IRVINE : Commission Still Considering Village

Even after meeting through the night Thursday to discuss the danger potential posed by helicopters, high-tension wires and about other concerns, the Planning Commission adjourned its public hearing on plans for a 3,626-home development without concluding the matter.

The commission will resume its hearing Aug. 16, when it will again take up discussion about Westpark II, a residential village the Irvine Co. wants to build on land west of Culver Drive between Barranca Avenue and Irvine Center Drive. As submitted, plans for the village call for a mixture of houses, condominiums and apartments; it also would have five community parks. In addition, the company’s plans set aside space for two elementary schools and two child-care centers.

Thursday’s meeting, which stretched over five hours, was scheduled to hear comments from city planners, the Irvine Co. and the public. Commissioners took no formal action on the plan.

The commissioners and a few residents expressed worries about traffic problems and argued for preserving a grove of old eucalyptus trees that could be affected by the project. The bulk of the discussion, however, revolved around noise from Marine Corps helicopters and the potential for health risks should the homes be built near electric transmission lines.

Westpark II would be under several air corridors used by helicopters flying into the nearby Tustin Marine Corps Air Station. The project plans have stirred the Marine Corps’ concern.

Col. Jack Wagner, a Marine Corps community relations officer, told commissioners that the corps believes that all of the homes in Westpark II should be built with sound-reducing material and that residents should be warned that they will be living under helicopter flight paths.

The Irvine Co. has proposed that only those homes south of Warner Avenue contain sound-reducing material. Marine Corps officials are worried that if some homes are built without noise protection, residents will become dissatisfied and demand that the helicopters be rerouted, which would affect base operations.

“Our policy is we will not compromise (flight) safety for noise-abatement measures,” Wagner said.

The high-tension power lines that would run near the development also have come under attack, and that issue was raised during Thursday’s session.

Southern California Edison owns two 220,000-volt transmission lines and one 66,000-volt line that would border the north end of Westpark II.

Although no scientific study has shown that electrical power lines cause health problems, some studies have indicated that people subjected to high amounts of electromagnetic energy have a higher risk of cancer, weakened immune systems and other problems.

Worried by those findings, Irvine planning officials have been working to establish standards for what can and cannot be built near the wires.

But Kirby Holte, an Edison consulting engineer and USC professor, said establishing such standards would be foolish. Studies of the link between electromagnetism and human health have not determined safe or unsafe levels of electromagnetism, he said.

“I don’t think this is appropriate to take this into your hands and bypass the research being done,” Holte said. Setting a no-building zone, he said, “is a naive approach.”

Planning Commission member Lowell Johnson, however, said the city should not just “stick our heads in the sand and wait for someone else to take care of this.”

If more information is not available soon on electromagnetism, Community Development Director Robert C. Johnson said, his department might propose a no-building zone of 150 feet from the wires.

That matches the distance suggested by the state in building new schools.