Airport debate remains in the clouds

Members of the Airport Working Group of Orange County, Inc. Board of

Directors read with interest the Community Commentary of March 28 by

Dan Emory and Michael Glueck concerning the grave pressures for

expansion that face John Wayne Airport as the only airport available

to accommodate growing Orange County air travel demand. We admire the

authors’ grasp of information concerning the inadequacies of the

various panaceas, such as the 19th Century solution of new rail, and

the financially impractical solution of new freeways to reach

outlying areas, offered by, among others, the cities of South Orange

County who don’t want a needed airport in their own backyards, and

agree with their conclusions based on that information. We are,

moreover, grateful to their long time interest in the airport issue.

Indeed, Emory was one of the first involved in the effort to control

expansion of John Wayne Airport more than 25 years ago.

We must, however, dispute their conclusion. Far from being

“silent” on the issue of the impacts of increasing demand for air

travel in Orange County, the working group has been in the forefront

of finding a solution. First, as the authors acknowledge, the working

group has been, and remains, a principal supporter of the use of El

Toro as a commercial airport. Everyone in the Southern California

region has now recognized what the working group knew from the start,

i.e., that without El Toro (or a similarly situated addition to

capacity that does not exist), there is no outlet for increased air

travel demand.

In furtherance of the search for additional airport capacity, an

objective explicitly mandated by bylaws adopted when the working

group was established almost 22 years ago, we embarked on 10 years of

educational activities aimed at informing the Orange County public of

the economic urgency of additional airport capacity. We also

commenced litigation aimed at enforcing important public laws such as

the California Environmental Quality Act and the Federal Clean Air

Act against opponents of El Toro’s development as an airport, who

were bent on using any means necessary to subvert the effort, legal

or not.

While we prevailed in court, we could not, by our mandate as a

federally tax-deductible organization, participate in the political

process by which El Toro’s opponents ultimately prevailed.

Nevertheless, the working group properly used legal muscle to

successfully challenge the outcome of that political process. The

judicial decision on our most recent challenge to the correctness of

Irvine’s planning for and implementation of Measure W is still

pending. In short, the runways at El Toro remain in place, and a

dispute over the proper location at which to accommodate Orange

County’s need for increased airport capacity still rages.

While it has been actively engaged on behalf of an airport at El

Toro, the working group’s attention has not been deflected from the

other principal goal for which it was established: to control the

expansion of John Wayne Airport. In close cooperation with the city

of Newport Beach, the working group obtained, in December, 2002, the

county’s agreement to an extension of the John Wayne Airport

Settlement Agreement, already the most restrictive airport regulation

in the nation. Notably, for example, the extension contains a

provision that the curfew for takeoffs over Newport Beach, from 10

p.m. to 7 a.m., has been extended to the year 2020. In addition, in

cooperation with the city and county, we obtained from the FAA

approval of the settlement extension -- a feat not matched anywhere

else in the nation.

Finally, the working group takes seriously its responsibility to

its members to remain their eyes and ears in dealing with airport

related issues. While we may not always appear in the newspapers, and

decline to create unrealistic expectations for the future of Orange

County air transportation, our strategies and decisions are always

based on informed legal judgment and on promises we believe we can

keep. In that tradition, we promise the authors of the commentary,

our members, and the people of Newport Beach and surrounding

communities in general that we will never be “lambs,” but always

“lions” in the effort to find new ways of meeting Orange County’s

transportation demand, and protecting our community from the

potential impacts of John Wayne Airport expansion.

RICHARD TAYLOR

Newport Beach

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Richard Taylor is a member of the Airport Working

Group’s Board of Directors.

I would like to congratulate the authors Dan Emory and Michael

Glueck for their succinct, yet comprehensive, analysis of the El Toro

situation, in their Community Commentary, “Orange County, we have a

problem,” and the Pilot for printing it.

The authors characterized the airport “drama” as a three-act play,

where act No. 1 is the successful setting of restrictions on John

Wayne Airport flights; act No. 2 is the failed attempt to open El

Toro; and act No. 3 is to prevent the expansion of John Wayne and

reopen El Toro -- the critical act that is now in progress.

The picture the authors paint of the effects of trying to expand

John Wayne to become the only airport facility in all of Orange

County is dismal indeed and, based on the estimates Emory and Glueck

quote, are reasonable. The redesign and reconstruction of John Wayne

alone would require at least 15 years until completion. Rearranging

the interconnecting infrastructure may take much longer. The

rebuilding of John Wayne would have an equally large negative impact

on South County, and it is difficult to understand why South County

would put itself through such an ordeal. The only beneficiaries for

such massive changes in Orange County are the developers and builders

(and their out of state investors) who hae been longingly eyeing the

14,000-acre buffer zone since the closure of El Toro.

The bright point is that if El Toro is to be activated, the

redesign is already completed. Since there are four serviceable

runways and a safe pipeline fuel delivery system in place, building

the terminal and necessary service facilities should take only about

two years for the airport to be operational.

FLORENCE STASCH

Newport Beach