Court Delays Orange County Airport Expansion

Superior Court Judge Philip E. Schwab has ordered Orange County to halt all work on a $150-million expansion plan for John Wayne Airport, reserving the right to roll back jet departures to 41 daily unless the county wins court approval for environmental studies supporting the expansion.

All engineering and planning work gearing up for the new airport master plan was halted late Friday, and county officials were left uncertain about the next step in their legal fight to construct a new 6-million-square-foot terminal and other facilities to handle up to 73 jet departures daily at the airport.

Also suspended were preparations to offer sound-insulation and purchase-assurance programs to residents of Santa Ana Heights--the small community near the departure end of John Wayne’s runways--who can no longer bear the sound of overflying jets. Assistance programs could have been available to those residents as early as February, 1986, if funding applications had been allowed to proceed on schedule, county officials said.

Newport Beach officials were jubilant over the order--which can be modified before it becomes final some time next month--although they may have lost their attempt to have the airport environmental studies reviewed in state court, a forum city officials believe would be more protective of state environmental laws.

Schwab ruled only that the studies had to be reviewed by a court “of competent jurisdiction,” and that could include the federal court, which the county has asked to take sole jurisdiction over the airport expansion issue.

Newport Beach did not ask the judge to set aside the limited expansion that took effect April 1, when jet flights were expanded from 41 daily to 55, citing the “inconvenience to the traveling public” that would occur if the already-booked flights were canceled. Schwab did not order a rollback, but he reserved the right to do so if necessary in order to enforce his order, which found county officials in contempt of a 1982 court injunction limiting jet flights to 41 a day.

“I’m deeply disappointed, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more disappointed at an airport matter since even before I was a supervisor,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley, who lives beneath the airport flight path in Newport Beach.

Riley said he was primarily concerned with the judge’s order to halt plans to assist Santa Ana Heights residents, whom he characterized as victims in the airport expansion battle.

After nearly a decade of controversy over a long-term land-use plan for Santa Ana Heights, whose residents were divided between those who wished to keep the community rural and residential and those who wished to sell out to commercial developers, the new airport master plan settled on a compromise that would retain a small neighborhood near the center of the community while converting several other blocks to business parks.

The plan calls for offering noise insulation to an estimated 400 homeowners scheduled to remain, while providing purchase assurances to an estimated 300 families in the noisiest areas of the community who want to sell their homes. Many residents are eager to begin taking advantage of those programs.