O.C. Group to Make Pitch Today to Save El Toro Base : Closure: Delegation will argue its case before U.S. commission in San Diego. Wilson and senators back effort.

Loaded down with detailed arguments and glossy photos, an Orange County delegation today officially begins its battle in San Diego to persuade a federal panel that the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station should not be closed.

Working in Orange County’s favor at the outset is the acknowledgment by members of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission during the first two days of hearings in the Bay Area that some of the Navy Department’s recommendations need more study.

Orange County also enjoys the considerable support of Gov. Pete Wilson and the state’s two U.S. senators, who are focusing on the economic devastation they say the state would suffer if the facilities are closed.

But as strong as Orange County’s case may be, the reality is that the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission has heard it all before.

For every point that opponents of the shutdown raise--the main one being that moving El Toro’s Marines to Miramar Naval Air Station would be a gigantic waste of money--similar arguments have been used by those trying to keep military installations open in Northern California and elsewhere in the nation.

There is one significant difference--a difference that does not help those who are trying to keep El Toro’s gates open.

The delegations that have pleaded their cases thus far at the hearings in Oakland were made up of congressmen, mayors and business leaders all united in the common cause to save their bases from extinction.

But in San Diego, commissioners will not see a united Orange County front.

With most of the congressional delegation either supporting the closure or staying out of the fight, the campaign to keep El Toro open will instead be led by a coalition of South County cities and the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

Also, their one-hour presentation will be interrupted by a pitch from Newport Beach to close the base, so that the facility can be converted into a regional airport.

The split in the community “makes it very hard (to argue against the closing). It makes it very difficult,” U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Monday after her testimony before the commission in Oakland.

El Toro supporters are expected to focus on the top five criteria on which the commission will make its decision--areas dealing with the base’s “military value” and whether the federal government will save money in the process.

In their eyes, the military is poised to commit “a billion-dollar blunder.”

Their arguments involve a litany of questions.

How much will it really cost to move the Marines to Miramar? They claim that the $340 million budgeted for improvements at Miramar may be only half of what will be needed. The projected budget, they say, does not cover the expense of building a new helicopter base for the Tustin Marines, who are scheduled to lose their base in 1997.

Has the Navy taken into account the cost of new base housing? El Toro has 2,700 units, compared to about 300 at Miramar.

Irvine City Councilman William A. (Art) Bloomer, a retired Marine Corps brigadier general who is a key leader of a citizens group opposed to closing El Toro, said Monday that the cost of moving the El Toro and Tustin Marine units to Miramar will be about $1.3 billion.

The amount, which Bloomer says is based on Marine Corps data, is substantially higher than the $898-million cost estimate by the Department of Defense, and appears to erase the Pentagon’s projected savings of $1.3 billion over 20 years.

Bloomer said the Defense Department’s analysis is further flawed by exclusion from the cost figures of an estimated $30 million to $40 million a year that the Marines will have to pay for housing allowances in San Diego County.

“In order to fit all the El Toro and Tustin Marines into Miramar, about $720 million to $740 million will have to be spent for military construction,” Bloomer said. “That is more than twice the original construction estimate of $340 million.”

Other questions to be raised include whether the airspace at Miramar can handle the mixed use of helicopters and fighter jets, and whether the naval base can ever be expanded given the environmental sensitivity of roughly half of Miramar’s 23,000 acres.

One of El Toro’s major flaws, according to the Navy’s report recommending closure, is that the 4,700-acre base is largely surrounded by developed or developable land, and there is no room for expansion.

One of the lesser points to be considered by the commission is the impact the closings will have on local economies. With eight of the 10 major base closings occurring in Northern California, Orange County’s loss of jobs is not as significant.

Considering even the combined closings of El Toro and Tustin, Orange County’s unemployment rate will go up from 6.5% to 8.3%, according to a state report. But in Sacramento, which is facing its third base closing since 1988, the jobless rate will jump from 8.2% to 18%.

Of almost no value, commissioners have indicated, will be the traditional support the communities have shown for bases, whether it has been in the form of yellow ribbons during the Persian Gulf War, or social service support for military personnel.

Times staff writer Dan Weikel contributed to this story.