Newport Beach man working on own El Toro initiative

Paul Clinton

NEWPORT BEACH -- With an anti-El Toro ballot measure looming for the

March election, Charles Griffin is taking his own plan for the proposed

airport to the people.

Griffin doesn’t mind blowing against the political winds. He’s used to

it.

For three years, Griffin has shopped his plan for realigning the

runways at the closed El Toro Marine base into a V shape. The plan was

reviewed by Orange County officials, but quickly fell off the radar

screen.

Now, the retired aviation engineer, who lives in Newport Beach, has

drafted an initiative he hopes to put in front of Orange County voters at

the same time.

Frustrated by a lack of support, Griffin said he hopes to submit the

measure to the county clerk early next month. Griffin and Santa Ana

Heights activist Russell Niewiarowski founded the New Millennium Group to

lobby for the plan.

“That’s why I’ve written an initiative,” Griffin said about the lack

of support for the V-Plan. “The supervisors aren’t listening.”

Griffin’s plan would revise Measure A, the successful 1994 initiative

that established aviation zoning at the base. It also would extend the

airport’s boundary to allow planners to eliminate the airfield’s

east-west runway and extend the north-south runway into Irvine.

Irvine would have the right to veto the plan under the state’s Public

Utilities Code.

Griffin also wants to set aside 1,500 of the base’s 4,700 acres for a

wildlife habitat.

The Board of Supervisors agreed to analyze Griffin’s plan in an

environmental review released in December 1999. Since that time, it has

come under fire from a number of parties. Critics have included Newport

Beach, the Airport Working Group, a pilot’s association and, of course,

South County leaders fighting an airport of any kind.

At a Tuesday meeting, several members of the Newport Beach City

Council spoke against it again.

Councilman Gary Proctor said airport planning should be left to the

specialists.

“To let citizens plan an airport is probably the worst place to make

those decisions,” Proctor said. “I was opposed to the Greenlight

initiative because it was letting citizens legislate planning decisions

at the ballot box.”

In a July 25 letter to the county’s El Toro planning office, the Air

Line Pilots Assn. objected to the plan’s “serious and specific

limitations.”

The Federal Aviation Administration also has refused to consider the

plan seriously, because it has not been endorsed by Orange County’s Local

Redevelopment Authority, the office planning an airport for the base.

FAA Associate Administrator for Airports Woodie Woodward sent a letter

April 13 to Niewiarowski informing the group of its position.

“It is not appropriate for the Federal Aviation Administration to

discuss the V-Plan alternative with your organization,” Woodward wrote.

South County leaders circulating their Orange County Central Park and

Nature Preserve Initiative, which would install a sprawling park at the

base, laughed off Griffin’s measure.

Meg Waters, spokeswoman for the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, said

she wasn’t worried about Griffin’s ballot measure.

“I don’t think it has any constituency,” Waters said. “It’s got

something for everybody to hate.”