Laguna Niguel Anti-Jail Group Skeptical : County Assurances Fail to Dampen ‘Worry and Concern’

The head of a Laguna Niguel citizens’ advisory group said Tuesday he is “worried and concerned” that the community is under study as a possible jail expansion site, despite county government’s assurances that Laguna Niguel is not a likely jail location.

Tom Wilson, president of the Laguna Niguel Community Council, an advisory arm to county government, said he is not reassured by the county’s statements last week that a recently updated environmental impact study has no real bearing.

The county last week acknowledged that a Sept. 15 environmental impact report has listed Laguna Niguel and nine other areas in the county as potential sites for a jail branch. But county officials said the report was simply an update of a study made a year ago. They said that year-old study already had found Laguna Niguel and the nine other sites as not meeting all the requirements for a jail site.

The County Board of Supervisors favors Gypsum Canyon in North Orange County for a new jail and has endorsed an expansion of the existing Theo Lacey Branch Jail in Orange.

The city of Orange opposes the expansion of the Theo Lacey jail and filed suit to block it. That suit has required the county to update its jail site study, county officials said last week. But they said they do not believe the updated environmental study will result in any change of jail expansion sites.

Wilson announced Tuesday, however, that he remains skeptical about county government’s intentions and will appoint a committee within the Laguna Niguel Community Council to study the implications of the environmental impact report.

“Laguna Niguel can’t sit still and let things happen to it,” Wilson said.

“I am confident we are going to become a city (in the Nov. 7 cityhood election in Laguna Niguel), and then we’ll be able to fight something like this just like Anaheim and the other cities. But we want to make sure that in the meantime we’re not blind-sided by something the county might do.”

The county’s Sept. 15 jail-site environmental impact report lists the South County Civic Center at Alicia and Crown Valley parkways as a possible site for a branch jail, arguing that it would put prisoners close to the branch municipal courthouse at the civic center. But the report also acknowledged that Laguna Niguel area residents probably would object to the site being used for a jail branch.