Musick Jail Report Called Inadequate

IRVINE —  The county’s plans to greatly expand the James A. Musick Branch Jail suffered a modest setback Monday when a judge found that portions of the project’s environmental impact report were inadequate.

In a tentative decision, Judge Warren Conklin ruled that the county failed to fully study how the jail expansion, when combined with plans to build a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, would affect residents in Irvine and Lake Forest.

The judge also said the report inadequately disclosed how the expansion would affect air quality and surrounding agricultural lands.

But Conklin denied the vast majority of objections lodged against the report, and concluded that expanding the honor farm into a maximum-security jail would not pose security risks to nearby residents.

Attorneys for Lake Forest and Irvine, who filed the legal challenge to the report last December, said they will ask the judge to require a new environment review process.

But Jack Golden, a deputy county counsel assigned to the case, said it will be “fairly easy to remedy” the court’s ruling and that a new environmental impact report will not be necessary.

“They hit us with a few BB’s, that’s all,” Golden said. “I think this vindicates the [report] when you consider the 40 or so claims they filed against it. . . . It would be silly and a waste of money to do a whole new report.”

Of the 18 claims Conklin addressed in his ruling, he found in the cities’ favor in four instances. The judge sustained the report’s completeness on several important fronts, saying that the document adequately assessed future traffic, safety and aesthetic issues.

Sheriff Brad Gates wants to expand Musick from a 1,000-bed honor farm into a maximum-security facility capable of housing as many as 7,000 inmates. Neighbors strongly oppose the plan, saying it will decrease property values while increasing crime and traffic.

The Board of Supervisors approved the environmental impact report last November, saying the project would ease severe jail overcrowding that forces the early release of thousands of inmates a year.

Conklin, a San Luis Obispo County judge brought in to hear the case, handed Lake Forest and Irvine their biggest victory on the question of whether nearby residents would be affected by both a jail expansion and the proposed commercial airport at El Toro.

The county used data from a separate environmental impact report for the El Toro base in assessing combined effects. Last month, a San Diego County judge invalidated parts of the El Toro report, saying it “artificially minimized” the airport proposal’s effects.

Because the El Toro study was struck down, portions of the Musick report that used its data “are similarly tainted,” Conklin ruled.

Christopher G. Caldwell, a Los Angeles attorney representing Lake Forest, said the deficiencies found by the judge merit a complete reexamination of the project.

“If the court’s final decision continues to find that [report] did not accurately analyze all the impacts, we think it’s important that the county go back and make sure the process works,” Caldwell said.

Gates, however, strongly disagreed, saying the ruling was by in large a victory for the county.

“I think the judge made the appropriate ruling for the safety of all people in the county,” the sheriff said. The four claims the judge upheld “are what we consider minor issues. We can go back and provide additional information.”

Jail overcrowding has plagued the Sheriff’s Department since the 1970s, and several efforts to build jails in other areas including Anaheim and Santa Ana have been thwarted, partly by public outcry.

The report found Musick to be the best location for additional jail beds.

Still, no money is available for the expansion, which would cost more than $40 million. If more jail construction funds become available, the money would first go to expand the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange.

A report prepared by the Sheriff’s Department concluded that in 1995, 40,000 people were cited and released or had their sentences reduced because of jail overcrowding in Orange County. Of those, 882 committed new crimes during the time they would have been in jail.