want because of all the critical habitat. In that case, it would be great if they came back and said, 'okay, we're only allowed to build in this many places,' and then we could purchase those areas. That sort of thing. We'd love to be able to work with them, but they haven't budged in saying they want to work with us.

Murphy: I think it's a 30 year buildout plan. Some of their land is already leased to TRW and I think they have a 20 year lease for the rest of the land. I'm not sure when they'd really get to start. They're still in the planning phase.

Personally, I feel like it's grown tremendously. For example, San Clemente has a Fiesta Day every year on Del Mar it's main street. Every year I've been here, we've had a booth on Fiesta Day. The first year we had 500 people sign a petition on a postcard that we send to the county supervisors and big decision makers like the water boards. So 500 was pretty good. But then the next year we had 700 and this year we had over a thousand. To me that shows that there's more and more interest. More and more people are coming to us and asking about this issue.

You can also see it in the local papers. There are a lot of letters to the editor. It's definitely in the minds of a lot of people.

Murphy: Fortunately Wayne Eggleston, who also ran on an environmental platform, just won a council seat in the most recent election in San Clemente, and Scott Diehl lost. Then in other towns, you had Susan Withrow, who was from Mission Viejo and had a chair on the TCA (Toll Road) board and then Harold Kaufman who was on the board too. They all lost. Three major toll road players all lost in the last election. So that's really interesting.

I think people are thinking more about their elected officials and what kind of decisions they're making with regards to development. For the most part, everyone hates to see big money buying off politicians and people want to see their quality of life preserved in their local communities. They want clean water, clean air and clean beaches.

It was a rider on a bill that had nothing to do with transportation. The TCA lobbyists are always trying to find ways to get out of adhering to the standard environmental traffic and safety laws that they're required to follow. They convinced a congressman -- we heard it was Ken Calvert from Riverside but he denies it -- so we're not sure who it was.

So the TCA convinced the congressman to put a rider on this Department of Defense Authorization bill and luckily the environmental community found out about it and was able to raise the awareness to Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Loretta Sanchez and Susan Davis. We got a lot of state politicians aware of this attempt to avoid state laws and to put this road through at a Federal level. They made a big stink about it and said, "we represent California, you can't put a road through in California and not have it abide by our laws." So the effort was really successful and they were able to kill it in committee which was great.

Murphy: If the TCA is so proud of their road and their road is so great, why do they need to avoid state laws? If they were so environmentally sensitive they'd be able to go by the book rather than trying to sneak this road through on a rider that has nothing to do with a Department of Defense Bill.

Murphy: It's amazing. Someone from a different environmental group not even affiliated with Friends of the Foothills caught onto this and alerted us. We wouldn't have known otherwise. The National Resources Defense Council was excellent in helping us get rid of that rider. They're our lawyers on this.

Murphy: We had a debate on the Cox Forum TV show, but there was a big forum was last November when almost 1000 people turned up at a church for a TCA hearing. It was awesome. Surfers were great, they turned out in droves, along with local residents and people from far away. It's really a statewide issue because it does go through the middle of San Onofre State Park.

All those people were really concerned about what this road was going to do.

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