Retired Engineer Insists His Idea for a New Airport Will Fly

Robert A. Lynch thinks he has an answer to San Diego County’s vexing dilemma: What to do with Lindbergh Field?

Lynch, 62, a retired engineer from General Dynamics/Convair, says the Silver Strand in Coronado, south of the Naval Amphibious Base, is the ideal spot for a new airport.

By dredging and filling and building a tunnel and a second bridge, he says, it could be done: two 10,000-foot runways and two terminals, perpendicular to the strand. Planes would take off over the ocean so there wouldn’t be any litigious homeowners angry about noise.

But there’s a problem with the Lynch solution. No one will listen to him. He’s beginning to suspect he’s tilting at windmills.

The San Diego Assn. of Governments says the Silver Strand idea is expensive and incompatible with air traffic at North Island Naval Air Station.

Lynch says that conclusion is flawed. He says it relies on a 1976 study of a proposal for an airport on a man-made island off the Silver Strand, which is different than his proposal.

Lynch worked up a 15-page report, complete with schematics. For 18 months, he attended meetings of Sandag’s airport committee.

He buttonholed reporters and politicians. He did an “opposing view” commentary on Channel 8. He spoke to the La Jolla Town Council.

He hopes to make enough fuss so that someone will stick up for his Silver Strand idea when the “public comment” period closes today on Sandag’s report on alternatives to Lindbergh.

Lynch says he’s learned a truth about the airport debate: “The name of the game is to make sure it isn’t in your district, be it Bilbray, Roberts or Filner.”

He says he’s one of the few people who can be objective. He lives in Pacific Beach.

He doesn’t hear Lindbergh and he won’t hear Miramar, Otay Mesa or Brown Field either.

Martial Arts Exchange

Interesting and true.

- Karate Kop II.

Kuniyuki Kai, a martial arts expert from Nobeoka, Japan, is set to arrive in San Diego today to provide training in defensive tactics to sheriff’s deputies and police officers from Coronado and Chula Vista.

This is an exchange trip.

In 1988 Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Snowden, defensive tactics coordinator at the sheriff’s training academy, went to Nobeoka to learn at the hands and feet of the master.

- The railroad doesn’t stop here anymore.

At a rally last week, Newspaper Guild President Ed Jahn charged that Union-Tribune publisher Helen Copley has turned her back on her employees and forgotten her humble origins as the daughter of a railroad signalman.

This week, a Washington-based group headed by the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale named Copley as one of 11 recipients of the 1990 Horatio Alger Award, given to people who have overcome hardship “through hard work and impeccable integrity.”

The citation on her award notes that Copley was “the daughter of a signal supervisor on the Rock Island Line.”

SDG&E; Merger: An Open Page?

SDG&E; President Tom Page met with 14 newspaper and radio reporters for two hours Wednesday to talk off the record about the proposed merger with Southern California Edison.

Privately or publicly, Page does not deviate from the company line: The merger is wonderful and cannot be blocked by local opposition.

But, to some in the group, Page’s beleaguered body language and verbal tics seemed to be saying something different. A day later, the Public Utilities Commission report was issued, saying the merger is a bummer for consumers.

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