Clarify Different Projections on Use of Southland Airports : Discrepancies Add to Confusion on El Toro Base’s Future

Projecting future passenger volume at Southern California airports may seem like arcane business, but it turns out to be at the heart of a fierce political debate now raging over the future of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Recently, the Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG) offered some comments on a county consultant’s projections. While the document is laden with alphabet soup, its jargon and acronyms are interspersed with findings that are politically potent.

SCAG concludes that plans for a commercial airport should be scaled back because, among other things, it anticipates smaller passenger demand than anticipated by the county.

The differing projection over passenger demand prompted a quick response from the El Toro Local Redevelopment Authority’s Michael M. Ruane, who is also director of the Environmental Management Agency, and O.B. Schooley, director of John Wayne Airport. In a detailed response, the officials questioned SCAG’s own airport demand forecasting and doubted any basis for a conclusion that the county had double-counted passengers at both Los Angeles International Airport and at a new El Toro facility. The county also sought clarification of SCAG concerns about getting in and out of the El Toro facility, citing improvements in the El Toro Y freeway interchange, tollway plans, and nearby rail facilities.

While the reports and queries were flying back and forth, critics of the county’s planning approach took the SCAG report as ammunition. Indeed, SCAG had undertaken its review in the first place after being asked to do so by Lake Forest officials. Irvine Mayor Mike Ward and Laguna Hills Councilwoman Melody Carruth readily found in the county’s methodology evidence of a conspiracy to create the justification for an El Toro airport that might not otherwise exist.

All of this jockeying took place against the backdrop of two major developments. The first was the defeat of Measure S in March, which would have made it almost impossible to build an airport, and the second was the release by the county of three proposals for the future of the base in April. The proposals were an international airport, a less ambitious facility for cargo and general aviation that assumed the expansion of John Wayne airport, and the elimination of the airport option entirely.

The community will benefit if the exchange between county planners and SCAG helps make these choices by clarifying how the bureaucrats go about counting likely passengers. Uncertainty over the veracity of the figures has the larger effect of leaving the public even more confused than it already is.

Some larger questions are: Should there be an airport at El Toro or not, and if there is one, is it inevitable that John Wayne Airport, only recently remodeled, would close because of insufficient regional air traffic demand to support the two facilities?

The answers are of enormous importance to the county’s future. They matter, for example, in Newport Beach where the closure of John Wayne Airport would be relished by many. They matter in Laguna Hills, where retirees imagine giant jetliners flying overhead.

The county should have these concerns addressed before any representation is made to the federal government that there is a “community consensus” over the future of El Toro.

There is also the lingering question about the county’s agenda: That is, there is a suspicion in South County that the planning process is being steered in the direction of a big airport at El Toro, maybe even one in which the taxpayer gets stuck with the cost of construction if supervisors wave through approval the way they did borrowing for the investment pool.

The county, in its letter to SCAG, affirmed its commitment “to conducting an open, thorough and fact-based planning process.” Clarity in counting projected passengers can only serve the cause of public confidence at this juncture.