Cracks in the El Toro Debate
* Your editorial (“Some Ominous Signs on Airport Funding Front,” Sept. 7) is on the money with one glaring exception: The $1.7-billion county bankruptcy was not mentioned. Possibly The Times couldn’t in good conscience mention it since your reporting was so sorely lacking as a precursor to the largest default in this country’s history.
If things happen in threes, [after] the San Joaquin Hills toll road and the bankruptcy, El Toro surely is next. If current El Toro planning and expenditures are any indication of the future, this boondoggle will be the “mother” of all county financial disasters.
The public has very little confidence in the County Board of Supervisors and the departmental staffs who are doing this sorry work. It defies common sense how this incompetence can be tolerated year after year by the public.
Project 99 and Taxpayers for Responsible Planning are two organizations that are trying to use education and legal means to slow the El Toro juggernaut until the non-airport alternative use is studied. This effort unfortunately is looked upon as sour grapes by most North County citizens, rather than [considering] the huge bill all of us will be saddled with should this incompetence continue.
One way The Times and other leading institutions, public and private, could assist is to form a coalition to organize a countywide fund-raising campaign that would be used to factually air [using] the airport site for its highest and best use, which the law demands. To date this test has not been met; nor is there any indication it will be.
JEFF INGLISH
Irvine
* It will cost $2.5 million to repair the runways at John Wayne (“Heavy Jets Cracking Airport Runway,” Sept. 5). It’s a bargain to maintain what we already own.
The Air Line Pilots Assn. says that El Toro’s military runways will have to be completely torn out and replaced. New runways are required for commercial all-weather instrument operation and international flights. The ALPA also recommended new flight paths parallel to the I-5 freeway.
Replacing the limited-use military runways with ones meeting up-to-date high-traffic commercial standards could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. The county has not included this cost in their El Toro reuse plans.
Taxpayers are way ahead if we keep maintaining John Wayne Airport, where an agreement to artificially limit utilization to about half of the airport’s capacity expires in the year 2005.
LEONARD KRANSER
Dana Point
* An Aug. 30 article reported that a “grass-roots” coalition of South County anti-airport forces, Project 99, has found an obscure government document which they interpret to mean that the county is not the proper land-use planning agency for determining the future use of El Toro.
It occurred to me that “grass-roots coalition” is not the sort of name that grabs the public attention. I propose a new name for the group: Grasping At Straws By Any Connivance, or Gasbac. The proposed name accurately describes 90% of the public statements emanating from the South County on the subject of El Toro.
DAN EMORY
Huntington Beach
* The article “Heavy Jets Cracking Airport Runway” certainly comes as no surprise. If the runways at John Wayne are caving in under pressure because they were not designed to accommodate fully loaded commercial jets, what can be said about the runways at the proposed El Toro Airport, which were meant to accommodate military aircraft, not fully loaded 747s and other heavy commercial aircraft landing 24 hours a day?
In order to achieve passage of the ballot measure to ensure a new airport, the proponents used the argument that since the runways were already in place it made sense to convert the airfield into a commercial airport.
The pilots have already stated that the present runways are in the wrong position for commercial jets’ takeoffs and landings. Now we are made aware of the fact that the runways would need to be redone to accommodate commercial aircraft. Apparently we now can add this to another in a series of lies brought to us by those who would reap great profit from such a venture at the expense of both the surrounding communities and the taxpayers who will foot the bill.
MERYL SCHWARTZ
Irvine
