Fast Action a Must for Locating Airport : Supervisors Should Give George AFB a Close Look

For decades, the Orange County Board of Supervisors has been commissioning studies and spending scarce taxpayers’ funds in a hunt for some place to build another commercial jet airport.

For just as many years, knowledgeable observers have been saying quietly that no matter how hard the supervisors might look, they wouldn’t find another airport location in Orange County. As they have correctly surmised, the county’s growth, size and land-development patterns long ago precluded the possibility of finding a suitable site within the county’s borders.

On Tuesday, the supervisors are scheduled to consider a staff report that recommends ruling out once and for all the four sites (two in Orange County, one each in San Diego and Riverside counties) that keep cropping up in other studies, and to focus attention instead on George Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County.

The four sites, with their built-in environmental and traffic problems, are all seriously flawed, as the staff notes. Moreover, the Pentagon is planning to close George Air Force Base in 1992. So from Orange County’s point of view, it makes good sense to at least think about how workable it would be to convert the 6,000-acre military airfield to serve the civilian needs of Southern California.

To some, singling out a seemingly remote site in the desert about 80 miles northeast of the heart of Orange County is an attempt at exporting a problem. Skeptics also see it as locating the airport where it would be rarely used, simply because it’s so far away.

But there are mitigating circumstances that make George Air Force Base at least worthy of the consideration that the staff is asking from the board.

Not only can the airfield be converted to civilian use in a relatively short period of time, but local residents in Adelanto actually want a new airport there and are actively campaigning for it. That eliminates the NIMBY (not in my back yard) problem that exists at most every other potential site.

The need for a new airport and more flights is a regional problem that Orange County should address with its neighbors in Riverside, San Bernardino and Los Angeles counties. Estimates are that by the year 2010, Southern California airports will need 25 million more passenger boardings a year than they will be able to provide. The bulk of the shortage (15 million) will be in Orange County.

The remoteness and inconvenience of George Air Force Base for Orange County passengers is a big problem. The only way the long trip to the airfield can be overcome is if the proposed high-speed rail service between Anaheim and Las Vegas becomes a reality. The fact that the train is a private proposal means that the public interest would be entirely dependent on decisions made in the private sector. The train, if it becomes a reality, could make the airport trip feasible and fast. But it remains a question mark.

Still, if Orange County’s growing passenger needs are to be met in this century, or in the early 2000s, the county board must start making decisions and pinning down the potential sites that are economically, environmentally and politically the most practical.

The four sites the staff report seeks to eliminate fall short on those factors. George Air Force Base may not measure up, either. Whether it does or not should be determined posthaste. At this point, any decision that eliminates the usual suspects-- tired, unacceptable and unrealistic airport sites--is progress, indeed.