Air Battle : Some Residents Angered by Proposed Commercial Use of Naval Base

Back in 1974, Bill Torrence decided that he had lived long enough in the urban environment of the San Fernando Valley.

A successful cement manufacturer, Torrence and his wife, Dorothy, moved from their comfortable Northridge home to Camarillo--then a rural, thinly populated community.

“We left because it was getting to be too much,” Torrence said. “We didn’t feel safe there and, in general, we weren’t happy there any more.”

Safely settled in their custom-made, double-wide mobile home at Camarillo Springs, the couple flourished in their new town--Dorothy golfing regularly and Bill tending his beloved garden.

But earlier this year, the Torrences were shocked to learn that Los Angeles-style urbanization might be creeping over the Conejo Grade.

A proposal in March by the U. S. Navy to share its 11,000-foot-long runway at the Point Mugu Naval Air Station with commercial passenger and cargo carriers sent shivers up Bill Torrence’s spine.

“When I first heard about the proposal, I said, ‘Here goes LAX again,’ ” said Torrence, president of the 250-member Ventura County League of Homeowners. “I’ve seen a lot of change come to the county, but I honestly feel this would be a disaster.”

Navy officials made the offer because a steady decline in military flights left the airfield with a lot of available flight time. Military flights fell from more than 70,000 annually in 1989 and 1990 to fewer than 59,000 in 1992, after the departure of a handful of tenant squadrons and an overall reduction in missile testing.

Selling flight time would help the Navy defray the costs of running the base, but opponents fear that it could lead to development of a full-scale regional airport.

Because Camarillo lies under the base’s primary flight paths, Torrence and a majority of City Council members believe that they will suffer increased noise and air pollution and incur higher safety risks.

“Basically, Camarillo has the least to gain and the most to lose if this goes through,” said Charlotte Craven, a member of the City Council who serves on the countywide committee now investigating the Navy proposal.

“Those cities and those people who are pushing this obviously don’t live in Camarillo,” she said. “They don’t have the concerns we do because the planes don’t fly over their cities. It’s easy to support something when you stand to gain all the benefits but none of the negatives.”

Camarillo Mayor Ken Gose and Councilmen Stan Daily, David Smith and Michael Morgan said they share Craven’s concerns.

“I wouldn’t care to see us become another heavily populated area,” Gose said. “The more facilities such as this that we have, the more people will want to move here. The bottom line is that I don’t want to see us reduce the quality of life that we have here. I fear that an airport such as this would do exactly that.”

The impact on the city from the development of a regional airport is one of the subjects of a $150,000 Federal Aviation Administration-funded study being conducted by the Southern California Assn. of Governments. The study, which is expected to consider the proposal’s commercial viability, financing opportunities, compatibility with the base’s military mission, and noise and pollution impacts, is due to be released in March, according to Tim Merwin, SCAG program manager.

“If this proposal doesn’t make it through this first study, then it’s dead,” Merwin said. “We’re really not pushing anything here. If it doesn’t pencil, then it doesn’t pencil.”

But Richard Fausset, a Ventura real estate developer and a director of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., has a distinctly more optimistic view of the proposed Point Mugu project. He says opponents in Camarillo are short-sighted.

“I recognize that they have some legitimate concerns,” he said. “But there may come a time when we are mandated to provide for our own county’s transportation needs. We may not always be able to depend upon Burbank, LAX or Santa Barbara.”

Fausset said the commercial flights would probably not exceed the peak numbers of military flights of a few years ago. And unlike LAX, where expansion led to the destruction of whole neighborhoods, the development of a regional airport at Point Mugu would not ruin the areas surrounding the base--currently farmland and open space.

“Regional airports haven’t ruined Santa Barbara or Monterey,” Fausset said. “The LAX example really doesn’t hold up when you think about it because we have the chance to master-plan this thing from the start--the ground floor.”

Fausset is part of a 70-member Navy-civilian committee formed last year to explore the possibilities of developing the Point Mugu facility for combined military and commercial use. Like Torrence and Fausset, members of the committee are eagerly awaiting the SCAG report to determine the proposal’s feasibility.

Also supporting the proposal is Marshall MacKinen, who recently resigned as county airports administrator.

“The people who speak against this are not fully aware of what the real impacts will be,” he said. “We are not going to crowd the skies. Navy takeoffs and landings are down 20(%) or 30%--it would be more a matter of filling that void.”

As demand for passenger service out of the county rises and cargo shipments increase at the Port of Hueneme, a regional airport will become a necessity soon, MacKinen said.

“Ideally, I see it as an intermodal facility--a place where sea, air, land and rail cargo could be processed,” he said. “I’ve even talked to some farmers who said they would change the kind of crops they grow if they had a chance to move their produce quickly out of the county.”

A recent estimate by SCAG said Los Angeles-area airports are near capacity with 60 million passengers annually. That number was projected to increase to as many as 93 million passengers a year by the turn of the century.

In 1991, another study found that 1.6 million passengers from Ventura County used Burbank, LAX or Santa Barbara airports.

Still, major airline operators have shown little interest in bringing jetliners to Ventura County. Many representatives pointed to the sagging economy and the airfield’s physical proximity to the Los Angeles area as reasons for their lack of interest in the Point Mugu proposal.

Navy officials have stayed out of the verbal sparring. Navy spokesman Alan Alpers said base officials stand willing to help civilian officials work out the details.

“Our position is that we would like to see this happen,” Alpers said. “But we realize there are a lot of details to be worked out. We don’t want to get involved in the name-calling. If we have a statement, it would be that everyone should try to stay calm and wait for the (SCAG) report to come back so we all can see what we’re facing with this thing.”

Torrence said he and the homeowner organization’s board of directors are prepared to do battle to stop the Point Mugu proposal, preserving, they say, the reason they moved to Camarillo in the first place.

“If these people think it’s a done deal, they’re wrong,” Torrence said. “I’ve never seen a politician yet who won’t listen to a group that can deliver votes. We’re ready to take this thing on.”

NEXT STEP

A report is due in March on whether the proposal to add civilian flights at the Navy’s Point Mugu airfield is economically feasible. If that study finds merit in the proposal, a second study by the Southern California Assn. of Governments will examine impacts on the county’s economy, tourism and land planning. It would be completed by the end of the year.