Airport Backers Outdo Themselves

* Isn’t it curious? Peggy Ducey, a Newport Beach official and executive director of a coalition of cities that support the El Toro plan, recognizes that “we can’t just push our need for airport service onto someone else.” (“Irvine’s El Toro Fight Takes New Direction: South,” July 18.)

Yet that is precisely what Newport Beach deep pockets are trying to do to us in south Orange County.

CARRIE HARVEY

Laguna Niguel

* In the battle to see who can produce the most hypocritical statement in support of an airport at El Toro, we have a new champion.

Peggy Ducey, in response to Irvine’s attempt to examine a regional solution to airport demand, located away from population centers, says that we can’t dump our airport traffic on someone else. Who, exactly, is this “we” that she refers to? Certainly not the city of Newport Beach, which has been promoting El Toro as a means of dumping John Wayne Airport traffic (and more) onto south Orange County.

Ducey replaced the previous champion, county airport planner Courtney Wiercioch, who complained that the 40,000-member Air Line Pilots’ Assn. was not considering the impact on local residents when it had the nerve to point out that the county’s proposed runways are unsafe.

Since Wiercioch’s office has systematically understated the impact of noise, traffic and pollution for the last two years, her brand of “consideration” for the 250,000 people adjacent to El Toro is more than a bit suspect.

Wiercioch’s statement trumped her earlier statement in response to a group of Laguna Hills churches, concerned that one-per-minute approaches of aircraft might interrupt Sunday services.

Wiercioch stated that her studies show that noise levels will be no higher than they are now. This conveniently ignored the fact that the Marines do not fly on Sunday (or on Saturday, or after 10 p.m. on weekdays).

It is apparent that airport supporters are willing to make any kind of outrageous statement, with a straight face, as long as it suits their agenda. I shudder to think what’s next.

ARNOLD BURKE

Lake Forest

* The Citizens for Jobs and the Economy’s attempt to change the state law on countywide initiatives is a step too far (“El Toro Supporters Try New Maneuver,” July 14).

To protect the millions of dollars that developers have invested in efforts to sell the voters on an airport at El Toro, we can expect even more of this sort of maneuver.

When money and its political clout is used to take away our voting rights, we are getting more of what we in Orange County already have and that is government by developers.

BARNEY DEASY

Laguna Hills

* With business booming and unemployment at an all-time low of 3%, why does Bruce Nestande and his Citizens for Jobs and the Economy continue to insist that an international/cargo airport at El Toro is needed to boost the Orange County economy?

Without the airport at El Toro, the economy is doing quite well, thanks to new high-tech businesses, and Orange Countians still have a good quality of life. Bring in a monster airport and we could lose these high-tech businesses to quieter communities.

EARL BIVEN

Irvine