Riordan Backs Airport at El Toro Base

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan waded into one of Orange County’s most divisive issues Monday when he enthusiastically endorsed plans to build an international airport near Irvine, accusing the project’s opponents of immorally ignoring the needs of the poor.

“To stick your head in the sand and say, ‘We have ours,’ is morally wrong and stupid economically,” Riordan said at a luncheon for political and business leaders in Irvine. Riordan was invited to address the $250-a-plate luncheon by Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, an Orange County organization pushing for construction of a civilian commercial airport on the site of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

Three of Orange County’s five supervisors support the project, but its opponents have waged a long campaign to defeat it and are expected to push for a ballot measure prohibiting use of the site for an airport. The event Monday was held in part to raise money to campaign against such a measure.

In his speech, Riordan noted that the region’s economy depends on air traffic and emphasized that he is attempting to win approval for a massive expansion of Los Angeles International Airport. But even if that plan is approved--at $10 billion to $12 billion, it would be one of the nation’s most expensive public works projects--it would leave the region far short of the job-generating air cargo and passenger capacity that Riordan says it will need in the coming century.

Cargo capacity in particular is an important generator of economic activity. With many firms, particularly in high-tech fields, shipping goods as quickly as they are ordered, companies need to be close to an airport. And Riordan argued that it is not enough to build remote cargo airports, because most air cargo travels in the belly of passenger planes. The airlines, therefore, want to land near populated areas.

Riordan has long been a vocal champion of airport expansion, but Monday’s speech marked a departure for him in several ways: It was the first time he had weighed in on the El Toro controversy, and it was his most aggressive attempt to link the region’s airports to the fight against poverty.

Opponents of the El Toro airport were taken aback by Riordan’s remarks. Some had accused him of pressing for regional airport expansion as a way of helping strengthen his case for an expanded Los Angeles International, which is facing a serious, well-organized opposition campaign in the neighborhoods nearby.

“We think that the mayor probably is being used by the political action committee that brought him down here,” said Paul Eckles, executive director of El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a group of southern Orange County cities that opposes converting the abandoned military base into a commercial airport.

Riordan, according to Eckles, “has not been adequately briefed” about the El Toro debate.

Time and again, Riordan urged members of the audience to consider the poor when debating the El Toro airport.

“Morally, we owe everybody the right to be part of the middle class, to be part of the American Dream,” Riordan said. “The ultimate goal is not increasing the capacity of our airports. The ultimate goal is creating quality jobs.”

Responding to questions, Riordan particularly chafed at criticism from some Orange County opponents of El Toro’s conversion. Dismissing them as “the usual suspects,” Riordan said the critics failed to understand the regional benefits of airport construction.

In an interview after his speech, Riordan was particularly stinging in his critique of environmentalists who oppose El Toro or LAX.

“An environmentalist is a multimillionaire who just closed escrow on his beach house,” Riordan said. “Do you want the poor to starve while you sit at the beach?”

Riordan, a moderate Republican, waved a newspaper clipping in which Larry Agran, a former Irvine mayor and longshot presidential candidate who recently was reelected to the Irvine City Council, criticized Riordan for lecturing Orange County residents on their airport issues.

“Riordan should be devoting his time to sorting out the airport demand problems as they affect the residents of Los Angeles instead of coming down here and imposing a totally unacceptable alternative on us,’ Agran said.

Riordan said that type of criticism was shortsighted and hypocritical.

“You have people who masquerade as liberals, who in effect are turning their backs on the poor,” Riordan said.

But Eckles said Riordan did not appreciate the other problems with the El Toro proposal. Among other things, opponents say the new airport would be too close to the mountains and too close to John Wayne Airport. They also question the new airport’s economic feasibility.

As for Riordan’s contention that opposing the airport is immoral because of its effect on the poor, Eckles added: “I don’t think any of us is unsympathetic to the poor, but . . . that’s one of the more bizarre notions that I’ve ever heard.”

In Los Angeles, City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter has led opposition to the LAX expansion, in part by raising concerns about its effect on the environment in the communities closest to the airport. Already, many residents of those communities complain of noise and traffic, and some worry that the problems will get worse if the airport expands to accommodate more flights.

Riordan disagrees, noting that roughly $2 billion of the proposed Los Angeles airport expansion would be used to improve traffic conditions near the airport and adding that airlines are increasingly shifting to larger, quieter planes. The result, he said: Expansion may actually help alleviate some of the local environmental complaints.