Orange County Commentary : Editorials : A Time for Compromises

Every few years the Orange County Board of Supervisors makes another run at trying to adopt a master plan for John Wayne Airport that will help meet the county’s transportation needs and still protect the environment by resisting excessive expansion.

It will try again on Wednesday, and while it would be naive to expect a solution that would end the controversy that has raged since the first jet took off from the airfield 17 years ago, there is reason for some optimism.

The one ingredient that has been missing in the past is a common ground, a compromise, an approach that was practical and politically acceptable for all competing interests. That elusive consensus now seems to be emerging.

Some cities, business leaders, residents and public officials are recognizing that:

- Some expansion is not only inevitable but justified.

- An increase in the present limit of 41 daily flights is needed.

- The terminal must be improved, along with access roads and parking capacity.

- The future of the Santa Ana Heights neighborhood that lies at the end of the airport runway must finally be taken out of limbo and determined so that residents can get on with their lives by either relocating or remaining.

Several plans for Santa Ana Heights will be considered by the board Wednesday. We urge the supervisors to select the one that allows the most people to remain in their homes and preserves the unique rural life style they want to retain. They then should adopt a generous relocation plan to provide real, and not just apparent, help for those who may be displaced because their homes are in the area where engine noise is intolerable.

The compromise for the airport, which would require opponents to accept more expansion and the board to accept less, seems to be to increase the daily maximum flight limit to 55, to scale down the proposed new terminal and to accept the proposition that a long-term solution to air transportation means finding another airport site to supplement operations at John Wayne.

The search for a new airport is the most perplexing part of the equation because there is little, if any, usable land remaining in the county that can be converted to airport use. Each potential site identified and studied thus far has been eliminated for some understandable reason.

Supervisor Thomas Riley, in whose district John Wayne Airport is located, may have the compromise solution to that. Riley suggests that the alternative locations considered before be reevaluated, this time not as sites for a massive international airport but for a smaller airport to supplement John Wayne.

The quest is not for an ideal solution to the airport problem. That possibility was lost many years ago. What’s left now are a series of second-bests, none entirely without its opponents. It’s time for the supervisors and the diverse community interests to finally agree on an airport plan before whatever workable options that might still be left are lost forever to the county’s relentless growth.