High-Decibel Debate : Noisy Marine Copters Draw Opposition in San Diego; Riverside Hangs Welcome Sign

Let’s see if we can unravel the Southern California custody battle over a bunch of big, powerful, noisy Marine Corps helicopters called Super Stallion and Sea Knight.

Orange County had them but was ordered to give them up. San Diego County is getting them but isn’t sure it wants them. Riverside County would love them but can’t have them, even if their presence would also help San Bernardino County.

Two hundred of the big choppers were stationed happily at Marine air bases in El Toro and Tustin until the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union splintered and suddenly the American military was ordered to downsize.

Orange County lost a battle with the Base Closure and Realignment Commission to save the El Toro and Tustin bases. The helicopters, the commission decided, could fit nicely at San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station because the Navy is moving its Top Gun School and F-14 Tomcats to other bases.

What wasn’t reckoned on but soon became apparent was that not everyone in San Diego, despite the city’s reputation for hospitality toward the military, is overjoyed at the thought of the big green workhorses overhead.

Screaming F-14s are a fact of life in San Diego. But helos, military jargon for helicopters, are slower than the jets and will fly different routes and put their “noise footprint” on pricey neighborhoods that F-14s have never touched.

When Patricia McCormick complained about the noise at her Rancho Bernardo house after the Marine Corps put on a flyover demonstration, she was offered a remedy: Close your windows.

McCormick, whose husband is a retired Marine, did not like that advice even a little bit. “I did not move to America’s Finest City to close my windows,” she protested to the City Council.

Debbie Michaelson, who lives in Rancho Penasquitos, said: “Two years ago we bought a home in a quiet neighborhood with fine schools. Now they’re trying to take that away from us by bringing in helicopters.”

The Super Stallion, the newer, bigger and noisier of the helicopters, is 99 feet long and 28 feet high, and has a 79-foot rotor blade and three turboshaft engines, each capable of 4,380 horsepower to haul a load of up to 33 tons. That means noise.

A Super Stallion at 3,000 feet, as measured from the ground, will give off 82 to 85 decibels, which is louder than a man shouting but not as loud as a food blender. At 1,250 feet, the decibels reach the low 90s, akin to a power lawn mower, coupled with enough vibrations to rattle windows.

Politicians in Riverside, seeing the opposition by homeowners in San Diego, have suggested that the copters be sent instead to the Riverside area’s March Air Force Base, which the realignment commission converted to a reserve base.

A state senator who represents portions of San Diego and Riverside counties is pushing a pro-March resolution through the Legislature, in hopes of pressuring the Defense Department. Three Riverside County congressmen are doing their best to persuade Secretary of Defense William J. Perry to ditch Miramar for March.

To calm homeowner nerves in San Diego, the Marine Corps has held community meetings, sent spokesmen to take flak on radio talk shows and made changes in proposed routes so the helicopters will fly higher and over fewer homes than initially planned.

The latest effort to win hearts and minds came last week when Maj. Gen. Paul A. Fratarangelo, Brig. Gen. Charles Bolden and assorted lesser brass met with community leaders at Miramar for 90 minutes of spirited give-and-take.

“The key for us is to cohabit compatibly without noise complaints every day,” said Fratarangelo, commander of Marine air bases in the Western area of the continental United States. Miramar will become a Marine base Oct. 1, 1997.

Fratarangelo said he has ordered that helicopters flying off the coast stay at least a mile offshore, not half a mile as originally suggested.

Further, he wants the helicopters to fly at higher altitudes when using the “Seawolf” route over Del Mar and La Jolla to the ocean, the Interstate 15 route to Camp Pendleton or Twentynine Palms and the Interstate 8 route to Yuma.

Fratarangelo hopes helicopters will stay at the 3,000- to 4,000-foot level when flying over I-15 and adjacent homes and 2,000 feet when using “Seawolf.” “Helicopters at 2,000 feet will not shake your house, your windows or anything else,” he said.

Changes are also being made, he said, in the routes for the Marines’ FA-18 jets that will be coming into Miramar. The FA-18s are louder than the Navy’s less powerful F-14s.

But there are limits, the general warned.

Clouds might force the helicopters to fly lower. Federal Aviation Administration controllers, who have responsibility for juggling civilian and military aircraft sharing the same sky, might order the helicopters lower. And occasionally the military needs to mobilize quickly even if it means using new routes.

“It’s a bad news-good news thing,” said Greg Jones, representing the Scripps Ranch Planning Group. “The bad news is that the helicopters are coming. The good news is that the Marine Corps is going to work with us to minimize the noise.”

If Perry gives his OK in June, as expected, the first of eight squadrons--the eight have a total of 64 Super Stallions and 48 Sea Knights--will begin arriving in 1998 and the rest in 1999. Four other Sea Knight squadrons are being transferred from Tustin to Camp Pendleton.

Some homeowners are gathering names on protest petitions to be presented to President Clinton. They plan to fly to Washington and knock on the White House door.

Meanwhile, state Sen. David Kelley (R-Palm Desert) submitted a resolution asking defense officials to reconsider sending the helicopters to Miramar and give Riverside another chance at making a case for March.

His resolution has its roots in the decision by the realignment commission to include March (along with Miramar and Camp Pendleton) as spots where helicopters could be sent. The decision was left to the military.

The Kelley resolution unanimously passed the state Senate and is set to go soon to the Assembly. The San Diego City Council, in a sign of the ambivalence felt in the community toward the helicopters, declined to take a position. Homeowners wanted the council to support the resolution; Councilman Harry Mathis, a retired Navy captain, wanted the council to oppose it.

Riverside County Supervisor Tom Mullen said he is convinced that an outside analysis would show it saves money to send the helicopters to March rather than to Miramar, where $376 million in construction is needed. Besides, he said, there is not the air congestion or the homeowner opposition in Riverside.

“The lights are still on at March, and the facilities are excellent,” said Mullen. “We’ve got air space--vertical and horizontal--that Miramar doesn’t have.”

Some of the same arguments have been made by Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside), George Brown (D-Colton) and Sonny Bono (R-La Quinta).

“Frankly, we fear that an innovative and problem-solving proposal is suffering because it is slightly unconventional [and] requires jointness,” the three wrote Deputy Defense Secretary John White in late March. “Jointness” is military-ese for cooperation between branches of the armed services.

The Inland Empire was particularly hard hit by the military downsizing: George Air Force Base in Victorville and Norton Air Force Base near San Bernardino were closed, and March was demoted to reserve status. Bringing March back to active status would help the entire region economically, Mullen said.

During this era of base-closing, San Diego has fared well, gaining more than it has lost despite the closure of the Naval Training Center and the conversion of Miramar to a Marine base. San Diego’s good fortune has not escaped notice.

“San Diego has done well,” Mullen said. “It seems to me there could be some sharing going on with the rest of us.”