Consultants’ Study Focuses on 3 Sites for Airport Relocation

Civic leaders looking to relocate Lindbergh Field should narrow their search to three sites, including a joint international airport with Mexico stretching from Otay Mesa into Tijuana, a consultant said Wednesday.

The other two sites recommended by KPMB Peat Marwick of San Francisco are predicated on what some say is the unlikely premise that the Navy will relinquish Miramar Naval Air Station. One alternative calls for the outright civilian takeover of the 15,400-acre naval station, while the other is the relatively new idea of grading undeveloped canyonland about 2 miles east of Miramar.

The three sites were the only ones to survive the initial screening for a new airport by Peat Marwick, which was hired for $225,000 by the San Diego Assn. of Governments to help with a yearlong airport relocation study. They were revealed Wednesday during a slide show to the Sandag Aviation Technical Advisory Committee, one of two panels charged with finding a replacement for Lindbergh.

Regional Facility

Meanwhile, three state legislators took their own approach to the crunch in airports and said they will push a plan to allow San Diego, Orange, Riverside and Imperial counties to build an international airport somewhere in Southern California, possibly at the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton.

Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-La Mesa) joined two Orange County legislators to say they would co-author a bill allowing for a special regional airport agency, an announcement that drew immediate opposition from senior Marine officers.

In San Diego, the airport discussion also riled Navy officers, who criticized the Peat Marwick report for using the assumption that they would be willing to give up Miramar, the celebrated home of the Top Gun jet fighter school.

“It’s like assuming that Lindbergh Field will have no passenger growth for the next 10 to 15 years,” Capt. Gary Hughes, Miramar’s commanding officer, said at the Sandag meeting. “It’s an absolutely ridiculous assumption to make.”

After the meeting, Hughes said Miramar’s importance to national security supersedes the local need for a new airport site. “Our mission . . . is going to continue to exist in the foreseeable future,” he said. The cost of moving the Navy from Miramar is estimated at $6 billion.

Impossible Alternatives

San Diego City Councilman Bob Filner, whose district includes Otay Mesa, said the consultant’s recommendations were a foregone conclusion that leaves local leaders with two nearly impossible political alternatives--persuade the Navy to leave Miramar or embark on complicated negotiations with Mexico.

“I just can’t believe we spent all this money, and we knew what the outcome would be before we started,” Filner said. “I don’t think either of (the alternatives) are practical.”

Dan Haney, senior manager for Peat Marwick airport consulting, conceded during his presentation Wednesday that the three preliminary sites faced major “institutional” problems.

But Haney emphasized that they are the only locations left in the urbanizing county that would give a San Diego airport the necessary room and airspace clearance to accommodate the estimated 40 million airline passengers expected by the next century.

In sifting through a number of suggested sites, Haney said the consulting firm was looking for a location that would be big enough for at least two runways and would be free of obstacles to allow for at least two instrument landings, preferably from the east and the west. The firm was also looking for a place with no major environmental problems or threats to military jet maneuvers.

Those considerations ruled out a number of sites, including Brown Field by itself. Haney said the sudden rise of mountains to the east of the city-owned airfield on Otay Mesa works against the site, which also creates airspace conflicts with the existing Tijuana airport.

North Island Ruled Out

Using the North Island Naval Air Station, either in conjunction with the military or as a total civilian airport, was ruled out for a number of reasons, such as incompatibility with Navy operations, threats to endangered wildlife and the burden of relocating three deep-water berths for air carriers, Haney said.

Other sites rejected by Peat Marwick were offshore runways in the South Bay or the Silver Strand, as well as locations in Rincon Springs, Bonsall and Ramona.

Consideration turned to Miramar, long eyed by civic officials as an airport site because of its large tract of undeveloped acreage only 13 miles from downtown.

Haney said Peat Marwick ruled out as untenable the idea of a new commercial airport using either shared or separate runways at the same time as the military. Even with two new runways at Miramar, there would be insufficient room for both Navy and commercial jets to make instrument landings over the mountains to the east, he said.

That left the consultants with three sites, Haney said. They were:

- Miramar as a total civilian airport. This alternative, of course, would only be viable if the Navy agreed to pull out of the air station. Although the proposed civilian field could be expanded and new runways designed to be built over Interstate 15, it still poses some problems because of the likelihood of more noise over residential areas along Interstate 805, Haney said.

- An unspecified tract south of Poway and about 2 miles east of Miramar. This alternative, a relatively new proposal, also depends on the Navy leaving Miramar, freeing up the nearby airspace. Although it would solve the noise problem by moving airplanes away from developed areas, it would be extremely costly to build. Haney said preliminary estimates show grading of at least 200 million cubic yards of dirt to level hills and fill in canyons. Thus, he said, the cost would be “scary.”

- A joint international airport with Mexico. One configuration suggested by Peat Marwick would build four new runways facing north and south. Ranging from 12,000 to 9,000 feet, the runways would overlap both Brown Field and the existing Tijuana International Airport.

Noise Problem

The proposal, however, would require an unprecedented international treaty with Mexico, said Haney. It is also further from the center of the county’s population and might create a noise problem over residential areas in Tijuana, he said.

San Diego City Councilman Ron Roberts, whose district includes the cramped Lindbergh, said there is enthusiasm for a joint venture with Mexico among businessmen in Tijuana. Roberts said Federal Aviation Administration officials also expressed interest when he broached the subject of a joint international airport during discussions in Washington this month.

“So far, the people we have talked to have been strongly in favor,” said Roberts, who added that he will fly to Mexico City next month to see if Mexican federal officials are equally enthusiastic.

But Filner said he doubts whether the joint agreement could ever be hammered out between Washington and Mexico City.

‘Political Realities’

“The Mexican idea is intriguing, it appeals to me as joint international cooperation,” he said. “But the political realities area . . . that it is not practical in the near future. We’re not going to put an international airport under some other government’s control, are we?”

Haney said Peat Marwick will now study the three suggested sites further and come back to Sandag with detailed recommendations by June.

Although local officials wrestled over the possibility of moving to Miramar, legislators in Sacramento said they are interested in Camp Pendleton for a new regional airport. Peace said the base is a logical choice and said an airport would be “but a blip” inside the 125,000-acre base. He envisions airline terminals built along Interstate 5, with a shuttle system to ferry passengers to a tarmac on an inland plateau.

But Marine Corp officers said construction of a civilian airport at Pendleton would be impractical at best and would probably force the departure of the Marines from their West Coast training facility.

“Such an airport, with its extensive infrastructure and traffic patterns, would effectively terminate training and operations at Camp Pendleton, and the country would lose a valuable asset to the national defense,” said Lt. Col. John Shotwell, a Camp Pendleton spokesman. “We will take every measure necessary to prevent that from happening.”