Agency Moves Toward Plan for New Airport : Government: The action by the 5-city joint-powers authority may signal a power struggle between competing agencies over the site issue.

In a bid to keep alive Orange County’s search for a new airport site, a five-city joint-powers authority has asked major engineering firms to submit their qualifications for planning and building an airfield in Cristianitos Canyon, near San Clemente.

The action is the first step toward soliciting bids for preparing an airport master plan, and it may signal a power struggle between competing agencies.

Cristianitos Canyon was listed as one of two preferred sites by the county’s Airport Site Coalition in a final report last month that capped a two-year effort. The coalition proposed creating a public-private partnership to pursue development of a master plan for Cristianitos Canyon or for its other choice, south Camp Pendleton in San Diego County.

But the Orange County Board of Supervisors was openly hostile to the coalition’s choices and submitted the report to an in-house staff committee for a review to be completed later this month.

Enter the Orange County Cities Airport Authority, which represents Anaheim, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Santa Ana and Stanton. For years this group, operating under different names, said it preferred airport sites ranging from the Chino Hills to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station but always found itself outgunned politically by the Board of Supervisors.

The airport authority board recently voted not to wait for the county’s in-house review of Cristianitos Canyon or for the Airport Site Coalition to take further action. What’s more, in letters to county officials, the airport authority offered to “handle” the site selection issue for the county, a proposal that irks Supervisor Thomas F. Riley.

“It surprises me, and at the same time I have grave difficulty understanding why they are doing this,” Riley said. “I don’t see how they can go ahead without us. My frustration with the whole thing is that we’ve asked our own task force to come back with a recommendation.”

Clarence Turner, a Newport Beach councilman who is a member of the Airport Site Coalition and the airport authority, acknowledged that even coalition members were not informed of the invitations sent to engineering firms.

“We have talked to the (Airport Site Coalition), and I believe there will be some type of cooperative effort in the future,” Turner said. “But rather than lose time, I’d rather be prepared. It’s my personal intent to see that the job gets done one way or the other.”

Santa Ana Councilman Ron May, chairman of the authority, added: “We’re an agency interested in securing an airport for the Orange County area. We’re also interested in George Air Force Base as a possibility. We’re not ignoring anyone. This is just a process that we’ve taken over as an authority empowered to select and build an airport.”

May acknowledged that the airport authority wants to keep the county from burying the airport site issue.

“We happen to be in a position to kind of fill the void,” May said.

The Air Force plans to abandon George AFB in San Bernardino County in the next two years. The Airport Site Coalition urged that the desert base get further consideration, but coalition officials had ruled out an extensive review of that site because of its remoteness and because San Bernardino County has plans to conduct its own study of the base as an airport site.

The City of Adelanto, which is next to the base, is actively trying to interest Orange County in developing a major airport there, possibly with a high-speed rail link to Anaheim.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman Don R. Roth is lobbying strongly for the air base.

Turner and May said that the airport authority has invited the cities of Irvine, San Clemente, Tustin and Yorba Linda to become authority members in order to broaden its representation.

They said firms solicited for statements of qualifications include the Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco and Fluor Daniel of Irvine.

No replies have been received so far, they said.

Although county officials have for decades been looking for a new airport site in order to relieve the crowding at John Wayne Airport, the effort was given a higher priority as a result of a 1985 court settlement between the county and Newport Beach and several citizens’ groups. As part of the settlement, the county agreed to limit the annual number of passengers John Wayne Airport can serve to 8.4 million, up from the current 4.75 million. The county also agreed to make a good-faith effort to find a site for a new airport. The passenger cap at John Wayne expires in 15 years, however, and Newport Beach officials have been trying to keep the selection of another airport site high on the county’s agenda.