Resignations Divide Freeway Advisory Panel

WEST SAN GABRIEL VALLEY —  A local transportation advisory panel, charged with devising ways to minimize environmental effects of the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway, is fracturing a month before the group is scheduled to release its conclusions to the Clinton Administration.

Three of the 13 members have resigned in recent weeks, including South Pasadena’s two representatives whose resignation letter was effective Wednesday. And other committee members have been boycotting the meetings or expressing their discontent.

South Pasadena Mayor Harry A. Knapp and Councilman Dick Richards had not attended a meeting since mid-January. However, South Pasadena officials have continued to sit in the audience and monitor deliberations of the group, an uneasy alliance of local supporters and opponents of the proposed extension--a decades-old controversy in the region.

In a five-page resignation letter sent to the Federal Highway Administration and the California Department of Transportation, Knapp said officials in both agencies had undermined attempts at compromise on the committee.

To resign, Knapp said, will “clear the way for superior initiatives” the Clinton Administration might propose to deal with the issue of whether to build the freeway.

Three weeks ago, the Sierra Club representative on the panel quit. In resigning, Stanley Hart of Altadena complained that the committee’s charter prevented it from engaging in a “realistic discussion of the only important question facing the community--whether the project should be built.”

Environmentalists and preservationists continually have clashed with the freeway supporters on the committee.

One of the panel’s pro-freeway forces, Alhambra Councilman Boyd G. Condie, said the South Pasadena representatives have abdicated their responsibility by not attending. “The fact that some choose not to come tells me that maybe they don’t care about their community.”

The two cities have been at odds for more than three decades over the freeway. South Pasadena fiercely opposes the freeway, while Alhambra wants it.

Set up last fall at the urging of federal highway officials in the Bush Administration, the panel was assigned to look at ways to lessen the impact of the 6.2-mile proposed roadway, extending the 710 Freeway from the San Bernardino (10) Freeway north to the Foothill (210) Freeway. Highway planners consider it the last significant gap in the Los Angeles County freeway network.

The committee has pushed ahead with its work under the assumption that its findings will benefit the Clinton Administration in making final decisions on whether to extend the 710 Freeway.

State highway officials say it is premature to speculate about how the freeway proposal will be received by the Clinton Administration, which has advocated rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure of roads and bridges but has cast itself as taking a higher environmental stance than its predecessor.

Also unclear is the impact of the changeover in the Federal Highway Administration. Last week the Clinton Administration announced that longtime Clinton adviser Rodney Slater is the nominee for director of the federal Highway Department. His nomination must undergo the confirmation process.

In addition to those who have resigned, other committee members have expressed dissatisfaction, including California Preservation Foundation board member William Delvac. “I don’t think it’s been a model process,” he said.

Elizabeth Merritt, associate general counsel of National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, has not attended recent meetings.

“The process has been poisoned by actions of some of the members of the committee,” she said, citing among others, the two representatives from Alhambra. “We just don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Still, she said that she plans to attend the next meeting April 15 to voice concerns about historic structures and neighborhoods threatened by the proposed project. “We do have something to offer and we can make some meaningful recommendations,” she said.

Michael Messina is Alhambra’s other representative on the panel.

As part of the work that began last fall, the committee has scaled down the original roadway proposed by Caltrans, reducing the number of historic structures that would have to be moved and the number of houses and trees that would be destroyed.

Discussions in recent months have centered on proposals to build a freeway with either six or eight lanes. Both proposals include two lanes for high-occupancy vehicles such as car pools and buses.

Under both proposals, fewer than 975 houses would be displaced, as opposed to close to 1,500 in earlier Caltrans versions.

“We did a lot of good things that will mitigate the impact of the freeway and that was our charter,” Alhambra’s Condie said.

He cited the elimination of trucks from the proposed roadway and the narrowing of its width. “We were sensitive to environmental issues, historic preservation, school issues, aesthetics” and house demolition.

James McCarthy, a Caltrans official in the Los Angeles regional office, said that he regrets that some committee members have left and that he wishes they would return. Regardless, he said, the state highway agency is committed to helping the panel complete its report by the end of April.