Airport extension fails to address main problems

I do not support the expansion of the John Wayne Settlement

Agreement, bringing John Wayne to a total of 20 gates and 10.8 annual

passengers for 10 more years.

The expansion (Environmental Impact Report 582) is fatally flawed

in one glaring aspect: The expansion will not satisfy the growing

demand for air transportation in to and out of Orange County now or

in the future. Even now, John Wayne does not now meet its own cargo

demands, and a request by the Airline Transportation Assn. to allow

its market share to be met in Orange County by an addition of two

more gates has been temporarily rebuffed by the signatories of the

settlement agreement. Whether the Federal Aviation Administration and

the airline association allow this demand to be capped for 10 more

years remains to be seen.

I cannot imagine airline pilots looking forward to flying

passengers out of John Wayne Airport on its one short runway with a

quirky takeoff pattern, or on landings, hitting the brakes the second

the planes touches the runway. I am certainly not comforted by the

fact that more flights per day will take place -- increasing the

likelihood of an aviation disaster around the airport -- the nearest

residence being 3,000 feet from the end of the runway.

I do not support this expansion agreement and I do not thank the

City Council for trying to negotiate this expansion. This was the

City Council who re-hired a political consultant who lost one

critical election regarding Orange County’s pledge to find an

alternative airport site (Measure F). They re-hired the same

consultant who was so close to the deadline to submit the rebuttal

argument to Measure F it took a lawsuit to assure the rebuttal made

the ballot -- a consultant tied very closely to developers -- a tie

that the City Council also shares.

Should I say “thanks” for this expansion City Council? Should I

thank them for voting for anti-El Toro commissioner Peter Herzog

rather than pro-El Toro airport supporter Lucille Kring for the

vacancy on the Local Agency Formation Commission, thereby removing

obstruction to the annexation of El Toro Air Base into the sphere of

influence of Irvine?

The current City Council can turn things around starting now. On

Dec. 19, when the Airport Land Use Commission meets to vote whether

or not to keep the buffer zone around El Toro Airport, Newport Beach

must resist the extreme pressure it must now feel to lift the buffer

zone and allow developers to develop around El Toro. Show by your

actions, not words that you support an alternative airport site to

John Wayne’s otherwise inevitable major expansion.

The next step would be for the Newport Beach City Council to work

with the FAA and the Airline Transportation Assn. to lease the

existing Runway 16L-34R at the closed El Toro and the related

property east of this runway directly from the Navy to operate a

national airport for the aviation administration (by-passing the

zoning limitations of Measure W) to provide for 2.5 million annual

passengers and parking with six temporary aircraft/passenger gates

leased by the airlines as needed (consistent with the intent of the

recently-approved Measure B) and consistent with the aviation

administration and the airline association to meet aviation demand.

ANN WATT

Santa Ana Heights