TO SURFERS it offers an almost religious experience: three and a half miles of unspoilt coastline known as Trestles, with no metered parking, fast-food restaurants, volleyball nets or other seaside distractions.

As for the “breaks”, surfers say that the unique geology of Orange County, California, makes them the best in the country. It is the only World Championship tour destination in the mainland United States.

But Trestles, named after an old railway bridge near the town of San Clemente, is under threat from a toll-road, which planners want to build through the area. Transport officials say that the motorway is needed to ease the near permanent gridlock on Interstate 5 between Orange County and San Diego.

Traffic in the area is expected to increase by 60 per cent over the next 20 years as 50,000 new homes are built and 98,000 new jobs are created. Officials claim that, if nothing is done, the traffic will be near stationary for up to eight hours a day by 2025.

The proposed 15-mile stretch of asphalt would be the last piece of a toll road created in 1993 that is almost 70 miles long and used by 300,000 motorists each day.

“Every study that we’ve done shows that the vast majority of people want to see (the road) built,” said Clare Climaco, spokeswoman for the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which will build the road. “They’ll take a tollway option because they know it will save them time.”

But surfers say that the road will ruin Trestles by blocking the sand and rocks that fall into the ocean from a nearby watershed at San Mateo Creek. “The surf has been created by that river, by that creek,” said Mark Rauscher, assistant environmental director for the Surfrider Foundation. “When you get the heavy rains, all the sand and cobbles get pushed out and it gets nicely shaped so that the wave peels beautifully.”

Jericho Poppler, one of America’s most celebrated surfers, added: “That’s where we go to feel the nature in our sport. There’s no more nature left in surfing if they start screwing with Trestles.”

To fight the development surfers have organised “paddle out protests” and submitted more than 7,000 comments to public hearings. They say that it would be better to improve the existing motorway, which runs from the Mexican border all the way to Washington State, than to build a new one.

Ms Climaco said that the new road would affect less than half of 1 per cent of the San Mateo Creek watershed, and would have no effect on surfing. “We feel very strongly about our environmental track record,” she said.

The proposed road has yet to go through several stages of federal approval but could be completed as early as 2010.

Wildlife officials are also concerned about the road’s effect on the 3,000-acre San Onofre State Beach park. The park attracts 2.5 million visitors per year, making it one of the most popular in California.

Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, told the San Diego Union-Tribune: “If this project happens, not only will it destroy this park . . . but it will set an example for developers that it’s open season on California state parks.”

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