Is the finish line ahead for 710 extension wrangle; highway chief may OK project before leaving office.

The fight over the controversial extension of the 710 (Long Beach) Freeway through Pasadena is coming to a head this week, as the California Transportation Department is successfully pushing to obtain final federal approval before the federal highway administrator, a presidential appointee, leaves office Jan. 20.

Opponents of the freeway extension are accusing CalTrans and the Federal

Highway Administration of rushing the decision out of fear that President Bill Clinton will appoint a more environmentally conscious administrator, who will therefore be less enthusiastic about the proposal.

But those accusations, and a pile of letters from local public officials, appeared last week to be doing little to dissuade outgoing Federal Highway Administrator Thomas Larson from making the 710 Freeway extension one of his last decisions on his way out the door.

"Every signal we're getting is that they're going ahead full bore toward that goal," said Elizabeth Merritt, associate general counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which opposes the expansion. "CalTrans obviously believes the new administration will be more environmentally sensitive, and that's why they want to rush."

CalTrans and federal officials deny the charges and say the decision has already been delayed once, to allow time for a community panel to study the issues -- a panel that was expected to conclude its work sometime in 1992 but continues to meet.

"The project's ready to go," said CalTrans spokesman Jim Driego. "It's gotten to the point where we need to make a decision and get on to something else. The opponents have already said they'll go to court, and that will mean further delays."

The proposal calls for an eight-lane, $1 billion freeway extension of 6.2 miles from the 710's current northerly stopping point in the community of El Sereno (in East Los Angeles just north of Interstate 10 and west of Alhambra) north through South Pasadena and Pasadena to the 210 (Foothill) Freeway at the point where it merges with the 134 (Ventura) Freeway.

It was first proposed more than 30 years ago by the California Highway Department, but blocked by a court injunction. CalTrans in 1977 proposed an alternative, but that plan was rejected by federal highway authorities.

Public officials said a final decision by the Federal Highway Administration this week would be a "milestone" toward getting the extension built, despite projected further delays in the courts.

"There are people in the department who have probably spent their whole career on this one issue," Driego quipped.

The federal agency approved the final environmental impact report on the project last spring and then established the Route 710 Meridian Variation Enhancement and Mitigation Advisory Committee to study the project.

Last month, CalTrans asked Larson to activate the final 30-day period for public comment on the project, which he did on Dec. 15. That leaves Larson three working days (Jan. 18-20) in which to issue a Record of Decision approving the project, if he so chooses.

"I did not want to make a final decision on the project until I was certain that we had identified appropriate mitigation and enhancement opportunities, but given how much progress the committee has made, and the fact that it was largely in response to my wishes that it was established in the first place, I feel it is my responsibility to complete the initial decision making process before leaving office on Jan. 20, 1993," Larson wrote in his Dec. 15 letter to committee members.

The committee, which includes the mayors of Pasadena and South Pasadena, fired back a letter saying that "cutting off public comment before our work is done is a great disservice to our committee and to the general public."

Another group called the Route 710 Coalition (which includes state democratic Sen. Art Torres of Los Angeles, the superintendent of the South Pasadena Unified School District, the city manager of South Pasadena and the chairman of the South Pasadena Transportation Commission) sent a letter saying it would be "a tragic mistake to issue final approval."

And U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., even wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Transportation, asking him to urge Larson to delay the decision.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, the Coalition for Clean Air and the Friends of the Earth say they oppose the freeway because its construction would mean the destruction of 1,000 homes, 60 historic properties, five National Register historic districts and 7,000 trees.