Orange County not right place for big airport

In a Dec. 14 letter, El Toro V-Plan proponent Russell Niewiarowski

of Santa Ana Heights expressed his widely held confusion (“Dazed and

confused by JWA situation”). He wrote: “I am confused as to how, on

one hand, the elected officials of Newport Beach and the majority of

the county of Orange Board of Supervisors could preach and sing the

need for a 30-million-annual-passenger El Toro International airport,

then so quickly discarded all such notions ... [and] present a new

notion that a mere slight expansion of John Wayne will now more than

meet Orange County’s future needs for the next 15 years.”

The confusion is justified because neither claim is true.

On the one hand, there never was a sufficient need for a second

county airport. El Toro’s size was pumped up in order to make the

economics look good. The county’s plan for filling El Toro required

that John Wayne shrink, that North County users of Los Angeles

International Airport and Ontario reverse direction and drive south

to El Toro, and that millions of San Diego County and Inland Empire

travelers each year join the traffic on our roads in order to fly

from Orange County. It was a fatally bad idea.

On the other hand, Orange County’s future aviation needs are

greater than what can be served under the new John Wayne plan.

However, no one has made the case that these needs must be satisfied

within the boundaries of this geographically small county. Orange

County is a land-scarce urbanized center. Airports belong in outlying

areas with less costly land, fewer impacted homes, less crowded

airspace, and less congested road access. Riverside and San

Bernardino counties offer these conditions.

It is time to ask what we would do if the Marines had not decided

to leave El Toro. It is time to get back to work on ground access

systems to the other airports scattered around the region.

LEONARD KRANSER

Dana Point

* Leonard Kranser is editor of an anti-airport El Toro

information Web site.