El Toro Switch: Bigger Airport, No Rail Link

Orange County supervisors approved plans Tuesday for a larger airport at the El Toro Marine base, despite two years of assurances to South County residents that a smaller facility with a rail link to John Wayne Airport would be built.

The switch to a back-up proposal, which envisions El Toro handling 28.8 million passengers a year by 2020, comes late in the process for developing plans to reuse the 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station. The military is scheduled to leave in July.

The decision seals the final phase of planning for a second county airport, a project that has polarized county residents like no other issue before.

County lawyers say that supervisors now can’t reduce the size of the project, even if they want to, because it would interfere with the timetable for final approvals.

By 2020, the larger airport would operate 412 flights a day--one about every 3 1/2 minutes--compared with the previous plan to have 263 flights a day--one about every five minutes--serve 23.4 million passengers a year.

Supervisors voted 3 to 2 Tuesday to eliminate plans for a people mover that would shuttle travelers between El Toro and John Wayne airports because the rail link is too costly and impractical. The board also eliminated planning work on three smaller airport options that would handle 10 million to 20 million passengers a year at El Toro.

But jettisoning the linked airport plan didn’t sit well with those who oppose an international airport at El Toro. South County residents accused county officials of a costly bait-and-switch tactic to foist a larger airport on residents there.

The change in midstream “does nothing except increase the size of the problem for south Orange County,” complained Supervisor Thomas W. Wilson, who voted with his fellow airport foe, Supervisor Todd Spitzer, against the change.

“I can see how the wool is constantly pulled over the citizens’ eyes,” lamented William Levinson, a Mission Viejo resident.

The decision also means that John Wayne Airport, which would have grown under the other scenarios, would shrink even below its current load to 5.4 million passengers a year.

Pro-airport residents praised the board for ditching an unrealistic and costly rail line that was criticized by the airlines and the Air Transport Assn., the industry’s trade group.

“The costs of [the rail link] have been shown to be unrealistically high and present a burden on the air-travel opportunities for the people of Orange County, which simply cannot be justified,” said Supervisor Charles V. Smith, the board’s chairman.

Smith and colleagues Jim Silva and Cynthia Coad form the current board majority that is moving along the county’s airport plans.

Spitzer and Wilson, meanwhile, vowed Tuesday that in the future they would oppose the airport by using a little-noticed provision of state law requiring a four-fifths vote for leases and sales of county-owned or managed property, including airports.

Orange County won an exemption from having to comply with that law in the aftermath of its historic 1994 bankruptcy. It needed more flexibility then in selling and leasing property as part of its financial bail-out plan.

The exemption, however, expires in January, and votes on airport leases--including a proposal for cargo flights from El Toro after the Marines leave in July--will require approval by at least four supervisors, County Counsel Laurence W. Watson said.

At that point, Wilson and Spitzer could stymie future leases on everything from concessions to airline agreements.

Silva said Tuesday that he will try to get the exemption continued, but Wilson and Spitzer said they will fight any such attempt.

“It looks to me that air cargo at El Toro may be dead,” Wilson said.

Marine Corps officials have recommended that the Navy Department, which must pass on all interim uses of the base, approve the cargo flights.

The state law requirement surfaced Tuesday in documents supporting an item on the board’s agenda to extend service by Federal Express and United Parcel Service at John Wayne Airport for one year. But airport officials yanked the proposal at the last minute, even though the current leases there expire Thursday.

The board’s brief agenda item failed to note that a four-fifths vote was needed for approval, though a similar agenda item two years ago did. Staff briefings to both Wilson and Spitzer on the leases also didn’t mention it, the supervisors said.

Spitzer said he discovered the requirement late Monday while reviewing an inch-thick packet of information on the proposed leases. The packet was delivered to board offices Friday afternoon.

“I guess county staff and lawyers are still under the impression that supervisors don’t read their agenda items,” Spitzer said. “They keep trying to push things under the radar screens.”

Despite the county’s exemption, it must approve John Wayne Airport cargo leases by a four-fifths vote because the leases are not subject to competitive bidding, Watson said. Those leases were negotiated in 1985 at the end of a long legal battle over expansion of the airport and have been renewed every two years in special votes.

Supervisors also sparred Tuesday over plans to conduct test flights of commercial aircraft at El Toro, tentatively scheduled for June. The tests were proposed as a way of letting South County residents see for themselves how loud takeoffs and landings would be.

Though Spitzer and Wilson oppose the $2-million test, Spitzer broke ranks with Wilson to vote in favor of adding noise monitors in Mission Viejo and Foothill Ranch at the request of residents there.

He was forced to do so because Silva said he would not vote for the added monitors unless Spitzer voted for them too.

“It’s gotten to the point that you are holding Tom and I hostage,” Spitzer fumed at Silva. “This is not a game.”