The Future of Trestles
CD: How much
land, undeveloped land, is back there that's threatened or under the gun?
 |
|
Million Dollar Tract Houses Being Built in the Hills Between Newport
and Laguna Beach.
|
McKee: 23,800
acres. It's huge. If they were to develop it fully, which they're not
proposing,
you could fit a city the size of Chicago back there. It's that big. What
they do have proposed right now is 14,000 homes --which is more homes
than currently exist in all of San Juan. And 4 million square feet of
commercial development. Which is almost double the size of South Coast
Plaza.
It's a significant
amount of development.
CD: When
you drive back there on the Ortega highway, it's spectacular, it looks
like some kind of painting of the old west, and it's only a few minutes
off the 5 freeway. Then when you see Ladera Ranch off to the left and
see the grading and vast destruction they've done there to build the place,
is that the kind of development too? Are they just going to go out and
remove every piece of vegetation and destroy the hillsides for miles and
miles to build their homes?
McKee:
Pretty much. They have 1180 homes along a golf course, 1020 along a business
park. Then a whole bunch of what we call McMansions -- mansions with their
little lots -- and then they have a couple more golf courses, a couple
of business parks, a golf resort and then upscale senior housing. They
like to say that they're trying to solve the housing crisis in Orange
County, but the cheapest houses they're proposing are $300,000.
CD: Well
that's kind of oxymoronic. If they're going to be building all this commercial
space and all these new houses, it just creates more pressure to build
on more land.
McKee: Exactly.
CD: 14,000
houses is probably almost difficult for someone to even conceive. If people
were to consider that there aren't even that many houses in all of San
Juan Capistrano right now -- that's amazing.
 McKee:
It's a lot of houses.
CD: How far
back does Rancho Mission Viejo's land go?
McKee: It
backs right up onto Caspers Wilderness and the Cleveland National Forest,
Camp Pendleton, Coto de Caza, Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano.
CD: So it's
like all the land you see driving the Ortega Highway until you get to
Caspers Wilderness.
McKee: A
vast area.
CD: Before
you heard about the 14,000 homes and all this development, we've been
hearing for a long while about the Foothill South, or Trestles Toll Road.
So let's talk a little about where that is, and what's going on.
McKee: It's
been really quiet on the Foothill South front because they're going through
their environmental review process right now. But meanwhile, the 73 toll
road behind Laguna Beach is $400 million in debt. They're facing bankruptcy,
so in order to keep from going bankrupt, they're talking about merging
the boards of the 241 and the 73. So that the 241 can prop up the 73.
The 241, the northern end, is doing OK financially, but it's not doing
great. And they were kind of counting on 241 revenue to finance the Foothill
South. So now if they use their revenue to finance the 73 it makes the
financial outlook for the Foothill South even riskier. There are a lot
of complications with the merging of the boards.
CD: Well,
it seems that the pressure to build an additional freeway back there should
Mission Viejo get to build on all there land is going to be tremendous.
Obviously they're going to have to widen the Ortega Highway to do any
of what they plan to do, then you can also only filter so many cars onto
the I-5 at the Ortega too.
McKee: The
problem also is that it's a toll road and not a freeway. Because of that,
you have to consider that the people living out there are not going to
want to take the tollroad to take their kid to soccer practice to get
milk at the market. They're going to want to take the free streets because
it's going to cost 9 dollars one-way by the time that construction is
completed which is just astronomical. So most won't take the tollroad
This of course, will just make traffic worse anyway.
(ed's note,
it currently costs as much as $5.00 to drive the entire 241 from the beginning
until it reaches the Riverside Freeway. If $9.00 seems kind of high, it's
because this amount takes into consideration what it would likely take
to drive all the way from Trestles to the Riverside Freeway)
 |
|
The
Cougar or Mountain Lion is the King of the Beasts in the Land Behind
Trestles.
|
CD: What
are some of the rare and or endangered animals back there. What makes
this such a biological hotspot?
McKee: It
was explained to me that there are 25 areas on the entire earth that together
make up only 1.4 percent of the entire earth's surface -- it's a really
tiny amount of space. But that 1.4 percent of space accounts for 66% of
all the earth's biodiversity. So on that tiny amount of space, most of
the species live. This land just happens to be one of those spots.
It's actually
been nicknamed the Headwaters of the South -- like the Headwaters forest
in northern California -- because of it's biological importance. But the
area actually has more endangered species and is more biologically sensitive
than the forest lands up in Northern California.
CD: It's
just that it's harder because the lack of trees back here is almost our
damnation. Because people don't think of scrub or chaparral habitat as
being all that important. It's not until you actually see a hillside that’s
had all its vegetation bulldozed and removed until you realize how beautiful
the land really is.
McKee: There
is not a big, majestic tree that you can grasp onto. Someone could go
sit in our little oaks to try and protest the destruction but you could
reach up and grab them down.
CD: So your
job is to make people aware that this land back here is as important as
a forest of redwoods.
McKee: Right
and it is that important.
CD: Talk
a little about the animals back there.
McKee: A
really cool story is that one of our volunteers, Toby Shackelford, was
a Friend of the Foothills volunteer and a 19 year old student at Saddleback
College. He was out at San Mateo Creek and caught a fish. He said, "I
think this is a steelhead trout." And took it to his professor. His professor
said "Yeah, I think it is too."
|
|
|
The
steelhead trout is unusual in that like a salmon, it spawns in
freshwater streams but lives most of its life in the ocean. Unike
the salmon, it does not die, but returns to the ocean after it
has spawned. Freshwater anglers consider it to be one of the most
prized of all American fish.
|
They went
to this whole process of trying to get Fish and Game to believe them because
everyone thought the fish were extinct in the creek, and they finally
got someone to admit that they do exist here. We just had the hearing
a year and a half or two years ago where the National Marine Fisheries
Service finally declared the area critical habitat.
CD: That
obviously affords a level of protection, but didn't a judge recently throw
out that ruling?
McKee: Yeah,
that's been going back and forth as to whether critical habitat designations
can be held up, because developers say they cost too much money. That's
been batted around the courts this year.
 |
|
The
California Gnatcatcher
|
 |
|
The
Pacific Pocket Mouse
|
Other
endangered animals back there include the cactus wren, arroyo toad, red
legged frog, least bells vireo --that's a bird, the California gnatcatcher,
Pacific pocket mouse, the tidewater gobi, and the arroyo chub. A number
of threatened animals.
 |
|
The
Red Legged Frog
|
|
 |
|
The
Arroyo Toad
|
|
 |
|
The
Arroyo Chub
|
|
 |
|
The
Least Bell's Vireo
|
|
CD: Then
you've also got mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, foxes -- everything
but bears.
McKee: Yeah,
all the top level predators but bears. And you know, one male mountain
lion needs an area the size of Camp Pendleton to survive. They need a
huge tract of land for hunting. So it's really great we have all this
contiguous open space -- the Rancho Mission Viejo land is also connected
with the Cleveland National Forest, Caspers Wilderness and the Mission
Viejo Land Conservancy -- so cougars have all that area to roam. When
you start putting houses and a road back there, it makes it impossible
for them to hunt and live. In fact, when they built the northern portion
of the 241 toll road in Orange County and Riverside, they had more animals
killed on that road than on all roads in the area combined. It was built
through the habitat where those animals live.
CD: And they
claimed well, we built these wildlife underpasses and these high fences
but the only animals that use the underpasses are the mountain lions because
they can just sit at the edge of the underpass and wait for a deer to
go through and pounce on it. That doesn't make it very effective as a
corridor for prey species.
McKee: Then
when you have homes back there then you have the animals coming into people's
neighborhoods and that's really unfortunate for everybody. And the tollroad
and housing proposals would basically isolate the Rancho Mission Viejo
Land Conservancy from the rest of the open space. So that area would become
one of those little biological islands where the larger animals can't
survive because they're not accessible and those animals need to traverse
across these open areas.
 |
|
San
Mateo Creek at Trestles is Generally Quite Clean Because There is
Essentially No Development Upstream.
|
CD: Now
let's talk a little bit about watersheds. San Mateo Creek is essentially
the last undammed, undiverted, unpolluted watershed south of Ventura,
right?
McKee: Right.
It's really significant. That's also why essentially Trestles is such
a clean beach. Because San Mateo Creek is so clean and there's no development
upstream, that's what makes Trestles such a great beach. And it's unfortunate
that this tollroad and the homes upstream could ruin all that.
 |
|
Chronically
Polluted by Urban Runoff, Aliso Creek Empties at Laguna Beach
|
CD: Well you think about a place like Aliso Beach and Aliso Creek that
are horribly polluted. They're not polluted by Laguna Beach, but by all
the development that's inland from Laguna in Aliso Viejo -- in a nutshell
that's what you could be looking at. Its' the lawn pesticide runoff, it's
the dog crap, the antifreeze, car oil and asbestos brake dust. Then the
other thing that seems like a big problem with this tollroad is that it
runs for such a huge stretch of its length along San Mateo creek. It's
not like the I-5 that has maybe a mile of road drainage into the creek
for one mile. This road would follow the creek for over ten miles.
McKee: Basically
it parallels San Mateo Creek for quite a long way, it's really going to
have much, much more significant impacts than the I-5 in terms of water
runoff into the creeks and the beach.
CD: Plus,
it will run over the San Mateo campground that's inland from Trestles.
McKee: The
TCA (Transportation Corridors Authority, or tollroad board) likes to say,
"it's not going to ruin the campground, we'll go right by it." Well, they're
going to go within 25 yards of the campground. So the State Park has said,
"yeah, technically you're not going to cross our campground, but we're
going to abandon the campsite because no one wants to camp under a tollroad."
The state parks system has said that they will abandon a campground that
is within the top ten most visited campgrounds in the state. Click Below to Read On
|
No comments have been added to this entry.
Add Comment