Camp Pendleton Named on Airport Site List

An Orange County site-selection group has chosen three potential locations for a new regional airport, and one of them is in San Diego County.

The suggested south Camp Pendleton site, about 3 miles north of Oceanside, would be an international airport serving 10.3 million passengers annually beginning in the year 2010, according to a proposal drawn up by Orange County Airport Site Coalition. The coalition is looking for a site to relieve crowding at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport.

The consultants envision a passenger terminal with 14 gates, as well as cargo and general-aviation facilities. The 3,190 acre facility would cost $5.496 billion. Funding was not spelled out.

Along with the Pendleton site, the group chose Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino and a location in the Cleveland National Forest northeast of San Juan Capistrano as finalists. The Cleveland forest location, a plateau called Potrero Los Pinos, is the only one of the three finalists within Orange County.

Orange County officials also are considering a second San Diego County site, McClellan-Palomar Airport in Carlsbad, as one of five backup locations in case the Camp Pendleton site or the two other finalists they identified last weekend--prove unfeasible.

There is general agreement among government officials in San Diego County that both Camp Pendleton and McClellan-Palomar are off limits as replacement sites for San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, and Marine Corps officials say they are adamantly opposed to giving up part of Camp Pendleton.

“Local policy is very clear on both of these sites,” said Jack Koerper, special projects director at the San Diego Assn. of Governments. “It would be very difficult to do politically in San Diego.”

On Monday, Sandag released a study saying that San Diego would have one of the nation’s most congested airports and lose billions of dollars in forfeited economic growth if no new airport for San Diego is built by 2010. The study compared the long-term economic impact of a new airport to that of Lindbergh Field, but did not endorse either.

Proposed alternatives to Lindbergh include two sites in and next to the Miramar Naval Air Station and one along the U. S.-Mexican border on Otay Mesa.

“San Diego is attempting to find solutions to its airport question inside the San Diego region,” said Koerper, who headed the study made public Monday, a continuing Sandag report of San Diego’s airport system.

“Orange County, or the Los Angeles area, has taken a different point of view, especially Orange County, by looking both inside and outside Orange County for solutions to air carrier problems.”

Gunnery Sgt. Stan Pederson, a Marine Corps spokesman at Camp Pendleton, said Tuesday that senior officers there are sticking by a January statement saying they would “strenuously oppose all proposals to locate a regional airport” at the base.

“We will take every measure necessary to prevent this from happening,” Pederson read from the statement.

“People are just tossing these ideas around,” said an aide to San Diego Councilman Ron Roberts, a major proponent of a new San Diego airport. “It just goes to show you the measure of desperation when it comes to air transportation planning in Southern California. It’s critical.”

The president of the Orange County Airport Site Coalition, meanwhile, said the group was “site-neutral” when it chose the three potential locations for a new airport at a meeting Saturday in Irvine.

“We’re only concerned with alleviating the year 2010 demand of more than 22 million air passengers a year in Orange County,” Leland Oliver said Tuesday.

In case any of the three chosen sites proved unworkable, the coalition fashioned a backup list that included McClellan-Palomar and four other possibilities. The group is sanctioned by the Orange County Board of Supervisors and has been aided by professional planning consultants.

The supervisors are not required to adopt the coalition’s final recommendations or choose any site. However, Oliver said Saturday that the group will work to build political pressure on behalf of its final recommendations.

Among the sites dropped from consideration was El Toro Marine Corps Air Station because the coalition’s staff concluded that selection of the military base would face significant political opposition and that there would be major costs in relocating military operations elsewhere.

McClellan-Palomar was projected to be a “short-haul,” as opposed to an international airport with three gates for up to 2.3 million passengers a year beginning in 2005. Though it would continue to handle general aviation traffic, it would not have cargo service, according to the consultants. They estimated it would cost $619.85 million to expand that airport.

The consultants’ projections for all locations assume that the process of obtaining money and government approvals would get under way in 1990.

John Wayne Airport now serves a maximum of 4.75 million passengers annually, with a new ceiling of 8.4 million when a new terminal and parking garages are completed.

Although many studies of airport sites have been filed over the years, a new search was required under terms of a 1985 court settlement between Orange County supervisors and the city of Newport Beach over planned expansion at John Wayne.

The coalition’s final report is due in December, Oliver said.