Miramar Air Station: Will Navy Share It as an Airport? : Property: San Diego’s need to replace Lindbergh Field puts new focus on Navy base. Rep. Jim Bates says joint use of Miramar is the ‘obvious choice.’

Capt. Hoss Pearson is besieged by 26 proposals from San Diego city and county clamoring for a parcel of land that once nobody wanted: Miramar Naval Air Station.

As soon as Pearson fends off one request, he’s hit with another. In most cases the requests are for undesirable projects that most neighborhoods fight: a sewage-treatment plant, sludge and garbage landfills, a jail, roads, a petroleum tank farm, a power plant, and a police and a fire academy.

“Everybody wants a piece of action out here,” said Pearson, commanding officer of Miramar, one of the nation’s four master jet stations, a hub for the Navy’s sophisticated fighter jets situated 13 miles north of downtown San Diego.

“It’s mind-boggling. You name it, if they don’t want it in their back yard, they want to put it at Miramar,” said Rear Adm. Phil Anselmo, commander of Miramar’s Pacific Fleet fighter wing.

But the most menacing of all the bids on the 24,000-acre Miramar is the proposal for a joint-use, civilian-military airport. It’s a proposal that has been shelved and revived several times through the decade. But, with each revival, it gains more force as the city fumbles for a solution to replacing Lindbergh Field, which experts say cannot keep pace with San Diego’s booming growth.

A decision this month by the San Diego City Council to permit developers to build in the area around Brown Field shortens the list of alternatives for Lindbergh. And the spotlight on Miramar has intensified.

Next month, the San Diego Assn. of Governments is scheduled to release recommendations for an airport site based on a 14-month, $350,000 study. There are two key options: Miramar or a multiple-airport approach that would involve Lindbergh and Brown fields.

As the population of San Diego has doubled in the last 30 years, much of the city’s land has been developed. By the middle of the next century, an estimated 35 million passengers will fly into San Diego annually--or more than three times the number now served at Lindbergh.

“The handwriting is on the wall. The obvious choice is shared use at Miramar,” said Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego). “It’s not a question of being for the Navy or being for defense, but it’s a question of what is in the best interests of all of us. Ultimately, that fighter-training airport should be elsewhere.”

Saying that commercial airlines and military could safely share an airport, the Airline Pilots Assn. has also come out in favor of a joint-use facility. And shared-use proponents point to three joint-use airports used by the Air Force in North Carolina, Hawaii and New Mexico.

“It will work--and it’s the only solution we have for San Diego,” said Tom Carroll, APA spokesman and a member of the Sandag committee. “The Navy is being short-sighted. If it poses a hazard, then I question whether they should be operating out there.”

Others, including Mayor Maureen O’Connor, note that the Navy is unlikely to relinquish its prized airfield, which employs 11,000 military personnel and 2,500 civilians. About 350 aircraft take off from Miramar daily.

“Unless you get a total change in Washington, we are really foolish to think the Navy is going to give up Miramar for our airport,” O’Connor said at a recent City Council meeting.

Navy officials, feeling increasing pressure, are preparing to protect their turf. They cite Miramar’s strategic role in defending the nation, the $10-billion price of relocation, the “untenable danger” posed by a joint-use airport and the potential damage to the environment at the base, which harbors endangered plants such as mesa mint.

“We’re here, and we’re here to stay. We are not for sale--we are a part of the community,” Anselmo said.

Navy officials hope to stop the piecemeal assault on the base, in which city and county agencies approach with proposals. To help solve this problem, city officials recently selected one liaison to handle all their projects. Navy officials, in turn, agreed to seriously consider many of them.

Some say this approach may help the Navy maintain its land and a desired buffer.

“I think the Navy is looking to surround itself with uses so unattractive that it isolates itself from the city,” said Councilman Ed Struiksma.

Anselmo says the Navy is willing to cooperate on many of the proposals but there is one caveat--the Navy wants city officials to sign an agreement acknowledging Miramar’s right to exist and adopt a policy reflecting the city’s intention to prohibit major buildings in the area dubbed the accident-potential zone, 15 square miles around the flight path.

The city may not make such an agreement.

“Realistically, I’m not sure we could ever strike such an accord because the city leadership changes, the various government bodies change and it would be difficult in my mind to make anything other than a short-term commitment about what the eventual use of Miramar will be,” said Roger Frauenfelder, deputy city manager and the city’s liaison with the Navy. “After all, we have to respect the independent thinking of our future leaders. I don’t see how we can bind them in that fashion.”

Because it sits on federal land, Miramar officials do not always hold the reins. Until he read about it in newspapers, the day after the announcement, Anselmo did not know that Miramar was selected recently by the Federal Aviation Administration for a $114-million radar-approach center for air traffic control. The center, which will have its own access road, will take a 10-acre bite out of the east side of Miramar, he said.

“You’re a taxpayer, and I’m your agent, so you expect me to do the best thing I can do with your taxpaying dollars--we should be using our federal resources,” Anselmo said. “I don’t get upset about these things, but I certainly would have liked to have known about it.”

The problem of encroachment is not unique to Miramar. Across the nation, every military base feels the pinch as once-fledging communities develop and the need for land becomes greater.

At Miramar, officials are developing a multi-pronged defense against encroachment. Some point to the Navy’s economic muscle, saying that the military personnel are responsible for $1 of every $5 spent in San Diego. Others brandish their patriotism. Anselmo said, “If we want to continue to be a free nation and a free world, I think we’re going to have to pay the price.”

But the Navy’s most compelling argument may be safety.

When city officials talk of a train station south of the intersection of Frost-Mar Place and Miramar Road, Navy officials speak about the hazard of having 150 people clustered a mile west of their runway. From 1972 to 1989, 30 military aircraft have crashed within 10 miles of Miramar, according to a report prepared by Miramar and the Naval Facilities Command in Virginia. Of those crashes, 73% crashed within the Navy’s proposed accident-potential zones and two fell within a quarter-mile of the station site.

Sandag officials, however, say they believe commuters would be safe because most stay at the station a very short time. They also say commuter rail is the only solution to escalating traffic. At the junction of Interstates 5 and 805, there are about 217,000 vehicle trips a day. In 1984, there were 145,000 vehicle trips daily.

“A station is very comparable to other industrial uses in the area, and it’s compatible land use,” said Michael Zdon, a Sandag senior transportation planner. “People come in 15 minutes before the train and then get out, unlike an industrial area where they are there for eight-hour shifts. The case is either station or no station; there really isn’t any alternative.”

The proposed rail system would consist of about six trains, each containing about 500 passengers, running from Oceanside to San Diego. And it could also become a transportation hub. Councilman Struiksma asked the city to study the feasibility of a trolley running to the proposed Miramar train station.

“It’s an extremely important transportation hub for the future of San Diego, and the fact is that you don’t have Navy jets coming out of the sky at all times,” Struiksma said.

Others say that, if the area is too dangerous for a station, then it’s too dangerous for the neighboring residential communities.

“The Navy has had some airplanes ditch; there’s no question about that,” said Jim Mills, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Development Board. “But everybody clear on over to Torrey Pines is probably equally in danger. I’m not convinced that the Navy’s fears are well-grounded.”

Over the years, Miramar pilots have accommodated the growth of surrounding communities. They once flew straight to sea to carry out their training exercises; now they make climbing S-turns to avoid offending their neighbors with the roar of jet engines. Even so, complaints flood the base.

Twenty years ago, operations Duty Officer Bill Hubert said he would handle fewer than 12 irate calls daily from residents. Today, he says he receives as many as 50 complaints a day. These tallies do not include notorious complainers, such as the woman several years ago who moved from 1 1/2 to 5 1/2 miles from the base and still called 35 times in a three-month period to gripe about noise, he said.

Despite noise complaints, Navy officials consider themselves good neighbors. Although Anselmo said he has no objections to a city-proposed jail on the base, he believes his neighbors might. When local builders needed to dispose of about 100,000 cubic yards of fill-dirt, Miramar accepted it and used it to construct a berm around the rifle range.

Base officials say one of Miramar’s most important contributions has been preserving acres of chaparral-dotted open space, home to a variety of creatures, including deer, desert shrew, side-blotched lizard and one bobcat.

In 1973, the Navy set aside 2,000 acres in East Miramar as a “research natural area” to preserve rare plants and unusual wildlife. With a cemetery dating back 100 years and the ruins of a homestead town, Miramar officials hope to woo universities to study pockets of environmentally and historically rich areas. And they also hope to preserve the area, much of it covered with sage scrub. One sailor was recently chastised for using a metal detector to find artifacts that he sold for scrap.

In the southwest corner of the preserved area, there are a small number of vernal pools, depressions in the ground where water collects during the rainy season. The depressions also harbor mesa mint, which once covered the San Diego area but is now endangered. When the Navy built a new jail, officials paid $500,000 to move seven vernal pools, said Capt. Al Katz, Miramar’s public works officer who oversees the base.

“We coined the phrase ‘island of ecological rarity,’ and we’re trying to keep it that way,” Katz said.

But Miramar’s ecological bent is not without purpose. When the city expressed an interest in Miramar’s East Gate Mall for a sewage-treatment and water-reclamation plant, officials demurred, saying the area was chock-full of vernal pools.

“If an area is a natural resource area, it gives us the ability to say no, you can’t build out there,” Katz said. “That’s the whole idea of Miramar being an ‘island of ecological rarity.’ If someone says they don’t care about ecological rarity, then part of our armor goes away.

“You see the problem is that the Navy is always located next to coastlines. Where’s the most valuable property? Coastline. And so the Navy will always have encroachment problems.”

Eventually, the decision about a project as major as an airport would be decided by Washington officials. Only seven months ago, the House cleared the way to close 86 military bases. Miramar was not among them.

“You come to the question of (whether there) are . . . things that take place at Miramar that couldn’t take place elsewhere. I suspect they could,” Mills said. “Would the city want the Navy to relocate its activities and the payroll that goes with them? That’s the question.”