COUNTYWIDE : Proposed Sites for Airport Draw Flak

The designation of Camp Pendleton in San Diego County and Cristianitos Canyon in South County as preferred sites for a new airport has drawn immediate fire from those with a stake in the properties.

San Diego County civilian and military leaders lined up solidly in opposition to efforts to build a $6.5-billion regional airport for Orange County in southwestern Camp Pendleton adjacent to Oceanside.

And developer Anthony R. Moiso, president of the Santa Margarita Co., which owns the Cristianitos Canyon site, said he will continue to oppose selection of that site as the location for an airport.

The canyon “has been owned by members of my family for over 100 years and recently, a wilderness reserve area was established directly adjacent to the canyon,” Moiso said earlier this week. “It is inconceivable to me how an airport of any size could be located next to a pristine wilderness area--this just does not make sense!”

Two other sites also deemed worthy of consideration by the Orange County Airport Site Coalition were Potrero Los Pinos, a plateau in eastern Orange County on Cleveland National Forest land, and at March Air Force Base near Riverside.

Ken Sulzer, executive director of the San Diego County Assn. of Governments, denied a statement by Leland Oliver, president of the airport site coalition, that San Diego and Riverside counties refused to cooperate with the site selection group and “wouldn’t come to our party.”

Oliver told the Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that “we tried and tried” to involve the San Diego association in the three-year search for a site but its officials did not respond to numerous telephone calls and letters.

“Over the past two years or so, we have exchanged considerable information (with Orange County) and talked about various things that affected San Diego County,” Sulzer explained. “We--our executive board of local elected officials--have repeatedly said that Camp Pendleton is not a candidate site.”

The San Diego County Assn. of Governments, which represents the county’s 18 cities and county government, has gone on record unanimously designating Camp Pendleton as a buffer separating San Diego County from Orange and Los Angeles counties. If the Marine Corps base is ever abandoned by the Pentagon, Sulzer said, the sprawling base should be retained as an open-space buffer.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) was more direct: “I am adamantly opposed (to the Camp Pendleton airport site) and will fight it until it’s dead.”

The Marine Corps responded to the latest Orange County airport site proposal by repeating an official position first issued early last year which states, in part:

“There is no way that a regional airport could be located anywhere on Camp Pendleton without seriously degrading or curtailing all the training we do here.

“Such an airport, with its extensive infrastructure and traffic patterns, would effectively terminate training and operations at Camp Pendleton. . . . We will take every measure necessary to prevent that from happening.”

Orange County supervisors also were less than receptive to the coalition’s recommendations for the Cristianitos and Camp Pendleton sites, but voted to refer the report to county staff for a 60-day review.

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

Coalition leader Oliver told supervisors that the county will need to serve 22.2 million airline passengers by the year 2010, which is 14.8 million more than John Wayne Airport is permitted to handle under a 1985 court settlement.