SOUNDING BOARD -- William J. Kearns

In the June 19 Daily Pilot, the cities of Orange, Villa Park, Tustin,

Irvine and Costa Mesa are said to have reported increased flights over

their cities, many of which are predominately residential.

Surprise, surprise. South County has experienced a phenomenal growth

rate and now boasts of a population of 600,000 made up of above-average,

educated and professional citizens who need to travel to distant points

for business and many who can afford to travel for personal and family

reasons.

The increase in passenger load at JWA has increased because potential

South County passengers now outnumber the combined passenger load of

Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana so that the number of flights has

more than doubled since 1990. The good news is that Orange County as a

whole is a growing center of commerce and tourism.

The bad news is that South County and other areas now seeing

increasing flight activity over their homes don’t want to see their

“quality of life” impaired one iota and feel that the people in parts of

Tustin, Newport Beach, Santa Ana Heights and Costa Mesa should continue

to absorb the noise from the South County flights because “they are used

to it.” It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if the noise bothers South

County homes that it might also bother the homes adjacent to JWA. So how

are we to deal with the increasing flight loads?

Some of the armchair airport planners feel that a light rail system to

faraway Ontario is a simple solution. Others want to bore through

mountains in Cleveland National Forest to reach inland airports. Put in

new freeways (or toll roads -- ugh) to the outback. Each plan has its

merits, but they all have two major drawbacks: Money and completion time.

Many billions of tax dollars are involved and at least 20 years of work

if the projects are started today.

It all adds up to a high tax bill and great inconvenience due to

traffic snarls, increased pollution, more trucks on the highway and on

and on. A much simpler interim plan would be to open El Toro and share

the load with JWA. El Toro would be essentially free to taxpayers as a

$10-billion gift from the Navy.

Work on one or more solutions to gain access to distant airports could

go on in parallel so that at the end of 20 years both local airports and

access to more distant facilities, which we will certainly need by then,

will materialize with minimum cost and inconvenience to taxpayers.

WILLIAM J. KEARNS

Costa Mesa