BYRON DE ARAKAL -- Between the Lines

It has always been a source of some curiosity that the epic and bitter

battle over the fate of El Toro has been waged, for the most part, as a

local quality-of-life issue. This is not to say that an El Toro airport

or an expanded John Wayne Airport or both don’t have real and weighty

meaning for the constituents of South County or the citizens of

Newport-Mesa. Indeed they do.

Nevertheless, I’ve never believed that the great wads of money, the

endless ballot initiatives, the interminable court challenges or the

flaming rhetoric that have fueled the airport warfare here would

determine the final outcome. That’s because a far more powerful warrior

with interests far more expansive and profound than those that compel the

local combatants has yet to step into the fray.

That Goliath would be the federal government. And that sound you hear

inside the Beltway is the government loading its authority into the

breach. Why? Because the intractable and inconclusive shape of the local

battle here is beginning to have broad economic and transportation

implications -- none of them positive -- that the federal government will

not suffer gladly, if at all.

To understand this -- and I am hopeful the fresh Newport Beach City

Council and a majority of the Orange County Board of Supervisors do -- is

to recognize that it’s time to shift the El Toro battle strategy away

from the costly and ultimately inconsequential skirmishes with our South

County brethren. Instead, we should broaden, coalesce and strengthen our

alliances with those Southern California governments with constituents

who already carry a fair burden of our nation’s air transportation needs.

And we should formulate a joint John Wayne Airport/El Toro strategy that

more closely aligns its interests with the broad long-term objectives of

the federal government. Here’s why.

The truth is, whether John Wayne Airport expands or El Toro becomes a

commercial airport has never been a local issue. It is, rather, a

national question that will be decided one way or the other by the

authority of the federal government acting in the long-term interests of

healthy interstate commerce and a safe and efficient national

transportation system.

If in its stewardship of our national economy and air transportation

scheme, Washington decides a Great Park is a bad idea and an El Toro

airport sounds pretty good, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, the good people of

his city and the flame throwers in South County can visualize all they

want. The park won’t happen and the planes will fly. But the federal

blade has the potential -- perhaps more so -- to cut just as harshly

against the Newport-Mesa community’s desire to keep John Wayne Airport

within its current boundaries. In fact, the probability here is more

troubling for our twin cities.

That’s because John Wayne Airport officials recently reported that as

of November the facility’s annual passenger count -- limited to 8.4

million bodies each year by the 1985 settlement agreement -- had grown

4.7% over 1999 to 7.1 million folks. More ominously, airport spokeswoman

Ann McCarley said John Wayne is on track to reach 8 million passengers by

the end of its reporting year on March 31. That’s dangerously close to

the settlement agreement caps, and is the strongest evidence yet that

John Wayne will slam head long into its 8.4-million-passenger limit

before the current agreement expires in 2005.

Confronted with a national air transportation system in near gridlock,

it is folly to assume Congress, the Federal Aviation Administration, the

Department of Transportation, the Commerce Department or the airlines and

their hired guns will embrace a 20-year extension of the current

settlement agreement restrictions. Nor is it at all clear that the 1990

Airport Noise and Capacity Act, which protects the current settlement

agreement, will provide safe harbor for a negotiated extension of the

caps and curfews. And the reasons are clear. Two decades is just too long

of a horizon to assume air traffic demand will remain stagnant or

decline. And given that, it’s improbable that the powers in Washington

will imprison the nation’s economy and air travelers to mounting flight

delays, deteriorating air safety and worsening bottlenecks in interstate

commerce without some other opportunity to expand airport capacity in the

region.

Clearly, from the Newport-Mesa perspective, that additional capacity

resides at El Toro. The folks in South County think otherwise. They want

El Toro off the table, period. And their strategy -- myopic and mistaken

-- shows it. They now openly talk of filing class-action lawsuits to have

the passenger limits of the John Wayne Airport settlement agreement

thrown out unless the Newport-Mesa community stands down in its push for

an El Toro airport. It’s a false choice that assumes John Wayne’s

structural capacity of 14 million passengers -- along with Southern

California’s other regional airports -- is sufficient to satisfy the

nation’s air transportation needs well into this century. Worse, it

baldly ignores the equitable distribution of airport capacity now and

well into the future.

We can’t hope any longer to persuade South County that an El Toro

airport is a fair and equitable solution to our nation’s air

transportation needs. Knowing that, it’s time to re-deploy assets and

take the El Toro battle to the national theater where -- in alliance with

the federal government -- we can fight for the health of our national

economy and air transportation system.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a writer and communications consultant. He lives

in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays. Readers can reach him with

news tips and comments via e-mail at byronwriter@msn.com.