A Scaled-Back El Toro? No Way

* George Argyros’ argument for a scaled-back international airport at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is at best unconvincing and at worst a public relations smoke screen (“Time for a Rational Approach to Settle the Airport Dispute,” Orange County Voices, Dec. 3).

Although he claims that he always has supported a smaller operation with limited capacity, one has to wonder why it has taken more than seven years of allowing the county to craft a monster El Toro facility capable of digesting 38 million passengers a year and roaring incessantly for 24 hours a day before he bothered to make more substantive efforts to broadly voice his position in the public arena.

Countywide support for a commercial airport at El Toro has eroded, so this “kinder, gentler” approach should be viewed with deep skepticism. Argyros champions a proposal that the county previously rejected as economically unfeasible, operating under restrictions to which the Federal Aviation Administration repeatedly has stated its opposition, and functioning as a two-airport system that has roundly been given the cold shoulder by airlines and airline pilots associations.

After plainly stating in his opinion piece that the Los Angeles International Airport possesses the infrastructure and capability of handling full-scale international air transportation roles for the Southern California region (read: El Toro could never hope to compete against LAX as a meaningful world-class commercial air facility), he presses forward with his contention that Orange County must contribute its “fair share” to projected regional air transportation demands by building an airport designed to handle 14 million to 16 million passengers per year and providing international service to Canada and Mexico.

I submit that Orange County already has the solution in place to fulfill this regional “responsibility,” and that this solution also provides the significant additional benefit of avoiding any reason to pump billions of dollars into another bureaucratic rat hole. It’s called John Wayne Airport.

CLAYTON SPADA

Fullerton

* To those of us who have been fighting against an airport at El Toro for several years, it is comforting to read that George Argyros has deftly addressed all of our doubts. Cut the number of flights to approximately half, he suggests, and exclude jumbo jets. With all that land available, how easy it will be to increase flights and jet size in the future.

And when they are increased, as they surely will be, night flights will become a necessity. And now he has exempted Irvine from any takeoffs overhead. Over whose heads will these planes take off? Leisure World? San Clemente? Laguna Beach?

Mr. Argyros, we in South County do not wish to choose which city should suffer the noise and pollution. We simply do not want any airport at El Toro.

ELIZABETH SURACE

Laguna Woods