Once El Toro is gone, it’s gone...

Once El Toro is

gone, it’s gone

Two letters in your Mailbag sections on May 25 and 26, by Ann

Merrit and Rex Ricks, need correction lest readers be misinformed.

Both Merrit and Ricks declare the county plan for the El Toro airport

to be unsafe. This is patently false. Both the Federal Aviation

Administration and Department of the Navy approved the county plan

for the El Toro airport as safe in February 2002.

As to the warnings about the El Toro airport being unsafe, these

are pure propaganda, the big lie, stated over and over again by

airport opponents. Did anyone watch CBS’s 60 Minutes show several

years ago, when they named John Wayne Airport as one of the most

unsafe airports in America? Reasons: 1) no buffer; 2) short runway;

and 3) deceleration upon takeoff.

El Toro is an ideal airport, located in a low-wind zone, with four

crossed runways and a large buffer area so that no one is in the

noise zone. It is sorely needed now because of rising demand for air

passenger service in the area. Ricks’ piece, promoting the V-plan as

a better airport plan, is a kind of fantasy. The V-plan, devised by a

local group, was carefully considered by experts when studying plans

for El Toro. It was studied and then rejected.

The space shuttle could land, if necessary, at El Toro. El Toro is

not dead. The need for this excellent airport grows steadily.

Airplane travel and its consequences are not confined to a small area

in south Orange County but affect millions of people in Southern

California. Thirteen south Orange County cities that devised and

voted for Measure W should not be the sole decision makers. I’ve

lived in Orange County -- I’m a native -- all my life and one thing I

know for sure is that once the land is gone, it’s gone forever.

RACHEL PEREZ-HAMILTON

Costa Mesa

V-Plan would have made El Toro take off

Don Nyre and Florence Stasch should ask Tom Naughton, president of

the Airport Working Group, or Dave Ellis, former political consultant

to the group, or Barbara Lichman, attorney representing it, to give

them a copy of the Parson’s Aviation report of the V-Plan. After all,

their donations and grants from the city of Newport Beach make this

both a public and private document. That should lay to rest the

debate as to whether the pilots’ V-Plan is a viable airport

operational plan.

As for me, I agree with Walter White of the Federal Aviation

Administration who said: “With respect to the other El Toro airport

layouts, the [V-Plan] initially appears to offer the most efficient

level of integration with current traffic flows and thus potentially

the highest level of safety and efficiency.” Since aviation

professionals were not allowed to offer input in the early stages of

El Toro airport planning, they were not allowed to work with anything

other than the “plan to fail” airport layout plan put forth by Orange

County politicians, a.k.a. the “land reuse authority.”

The “neutral” Irvine Co. opposed the V-Plan. Once the entire

perimeter of El Toro is built up with Irvine Co. projects, it might

dawn on people why any efficient and safe airport plan would have

been opposed by the Irvine Co.

ANN WATT

Newport Beach

Caspa column misses immigration issue

In his Tuesday column, Humberto Caspa writes: “Instead of making

scathing remarks against immigration in Garden Grove or Costa Mesa or

any city in Orange County, [Minuteman founder James] Gilchrist and

his group should be in Washington, pushing President Bush as well as

congressional leaders on Capitol Hill to change our country’s

economic policies toward Latin America.”

Where has Caspa been in the past 10 years? He needs to get his

facts straight.

* We are not against immigration. We are against illegal

immigration.

* The Minuteman Project is not a vigilante group. Look up

“vigilante” in the dictionary.

* We don’t need immigration reform. We need our immigration and

labor laws enforced.

* President Bush and most of Congress don’t want to enforce our

immigration and labor laws.

* American taxpayers are not responsible for the well-being of

Latin American countries. Let them all clean up their acts.

* The Minuteman Project has succeeded in calling national

attention to the illegal immigration problem, has proven that our

borders can be controlled, and it has succeeded in embarrassing

President Bush for not doing the job he was elected to do.

By the way, I am Hispanic; I came to the U.S. as a legal

immigrant; I’m a U.S. naturalized citizen; and it’s getting very

embarrassing to say I’m Hispanic.

HAYDEE PAVIA

Laguna Woods