Mojave Airport Endorsed : Transportation: Supervisors ignore recommendations for a site in or near the county, supporting instead a location 80 miles north of Anaheim.

County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously rejected the advice of a task force charged with finding a new airport site in or near Orange County, voting instead to pursue a remote location in the Mojave Desert.

It had taken members of the Airport Site Coalition, a broad-based group of civic and business leaders, more than two years to narrow its search to four locations, two of them in South Orange County. But the supervisors and a county-appointed committee took less than two months to reject all four locations, citing “significant impediments to each of them.”

“For me, to envision any kind of major aviation activity in Orange County is beyond the reach of possibility,” Board Chairman Don R. Roth said after the meeting. “To try to build an airport in an area as congested as this county is just impossible.”

Roth is an outspoken advocate of super-speed rail, and proponents of that system say it could make the desert airport site more realistic by providing an easy way for Orange County residents to use the proposed facility.

Both the supervisors and members of the Airport Site Coalition are trying to find a suitable location for another regional airport in Southern California in order to relieve congestion at already crowded John Wayne Airport.

In its report, delivered in April, the coalition’s recommendation of airport sites included Cristianitos Canyon east of San Juan Capistrano and Potrero Los Pinos in the Cleveland National Forest--both located inside the county. The coalition also recommended South Camp Pendleton in San Diego County and March Air Force Base in Riverside County.

Unlike the coalition, however, the Board of Supervisors is under strong political pressure to resist an Orange County site. The board favors George Air Force Base, about 80 miles north of Anaheim near Adelanto in San Bernardino County. The base is scheduled to close within three years, and Adelanto’s mayor urged the supervisors Tuesday to consider that site.

“The city of Adelanto welcomes your interest in this project,” Mayor Edward Dandelinger said. “We have an airport that has the capacity to handle your needs for the next 50 years.”

In fact, advocates of the desert site see it as far more than just another local airport. Armed with an array of glitzy visual devices, Costa Mesa Mayor Peter F. Buffa touted the site, which he referred to as a “mega-port,” and predicted that the new facility could not only support new air traffic demand but could also be home to a proposed “space plane.”

For Adelanto, the airport proposal represents a potentially huge source of revenue at a time when the town is losing its Air Force base. That city’s eagerness to accept an airport was in marked contrast to the reaction of officials from Orange County, who also appeared at Tuesday’s meeting.

“We will use every means at our disposal, legal, political and otherwise to stop an airport at Cristianitos,” San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Larry Buchheim warned the supervisors. He warmly welcomed the George Air Force Base proposal, however, calling it “absolutely fantastic.”

Representatives of Costa Mesa and San Clemente also said they would reject any proposal to build another Orange County airport, and Mike Eggers, a staff aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), reiterated Packard’s longstanding opposition to construction of an airport in South County.

While the Orange County officials are eager to see the George Air Force Base option succeed, the proposal faces formidable problems. It is by far the most remote of the options under consideration, and transportation to and from the airport would be over huge distances.

A super-speed train offers the simplest solution to that problem, but officials concede that many details about it remain uncertain. San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. has indicated interest in building the rail, and putting the airport on one of its lines would make it more profitable.