RECIPE FOR SUCCESS:

There’s an urban legend that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it’s placed in tepid water and slowly heated, the frog becomes accustomed to it, eventually cooks, boiled alive and lulled into disaster.

Not a recipe for success.

Boiling Frog Syndrome, as it is called, is alive and well and thriving in Newport/Costa Mesa. We are the frog in the John Wayne Airport story.

We hear the planes roaring overhead, pause our speech patterns with almost no thought at all. A recent study downplayed the airport noise because it increased so slowly over the years. The abnormal has now become the norm because we’re used to it. We have begun to boil.

Last week, the Daily Pilot reported the Orange County Board of Supervisors gave JWA the green light for air carriers to book 12.9 million passenger seats total over the next year beginning in April. The supervisors also authorized John Wayne Airport Director Alan Murphy to withdraw some of the seats if passenger levels threatened to bubble over 10.3 million, which is allowed in the settlement agreement.

So why authorize the increase in the first place? I’ve read the staff report rationale and the math behind it; it’s difficult to understand at best. The airlines originally asked for 13.5 million seats and if you think we’re not heading in this direction, think again. There are new airline carriers itching to get into JWA. They can’t right now because of the passenger load issue, but they continue to pressure the airport, county and FAA.

In 2006, the Newport City Council signed the Spheres Agreement saying it would prohibit JWA expansion of an additional runway. Council members say repeatedly that JWA is their top priority.

So why with such an important item on the Board of Supervisor’s agenda, there wasn’t a council person in sight? Some may argue that this agenda item wasn’t really important, but any time there’s any issue dealing with JWA, we should be front and center.

The county is trying to be all things to all people. They’re trying to appease the airport, the carriers, and the residents, but in reality no one’s happy.

Officials are careful not to anger the FAA and not take too strong a stand on the no-growth issue.

What no one wants to talk about is the fact that if the FAA wants a bigger airport, we’re cooked. Think it can’t happen here, just look at the history of the neighborhoods surrounding LAX.

We need our supervisors, senators and congressmen to start speaking up for us loud and clear and to stop trying to please everybody. We need leadership that is willing to go to the mat for us.

Where are the letter writers now? We’re not talking about paving over the back nine, we’re talking about the slow methodical destruction of all our communities.

It wasn’t too long ago that JWA was a sleepy little airport. Back in the 1960s, teenagers sneaked onto runways after dark to race their cars.

One has to wonder: How did we get from there to here? The answer is simple: Slowly, it boiled, and we’ve become accustomed to it.

We’re almost cooked.

BARBARA VENEZIA is the chairman of the Santa Ana Hts. Redevelopment Project Advisor Committee and was the co-creator of the cooking show “At Home on the Range” with John Crean.