Airport Debate Continues

I read Clarence Turner’s Aug. 11 letter regarding the proposed airport at El Toro with great interest. I am not clear on the responsibilities of Turner’s position as president of the Airport Working Group of Orange County Inc., but based on his comments he probably should be running for county supervisor.

Turner first proposes that airport opponents let the county run into a brick wall with its feasibility study. The likelihood of the county reaching any other conclusion than we need another airport and it will not impact life as we now know it is small at best. Consultants are paid large fees to reach conclusions consistent with the opinions of people who hire them.

About the only point more ludicrous was that the county would walk away from John Wayne bondholders and taxpayers would not end up paying the bill. I am not a municipal bond expert but I hardly think this is a financial strategy that the county should pursue. If the county did default, does Turner believe that other bondholders would be lining up to buy new El Toro bonds? Might the county’s overall debt rating also be impacted by the default resulting in a higher interest charge on future bond issues?

I cannot believe that the residents of Orange County are prepared to bet billions of dollars developing an airport on the advice of our county leadership and their consultants. How many corporate management teams would have the nerve to approach their board of directors for a multibillion-dollar loan a year after managing their company into bankruptcy? How many boards would say yes?

Let’s maximize our existing airport resources at John Wayne before betting the farm on consultants’ rosy projections. Our illustrious toll road revenue consultants are already backing away from their estimates, blaming bad assumptions for the revenue shortfall. But county residents need not be concerned. We’ll just default and find some other sucker to lend us the next billion.

HERB DOANE

Placentia

* Regarding your Aug. 18 editorial, “Decision on El Toro’s Future Needs Careful Consideration,” I completely agree with the need to look at the facts in determining the best reuse of the site. That is exactly what I believe has been and is being done.

With the release of the draft environmental impact report, specific and detailed studies have quantified the impacts of a commercial airport, a cargo-only airport, and mixed commercial, residential and recreational reuse of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

The evidence stated in the report quantifies in great detail specific to this property what has been empirically proven elsewhere: A commercial airport will have less negative impacts and far greater positive impacts than any other reuse scenario suggested by any party to the reuse discussions over the past four years.

The reuse of El Toro has been the most intensely studied and debated land-use planning issue in the county’s recent history. Countless effort has been put into looking at how best to use the site by all concerned, proponents and opponents of an airport alike. All credible evidence gathered over the past four years points to both the need and appropriateness of using El Toro MCAS to satisfy the demand generated by the county and region for access to air transportation.

I must take a bit of exception with your use of the word “wedging” when applied to reuse of El Toro MCAS as a commercial airport. Wedging? The site has been an airport for the past 50 years. It’s a 4,700-acre property with a 13,000-acre noise and no-home buffer zone surrounding it to protect local residents from the intolerable noise of loud, military aircraft. It will affect few as a commercial airport.

The concept of “wedging” is more correctly applied to those who would try to expand John Wayne Airport and force more flights into that densely surrounded, small, 500-acre site that could never meet demand, provide the type of services needed by Orange County, or be the economic engine that El Toro will be as we enter the 21st century.

TIMOTHY J. COOLEY

Orange County Business Council

Irvine

* More relevant than how well the studies showed the use for an international airport is the fact that a non-airport use of the land will allow something like 30,000 acres of land to be used for residential development that is now set aside as a buffer zone. This would mean dwellings for 250,000 or more residents.

Subjectively, for Orange County to be a serious participant in business it must have easy access to an international airport (and as a veteran of many international flights originating from LAX, that airport doesn’t count).

Judging by LAX, the airport will mean loads of cash for Orange County with no more taxes.

The alternative is to move us back to the horse-and-buggy era.

LAWRENCE M. STAHL

Mission Viejo

* The 10-volume draft reuse plan and environmental impact study have just been released. Citizens are being rushed to digest the documents and submit their comments by Sept. 23. Why the rush on one of the most important issues ever confronting Orange County?

The documents were available to airport proponents for some time. Some of the studies included in the reports carry July dates. However, the general public, including airport opponents, has been held up from getting a good look at the report until after its nominal release date of Aug. 8.

As of Aug. 15, my local library had yet to receive one of the crucial volumes, the draft community reuse plan.

The environmental impact report at the library is bound together in such a manner that one cannot open it on a copy machine and make copies of the charts and diagrams for study or analysis. Some of the text is difficult to read because it is trapped in the binding. If I want to digest the documents at my desk where I can type notes into my computer and otherwise examine the thousands of pages in a reasonable working environment, I am told that a copy will cost me $336, plus delivery charge.

A cursory review of the report takes several hours because of its great length. On the surface, it appears that many citizens’ comments were not dealt with adequately.

The Board of Supervisors has sole authority over the schedule for review and comment on this major study. We hear that the federal government has no objection to allowing the county and its citizens to take more time to do a good job on the project. Please extend the arbitrary deadline so that we can give Orange County’s proposed international airport development some careful thought.

LEONARD KRANSER

Dana Point

* Certain clarifications need to be made about the July 30 article, “El Toro Could Relieve LAX and Lindbergh.”

The article focused on the conversion of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into an airport that would help relieve passenger volumes at Los Angeles International Airport and Lindbergh Field in San Diego, implying that the Southern California Assn. of Governments advocated such a justification.

The news article was derived from a recent report issued in draft form by SCAG that documented results of a survey of San Diego County air passengers.

From a theoretical allocation of passengers, El Toro does well in attracting passengers compared with other military bases because of its proximity to the strong Orange County air passenger market. However, two contexts exist in which such a finding should be presented. The first is that all military bases were included in the modeling projections, and most will relieve LAX to one degree or another in future years. The other context is that El Toro’s operational ability to serve the demand projected by the model is still being evaluated.

Such factors as aircraft performance, runway utilization under different wind and temperature conditions, and airspace capacity are the subjects of evaluation in the current El Toro Community Reuse Plan and in the subsequent El Toro Master Plan and its environmental impact report. But until the operational evaluations are completed, it is not known how much air passenger demand El Toro can actually serve, or how much it will relieve LAX or Lindbergh Field.

TIM MERWIN

Principal planner, aviation

Southern California

Assn. of Governments