Driving north from San Diego along the coast on Interstate 5, a traveler passes mile after mile of houses, malls, businesses, and roadways. Every now and then you glimpse the ocean off in the distance or see a grassy hillside, but otherwise you are confined to a virtual corridor of development.

Then suddenly, just north of Oceanside, the landscape opens up. To the west is the ocean, while to the east flatlands and rolling hills covered with coastal sage scrub extend as far as the eye can see, with only here and there a building or a road. Along this stretch of highway you might actually spot a hawk circling overhead, hunting for its meal among the abundant little critters in the underbrush, or perched atop a telephone pole. This is coastal southern California as it used to look before sprawl took over, and it's still here because you're in Camp Pendleton. Like many military reservations in California, this 125,000-acre Marine Corps base, owned by the Department of the Navy, contains some of the last wild land in its region; this area would likely have been developed years ago if not for the base. San Mateo Creek, one of the last coastal streams in southern California that has no dams or other man-made barriers, flows from its headwaters in the Cleveland National Forest through Camp Pendleton to meet the ocean. Southern steelhead were thought to be extinct south of Malibu Creek until they were found in San Mateo Creek in 1999.

Camp Pendleton also contains a state park, created in the 1970s through a lease agreement with the Navy. San Onofre State Beach gets about 2.5 million visits each year, and in 2005-06 was the sixth-most-visited of California's state parks. Reservations for its two campgrounds fill up months ahead, and the 161-unit San Mateo Campground is usually booked solid for the summer. A 1.5-mile trail leads from that campground to Trestles Beach. There are 4.5 miles of beaches within the park, reached by six trails cut through the bluffs. The park is known worldwide among surfers for its surfbreak, Trestles, which is the only stop in the continental United States on the World Championship Tour. Although it is close to San Clemente and I-5, San Onofre State Beach can feel like back country. It might not be this way for much longer, though, if an Orange County toll road authority has its way.

"Gutting of the Park"
When President Richard Nixon and Governor Ronald Reagan worked to create San Onofre State Beach, they intended it to be--like any state park--protected in perpetuity, even though the land still belonged to the Navy. Nevertheless, Orange County plans to build a toll road through it. Foothill-South, as it is called, would be a 16-mile, multi-lane highway, extending the Foothill toll road from its current terminus at Oso Parkway in Rancho Santa Margarita to I-5 just south of San Clemente.

The damage to San Onofre State Beach could be catastrophic. State Parks Director Ruth Coleman has described it as a "gutting of the park," and she and other officials have said that State Parks might choose to abandon the inland portion of San Onofre State Beach if the road is built. "We are not interested in maintaining some remnants," said Rich Rozzelle, superintendent for the Orange Coast District.

Now in the preliminary design stage, the project still faces significant permit and other hurdles. Three lawsuits to stop the project--two by the State Attorney General and one by a coalition of environmental, recreational, and surfing organizations--have been brought against the Foothill/Eastern Transportation Corridor Authority (TCA), the joint powers agency created by the County and city governments to build and operate the road. The TCA, however, is proceeding with the design work and has collected field data, including boring for soil samples, in the park without State Parks permission. TCA spokeswoman Jennifer Seaton said that the agency obtained permission to drill in the state park "from the landowner--the military."

The toll road would have four lanes at first but is being designed for expansion to six. The most recent cost estimate for the project is $875 million. It would run through the watersheds of both San Mateo Creek and one of its main tributaries, Cristianitos Creek; through the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy, a privately owned wilderness reserve with more than 6,000 coast live oak trees; and through the middle of the inland section of San Onofre State Beach, cutting off wildlife and recreational corridors. The road would pass within 200 feet of the nearest campsite in San Mateo Campground and through the ancient village of Panhe, a Native American heritage site where the Juaneño people still hold ceremonies, coming within a few feet of a sacred burial site. Crossing San Mateo Creek on an elevated roadway, it would merge with I-5 near the Trestles Wetland Natural Preserve at the mouth of the creek. The road would travel through the park for approximately four miles and occupy more than 300 of its 2,189 acres.

Sedimentation and polluted runoff from the highway could degrade water quality both in the stream and offshore, affecting surfers, swimmers, and waders as well as steelhead. Rozzelle, who manages 17 miles of coastline for State Parks' Orange Coast District, said the beaches around San Mateo Creek are the only ones that do not have water quality problems. Not yet.

"Putting a road down the throat of a pristine watershed is not a great idea for the coast," said Mark Rauscher of the Surfrider Foundation. The increased runoff and sedimentation would not only damage water quality, Rauscher said, but would alter the flow of sand to the surf breaks at Trestles, potentially altering the waves' formation.

Traffic Drives Planning
State parks are created to protect the state's most valued natural and cultural resources forever--not until someone decides that the land is needed for something else. "I don't think that people who have paid their taxes for parks, and people who have worked hard over the years to preserve these parklands, intended them to be used as land banks for infrastructure projects," said California State Parks Foundation president Elizabeth Goldstein.

What, then, is the pressing need driving this proposed destruction of public parkland? In a word, traffic--a chronic concern in Orange County. Recent projections by the State Department of Finance show the county's population growing by 20 percent within the next 25 years, from three million in 2006 to more than 3.6 million by 2030. By then, Rancho Mission Viejo, a ranching and development company that owns 23,000 acres, plans to build 14,000 homes and five million square feet of commercial space in the region served by the toll road.

"[Foothill-South] has been planned for a long time to accommodate the growth in Orange County," said TCA spokeswoman Jennifer Seaton. "Traffic on I-5 is projected to grow 60 percent in the next 20 years." According to the TCA, relieving traffic on I-5 is the primary purpose of Foothill-South.

Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell, who has served on the boards of the TCA and the Orange County Transportation Authority, said that Foothill-South is necessary to alleviate I-5 traffic but will not, by itself, solve the region's congestion problems. He said the County will also look at improving arterial roads and increasing rail service.

"There's no question that we need to solve traffic problems," said James Birkelund, senior project attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "It's just a question of how we're going to do it."

Why not widen I-5 instead of cutting a new road through the state park? TCA's own draft environmental document, released in 2004 and subsequently revised, found that widening I-5 would provide the greatest amount of congestion relief--and would also do the least environmental damage of all the options studied, other than taking no action at all. The TCA concluded, however, that widening I-5 was not feasible because it would displace many homes and businesses and because funding had not been found for it.

The toll road's opponents contend that I-5 can be widened with far less displacement than the TCA claims, or even none, by using alternative designs. Follow-up studies commissioned by the California State Parks Foundation and other conservation groups concluded that a combination of widening I-5 by one lane in each direction and improving existing arterials is the most promising alternative for both congestion relief and minimal disturbance to the environment and nearby communities.

"They basically knew they wanted to build this road through the park," said Birkelund. "They never seriously considered the alternatives."

Some toll road opponents question whether Foothill-South would attract enough drivers to relieve congestion on I-5. They point to Orange County's financially struggling San Joaquin Hills toll road, which has not lived up to usage projections and was in danger of having to default on its bonds until it was bailed out by the Foothill/Eastern TCA in 2005. The bailout deal included a $120-million grant to mitigate future revenue losses to the San Joaquin Hills road due to migration of traffic to Foothill-South (see sidebar).

If the toll road is built, improving I-5 in southern Orange County could become more difficult and costly: a noncompetition agreement between the TCA and Caltrans requires the State to pay the toll road agency if it is forced to default on its bonds because of financial losses suffered as a result of future improvements to I-5 or other state roads, with some exceptions. The noncompete clause expires in 2020, Seaton said.

One thing in all this controversy that is not in dispute is that public transit was never considered as an alternative to the toll road. Seaton said that, as far as she knows, no new public transit projects are planned for this part of Orange County.

How Protected Are State Parks?
Beyond the issue of the best ways to accommodate highway traffic, what's at stake at San Onofre State Beach is a much larger principle. If a highway is allowed to be cut through this state park, what's to stop other state parks, preserves, and cultural heritage sites from being targeted for transportation improvements? Open land may look like the easiest way to go in other cases, too. So what does “in perpetuity” mean? What protection do state parks have against ever-intensifying development pressures?

In March 2006, State Attorney General Bill Lockyer filed two suits in California Superior Court in San Diego County to stop the road, one on behalf of the State Park and Recreation Commission, the other on behalf of the Native American Heritage Commission. A third suit was filed the same day by a coalition of conservation organizations that includes the Sierra Club, NRDC, Parks Foundation, Sea and Sage Audubon Society, Laguna Greenbelt, Inc., Endangered Habitats League, and Surfrider Foundation. The Park Commission and conservationists' suits alleged that the TCA violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by failing to adequately assess the road's environmental impacts, identify mitigation measures, and properly study alternatives that would cause less environmental harm. The Heritage Commission suit contends that the TCA violated laws that prohibit public agencies from causing damage to Native American historical and ceremonial sites located on public property. As of late March 2007, a State Court of Appeals judge in San Diego was considering whether the venue should be moved to Orange County.

Even if the lawsuits fail, the TCA must obtain permits for the toll road from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Coastal Commission, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board, among others. The Navy must also grant permission for the road to run through its property.

Many people who live in this region care deeply about what happens to this last intact piece of open land, and many have come to its defense. Surfers from around the world have expressed their concern about the potential damage to Trestles. Local and national organizations have campaigned against the road, rallying citizens to write letters and turn out for meetings. The Parks Foundation is studying possible legislative options, and has joined Surfrider Foundation, Sierra Club, NRDC, Audubon California, Endangered Habitats League, and Laguna Greenbelt, Inc. in a coalition called Save San Onofre (www.savesanonofre.com; the TCA's website with information about Foothill-South is www.ftcsouth.com).

But many people who live in the region spend a lot of time sitting in traffic, and local political support for the toll road is also strong. To date, the TCA has defeated legislative attempts to protect the park and convinced Congress to pass special legislation and federal officials to grant exemptions favoring the toll road (see sidebar).

On February 23, California Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) introduced AB 1457, which would prohibit state or local agencies from building roads on state parkland except under very restricted conditions. The bill is scheduled for its first hearing, in the Assembly's policy committee, on April 18. Similar legislation has been proposed a number of times over the years, but so far none has been passed.

"This Is the Last One"
The TCA has said that it will work to offset the toll road's impacts on the environment and on park users both during and after construction. Its plan includes installing detention basins with state-of-the-art filters to capture and treat stormwater runoff, building a soundwall to shield the campground from traffic noise, and building bridges and culverts to serve as wildlife crossings. It disputes claims that the road could affect the surf break at Trestles, citing studies it commissioned as part of its environmental impact study (see attachment 11 to the TCA's final SEIR at www.thetollroads.com/home/finalseir.htm).

"There has never been a road built that didn't pollute," countered Surfrider's Mark Rauscher.

San Onofre State Beach and Camp Pendleton, together with surrounding parks and open space, harbor a tremendous diversity of habitat types, animals, and plants, many of which are rapidly disappearing elsewhere. Federally protected or threatened species that live in the region include the arroyo toad, least Bell's vireo, California gnatcatcher, Pacific pocket mouse, tidewater goby, and probably steelhead trout, which were last documented in San Mateo Creek in 2003. "It has everything that was there, except the grizzly bear," said Dan Silver, executive director of the Endangered Habitats League. "Biologically, this is the best that's left in southern California."

For people, the park will become ever more valuable as the area's population grows. "The reason there are so many visitors to San Onofre State Beach every year is because eight million people live within an hour's drive," said Brittany McKee of Friends of the Foothills, a local task force of the Sierra Club that has been very active in opposing the road.

Allen Greenwood, a cofounder of San Diego Trout, pointed out that mitigating the proposed road's damage by setting aside comparable land elsewhere in the region isn't possible because nothing else like San Mateo Creek remains elsewhere along the southern coast. "You can't say you have 30 more streams like San Mateo Creek," he said. "This is the last one."

One more irony in this story is this: both San Mateo Campground and the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy were created as mitigation for other development projects in the region--O'Neill for the community of Talega, built on what was Rancho Mission Viejo land, and the campground for a parking lot built on part of the state park's land by the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, just down the coast. "This park has been nibbled at before," said Elizabeth Goldstein. "At some point you have to ask, where does it end?"

The problem is that California doesn't have strong enough legal tools to protect its state parks, said Goldstein, who worked for parks departments in New York City and State before coming to California. "The charter obligations to protect state land are much stronger in other states. People have to say ‘We won't tolerate this,' if this is going to be turned around."