Cristianitos Airport Site Favored by Panel

Warning that Orange County residents face a crippling air-transportation crisis, the Airport Site Coalition urged the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to create a public-private joint venture to pursue construction of a new regional airport in Cristianitos Canyon near San Clemente or at South Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

The group also named Potrero los Pinos plateau in Cleveland National Forest and March Air Force Base in Riverside County as less feasible but still worthwhile locations for a new airport.

The coalition’s report, however, received a cool reception from the Board of Supervisors, which charged the coalition three years ago with picking a suitable airport location as part of a court settlement that limits expansion of John Wayne Airport.

The supervisors still have no timetable for resolving the airport-construction issue.

According to the coalition’s report, the following is what it would cost to build an airport at each of the four sites and how many passengers each would be able to handle a year:

* Cristianitos Canyon--$1.8 billion and 15.1 million passengers.

* South Camp Pendleton--$6.5 billion and 33.8 million passengers.

* Potrero los Pinos--$6.3 billion and 15.4 million passengers.

* March Air Force Base--$3.3 billion and 15.4 million passengers.

After Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder scolded the coalition for not involving adjacent counties in its deliberations, the board voted 4 to 0, with Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez absent, to refer the coalition’s findings to the county staff for a 60-day review.

Privately, a key county official said the coalition’s report was “dead on arrival” because each of the recommended sites has significant environmental and political obstacles, including strong opposition from elected officials and other government agencies ranging from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the U.S. Forest Service and the Pentagon.

“I don’t give it much hope,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth said after the meeting.

The coalition used the meeting to showcase its findings and urge officials not to shelve them.

By the year 2010, Coalition president Leland Oliver told the supervisors, the county will need to serve 22.2 million passengers annually--14.8 million more than the maximum volume permitted at John Wayne Airport under a 1985 court settlement.

Public pressure created by lack of airline seats will push the supervisors to act, coalition officials said after the board meeting. In addition, they said, state legislation may force restricted airports, such as John Wayne, to allow more flights and may create regional joint-powers authorities to find and develop airport sites.

Indeed, the Orange County Cities Airport Authority, composed of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Newport Beach, Santa Ana and Stanton, voted last week to pursue George Air Force Base in San Bernardino County as a regional airport site and invited the Airport Site Coalition to join forces in that effort. The base is scheduled to be closed by the Pentagon in three years.

Roth said he will continue to propose that Air Force base as Orange County’s most logical airport location--a site that some coalition members believe is far too remote to serve the county’s needs.

Roth said he recognizes that there will need to be monorail or high-speed train service between the Air Force base and Orange County, and not the Las Vegas-Anaheim link under consideration by the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission. Roth is the commission’s vice chairman.

San Clemente officials, meanwhile, said they will continue to resist any attempt to pursue Cristianitos Canyon as an airport site.

“I’m angry,” said San Clemente Councilman Thomas Lorch, who was the city’s representative at site-selection meetings. “I think Cristianitos Canyon was somebody’s choice all along, before any studies were done,” he added.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) and other elected officials have vowed to prevent construction of a Cristianitos airport.

“Unfortunately,” Packard said, “this report will not take us anywhere. I think the process of site selection in Orange County was flawed from the start. None of these sites is acceptable.”

Coalition board members recommended Cristianitos, Oliver said, because it is located on privately owned land in the county’s unincorporated area, would serve a higher percentage of the county’s air-traffic needs and would be cheaper to build than the other sites.

During a news conference later, Oliver acknowledged that the coalition had resurrected the Cristianitos Canyon proposal from a list of mid-ranked sites last July, despite objections from public participants.

“In our opinion,” he said, “the final decision had to be made by the board of the Airport Site Coalition.”