Helo . . . Goodbye? : Homeowners Complain About Noise if Helicopters Transfer to Miramar

Homeowners opposed to moving super-loud Marine Corps helicopters to a base here surrounded by homes sensed victory in June when President Clinton ordered the Pentagon not to make the move until it studied alternative sites.

They were convinced that, given a nudge from the White House, the Department of Defense would conclude that it makes more strategic, fiscal and community relations sense to send the Sea Knights and Super Stallions to March Air Force Base in Riverside rather than Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego.

But it hasn’t worked out that way, and the homeowners are stepping up their battle.

Jerry Hargarten, leader of a San Diego group called MARCH (Move Against Relocating Choppers Here), said he knew things were not going to be easy when he met last month with Deputy Secretary of Defense John White.

Hargarten and others went to Washington to try to persuade White that the helicopters are too noisy and dangerous to be allowed over densely populated residential areas and that Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Charles Krulak is dead wrong to favor Miramar.

“The first thing the deputy secretary of defense said was: ‘I’m an ex-Marine,’ ” Hargarten said. “That set the tone for the meeting.”

Later that day, the Department of Defense announced that after additional study, it still concurred with the Navy’s plan to transfer helicopter squadrons to Miramar from Marine Corps bases in Tustin and El Toro, which are being closed.

San Diegans from upscale neighborhoods around Miramar are now complaining that the study was flawed and biased. They want a study done by an independent party.

The group is threatening a lawsuit once Defense Secretary William Perry signs the final order authorizing the transfer of 64 Super Stallions and 48 Sea Knights, starting in 1998. That signing could come as early as next month.

To fight the military, the homeowners have cobbled together an unlikely coalition: a liberal congressman and a conservative congressman who usually disagree on everything, retired military officers who say the Defense Department did a botched job, and local leaders who have long been proponents of keeping the military in San Diego.

Hargarten and others want their congressional allies to meet with Clinton in an effort to make the helicopter conundrum into an issue in the presidential campaign.

At a news conference last week, retired Air Force Col. Paul Gill, formerly a wing commander at March, said the Defense Department had denigrated March by ignoring the construction and improvements that were done when it was thought that planes and personnel from Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino County would be coming to March.

(Instead of moving Norton assets to March, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission decided to downgrade March to a reserve base with a yet-to-be-defined mission.)

“What we have is an absolutely fabulous facility, much of which is brand new,” said Gill, who lives in Riverside. “There would be no problem accommodating helicopters being sent to Miramar. We believe March is operationally superior.”

Pardee Construction Co., one of San Diego’s top home builders, has hired a public relations firm to assist the homeowners group and has predicted that home values will plunge if helicopters begin hovering overhead on a daily basis.

San Diego Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat, and Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham, a Republican, have also weighed in on behalf of the group’s campaign to redirect the helicopters to Riverside, where the area’s politicians and community leaders would welcome them.

It would be difficult to find two politicians more different in their backgrounds, political views and temperaments than Filner, the civil rights protester turned history professor, and Cunningham, the swimming coach and decorated Navy fighter pilot during the Vietnam War.

The two do not like each other much. They nearly came to blows when Filner tried to crash a San Diego appearance by House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Hargarten said the fact that Filner and Cunningham agree on the helicopter issue “is a measure of the depth of feeling” in San Diego against the big choppers. It was Filner who prevailed on Clinton to order the additional study, which Filner announced June 10 at a MARCH rally.

But the opposition does not mean that there are no voices in San Diego in favor of sending the helicopters to Miramar to take the place of the Navy jets that have been transferred to other bases. The Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce and the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial page remain steadfast in favor of the helicopter switch.

Stephen Cushman, chairman of the chamber board, warned that if the military is blocked from sending the helicopters to Miramar, it would probably also scrap plans to send Marine jets and other fixed-wing aircraft there. The result, Cushman said, is that Miramar could be closed altogether, with the loss to San Diego of $500 million a year in payroll.

And if that’s not spooky enough, Cushman, a car dealer, predicts that if Miramar is no longer a military base, there would be nothing to prevent it from becoming a commercial airport, as some civic activists have wanted for years.

“If you’re worried about helicopter noise, you’ll love 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, fully loaded, 747 jet noise,” Cushman said. “I guarantee you it will be far worse than military aircraft noise.”