Still in a Holding Pattern

The Orange County Board of Supervisors needs a special bookcase, a large one at that, to store all the expensive studies it has ordered, paid for and thrown on the shelf to gather dust in the last three decades. It added another last week, a $750,000 gem that took more than two years to compile. It leaves the board where it has been stuck for years, with no recommended location for another airport to help meet the county’s growing needs.

The Airport Site Coalition, which presented the report to the supervisors last Tuesday, did urge creation of a public-private joint venture to pursue construction of a new airport. So far, so good. But instead of pinpointing one site, it presented four possibilities, all of which have so many environmental and political obstacles that one county official privately pronounced the report “dead on arrival.”

It well may be--as some people have maintained for years--that there is no suitable, safe, convenient and acceptable location for a new commercial jet airfield in Orange County. Studies for the last 30 years have failed to come up with one. Because of flight restrictions in a legal agreement made with Newport Beach, John Wayne Airport will fall short of serving the county’s needs by about 14.8-million passengers each year by 2010.

Recognizing this, the supervisors seem to be looking more seriously beyond county borders, to places like George Air Force Base in San Bernardino County, which is marked for closure by the Pentagon. That may not be so much looking to export Orange County’s problem as it is finding a regional solution to a regional need.

Past indecision has lost forever the most suitable sites for an airport in Orange County. What’s left is a decision on less-than-perfect options. The supervisors must pursue those before they also disappear. But $750,000 later, they have received little help from the airport site report.