Navy Studying Ways to Prevent Closure of Bases : Military: A departmental memo instructs commanders on how to justify reconsideration. El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, scheduled to be shut down by 1999, could be affected.

The Navy is studying the possibility that some naval and Marine Corps bases scheduled to be closed could be kept open by showing Congress that the military installations are vital to national defense or that closing them would be too expensive.

In a June 1 Navy memo, base commanders were told that they are welcome to “propose changes to the previously approved . . . base recommendations of the . . . (congressionally appointed) commissions.”

The El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Orange County is among the bases scheduled to be closed by 1999. The Marines are part of the Navy.

The Base Closure and Realignment commissions have made recommendations to Congress in 1988, 1991 and 1993 on which military bases are the least vital to national defense and could be closed to reduce defense spending.

Congress will appoint a new commission in 1995 to recommend more military base closings. The Navy memo raises the possibility that some Navy bases scheduled for closure could eventually be put on a list of bases to be reconsidered by the new commission.

The Navy memo, which was obtained by The Times, instructs officials at bases scheduled for closure or realignment to give compelling reasons for saving the installations.

The memo also states that a reconsideration request should address a base’s clear military value and the significant savings that can be realized by keeping the installation open. Any request for reconsideration should “be submitted with full objective justification,” the memo said.

A Navy official familiar with the memo said it has opened “a Pandora’s box” in the case of the El Toro base. Maj. Gen. P. Drax Williams, commander of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, and other supporters of the base have previously argued that closing the base and moving the Marines to Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego is not cost-effective.

In the past, Williams has expressed concern about housing thousands of Marines in San Diego, where a military housing shortage exists. The Marine Corps would have to subsidize the housing of Marine families forced to rent homes.

According to Marine figures, closing El Toro and the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station, which is scheduled to be shut down by 1997, will cost about $1.6 billion. Lt. Brad Bartelt, a Marine spokesman at El Toro, said it costs about $46 million annually to run the El Toro base.

Bartelt said the Marines have not seen the Navy memo, and declined to comment.

Navy officials in Washington ignored requests for comment.

Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said that “anything is possible if it gets into the 1995 commission’s hands.” But he said that Navy and Marine officials would have a “tough selling job ahead.”

Even if Navy and Marine officials wish to put El Toro on a reconsideration list in 1995, they still have to convince the secretary of defense that the Marine base should be saved. If the defense secretary agrees that El Toro should remain open, then he will ask the yet-to-be-impaneled 1995 commission to consider reopening El Toro.

“There is still a tough selling job that has to be done as far as (the Pentagon) is concerned,” Flood said.