The U.S. Department of Commerce is holding a public hearing and accepting public comments about a proposed toll road controversial toll road which would run through San Onofre State Beach parallel to I-5, to relieve congestion on that Corridor of the Future highway.

Permission for the plan was recently denied by the California Coastal Commission at a public meeting that drew 3,500 people in opposition to the road. The Transportation Corridor Agencies of Orange County appealed this decision to the Secretary of Commerce. Because a federal agency is now responsible for deciding if the road should be permitted, you do not have to be a California resident to comment.

You can comment in person at a public hearing between 10:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., July 25, in the Donald Bren Events Center, 100 Bren Events Center at the University of California-Irvine. You can sign up to speak starting at 10 a.m.

Send comments by email between July 21 and Aug. 4. to gcos.comment@noaa.gov, or mail them to :

Thomas Street
NOAA Office of the General Counsel for Ocean Services
1305 East-West Highway, Room 6111
Silver Spring, MD 20910

General inquiries about the comment process should be directed to the NOAA office at (301) 713-2967.

The toll road would be a 16-mile extension of Route 241 north of San Diego. The Coastal Commission concluded that the road would destroy 66 acres of critical wetlands and other habitat, destroying the last coastal habitat of the arroyo toad and placing the Pacific pocket mouse at imminent risk of extinction.