San Onofre State Park could be cut off by the proposed toll road. (City Project)

A spacious, 3,000-acre state park that runs along the Pacific Ocean, San Diego's San Onofre State Beach is a popular vacation spot for the 2.4 million who visit each year. It's also the sacred site of Panhe, an ancient village of the native Acjachemen people who still reside in the area. Soon, however, San Onofre may also include a toll road.

Recently, there was a significant victory for those in support of preserving San Onofre. On Feb. 6, 2008, the California Coastal Commission voted 8-2 against the toll road proposal on the grounds that it would violate the coastal zone as well as the coastal act. However, because San Onofre is a state beach and resides on land owned by the Marine Corps under a long-term lease, the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) has already filed for an appeal to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Whether that appeal will be pursued has yet to be decided.

For the past seven years, TCA, along with a collaborative team of other agencies, have planned a six-lane toll road.

"The proposed road would be part of a 67-mile toll-road system in southern California that has been on the map since the early 80s," says Jennifer Seaton, TCA spokeswoman. Traffic on the well-traveled road that is the only link between Los Angeles and San Diego is expected to increase 60 percent by 2025. "There needs to be an alternative route," she says. "Just this year, wildfires caused Interstate 5 to be closed, and people couldn't evacuate. This toll road would not only provide emergency evacuation access when accidents occur, but also a road for the 14,000 homes that have already been granted permits to be built all along the area."

The construction of this toll road would cost at least an estimated $875 million dollars, funded exclusively by the tolls that are collected over the next several decades. It would ultimately be a part of the public highway system in California—administered, owned, and maintained by the state's department of transportation.

Critics say a toll road would disable the Acjachemen people from accessing the sacred site of Panhe, which includes burial and ceremonial sites, as well as the location of the first contact between the Acjachemen people and Spanish explorers in 1769.

Other groups say the road excludes the working poor who cannot afford to pay tolls and unfairly denies them from gaining access to an otherwise affordable and free public beach and park. Additionally, they say, the toll road would diminish coastal space, increase both traffic and air pollution, and further endanger the six endangered species that conservationists are currently seeking to save at the site.

Says Robert Garcia, executive director of The City Project, an organization that campaigns to shape public policy and law, "It's a very diverse and growing alliance that stretches from the native Americans to conservationists to environmental justice advocates in California and all over the country. We are all prepared to continue the fight to save Panhe and San Onofre."

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