Orange County’s Pendleton Airport Plan Blasted

San Diego County civilian and military leaders lined up solidly Wednesday in opposition to efforts to build a $6.5-billion regional airport for Orange County at Camp Pendleton.

To add insult to intrusion, the Orange County task force that named Camp Pendleton as a preferred airport site said the San Diego Assn. of Governments, San Diego County’s regional planning agency, has refused to participate in Orange County’s three-year hunt for a suitable site to provide additional air service when John Wayne Airport in Newport Beach reaches capacity.

Ken Sulzer, executive director of Sandag, denied a statement by Leland Oliver, president of Orange County Airport Site Coalition, that San Diego and Riverside counties have refused to cooperate with the site selection group and “wouldn’t come to our party.”

Oliver told the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday that “we tried and tried” to involve Sandag in the search, but that Sandag officials responded to neither numerous telephone calls nor a number of letters from the Orange County Airport Site Coalition.

The two preferred sites submitted by the coalition to Orange County supervisors were in southwestern Camp Pendleton next to Oceanside and in Cristianitos Canyon at the northern edge of Camp Pendleton in Orange County, east of San Clemente. The San Diego County site would require the lowering of eight lanes of Interstate 5.

Two other sites also deemed worthy of consideration in the Orange County study were Potrero Los Pinos, a plateau in eastern Orange County in Cleveland National Forest land, and at March Air Force Base near Riverside.

Sulzer termed Oliver’s allegation that Sandag refused to participate in the Orange County airport site search inaccurate and denied that his agency ignored the coalition.

“Over the past two years or so, we have exchanged considerable information (with Orange County) and talked about various things that affected San Diego County,” Sulzer explained. “We--our executive board of local elected officials--have repeatedly said that Camp Pendleton is not a candidate site.”

Sandag leaders, who represent the county’s 18 cities and county government, have gone on record unanimously designating Camp Pendleton as a buffer separating San Diego County from Orange and Los Angeles counties. If the Marine Corps base is ever abandoned by the Pentagon, Sulzer said, the sprawling base should be retained as an open-space buffer.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) was more direct about the Camp Pendleton airport site: “I am adamantly opposed and will fight it until it’s dead.”

Designating the Marine base as a civilian airport site “would put Camp Pendleton on the base-closing list,” the congressman said Wednesday.

Over the years the base has been converted into “a major military installation” with “permanent housing and facilities. I’m not about to let all that be ruined by a private undesirable use,” Packard said.

The Marine Corps responded to the latest Orange County airport site proposal by repeating an official position first issued early last year which states, in part:

“There is no way that a regional airport could be located anywhere on Camp Pendleton without seriously degrading or curtailing all the training we do here.

“Such an airport, with its extensive infrastructure and traffic patterns, would effectively terminate training and operations at Camp Pendleton. . . . We will take every measure necessary to prevent that from happening.”

Orange County supervisors also were less than receptive to the coalition’s recommendations for the Cristianitos and Camp Pendleton sites, but voted to refer the report to the county staff for a 60-day review.

Privately, a key Orange County official said the coalition’s report was “dead on arrival” because each of the recommended sites had significant environmental and political obstacles, including strong opposition locally and from government agencies ranging from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the U.S. Forest Service and the Pentagon.

Coalition leader Oliver told supervisors that the county will need to serve 22.2 million airline passengers by the year 2010, which is 14.8 million more than John Wayne Airport is permitted to handle under a 1985 court settlement.

Sulzer said that Sandag’s executive board is expected to choose at its May meeting a site that it will recommend for a new international airport for San Diego County. The present choices are Miramar Naval Air Station, a site immediately to the east of Miramar, or a binational airport on Otay Mesa adjacent to the Mexican border and the Tijuana International Airport.

Camp Pendleton is not considered by San Diego leaders as an airport site, Sulzer said, “but we will solve our airport problems within our own region.”