ENCINITAS - Residents on Tuesday demanded an exhaustive study of how a planned hospital expansion would affect traffic on nearby streets.

Neighbors also questioned the phasing of the program that is proposed to expand Scripps Memorial Hospital Encinitas over the next 13 years.

About 30 residents met at Encinitas City Hall to tell city planners and a consultant what issues they would like examined in the environmental impact report for the project.

Traffic emerged as the top issue, but neighbors also said that they worried about increased helicopter flights from the hospital's helipad and electromagnetic radiation from its medical equipment.

Hospital officials, who did not attend the meeting, have said that the 138-bed facility on Santa Fe Drive must expand to meet a growing, regional demand. The five-phase expansion includes a parking garage, medical office building, reconfigured entrance and additions to the hospital itself.

The triangular, 28-acre hospital campus adjoins Interstate 5 to the east, Santa Fe Drive to the south and Devonshire Road to the west.

Many of Tuesday's speakers said they live right across from the hospital, on Devonshire.

On that road, Gina Renteria said, delivery trucks come and go throughout the day. She asked how those vehicles would share the road with construction traffic and emergency vehicles, not to mention hospital patients and employees.

She asked how traffic would get to and from a planned parking garage and medical offices when a new road within the campus wouldn't be built until later in the project.

Where will workers park, she asked. Where will they stage their materials and equipment? How will crews get to and from the job site?

"I've been thinking about this for a number of years," Renteria said.

Scott Vurbeff, the city's environmental coordinator, said the study would address her questions. He said a draft of the report would be released later this year.

Andrew Matuszeski of Devonshire asked that the report examine any possible dangers from the electromagnetic emissions of medical equipment. He said he suspects that such emissions ruined a wireless telephone system at his home.

He also asked that the study look carefully at helicopter flights and whether they would meet safety requirements.

A planned helipad would sit atop a three-story, critical care wing that would adjoin the southwest corner of the existing hospital.

That and other additions would more than double the floor space on the campus, from 333,380 to 874,962 square feet - a 162 percent increase.

"The bottom line for me is," said neighbor Irene Kemp, "I think it is too large of an expansion for the area, period."

The five phases of the expansion program include:

• Phase 1 - 883-space parking structure, 48 feet tall; medical office building, 45 feet tall with rooftop mechanical equipment raising part of the roof to 55 feet above ground level.

• Phase 2 - 11,000-square-foot expansion of the emergency department on the hospital's north side. The emergency department would grow from 12 to 30 beds.

• Phase 3 - reconfiguration the main entryway on Santa Fe Drive with new lanes and gates.

• Phase 4 - westward expansion of the hospital with a three-story, 78,000-square-foot critical care building. A helipad and a mechanical penthouse would occupy the roof of this building. The rooftop of the penthouse would tower 59 feet above ground level to become the tallest structure in the city.

• Phase 5 calls for a three-story acute care building of 92,000 square feet. Mechanical equipment would bring part of the roof to 59 feet above grade.

The city has set a Jan. 16 deadline for residents and public agencies to offer their thoughts about the expansion in writing to the Encinitas Planning Department, 505 S. Vulcan Ave., Encinitas, CA 92024.

- Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 943-2312 or akaye@nctimes.com.