Commentary

Stephen Burgard, editor of the editorial pages since 1990, has consistently voiced the newspaper’s opposition to ballot-box planning for El Toro airbase’s future.

AWARD

Orange County Press Club

1st Place: Editorial Writing

*

Put El Toro Proposals in a Holding Pattern

Dec. 8, 1996

Orange County supervisors have a big decision coming up this week on the reuse of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. The correct stand for them to take is that there should not be an international airport at the site.

We hasten to say that the site may be appropriate for some kind of commercial air facility of a far more modest scale--not as a replacement for John Wayne Airport, which should remain the county’s main air facility, but in addition to it, and which could be complemented by other uses of the 4,700 acres.

Accordingly, the supervisors should back off the fast track being laid for them by the well-heeled and relentless agitators for the international airport proposal. They must insist on taking more time to get the environmental impact report right. They should move toward a posture that would allow for more serious consideration of other options.

One of the ironies of Southern California land-use history is that for all the celebrated planning that has gone on in the environs of the base, few could have imagined even as recently as 1990 that the community would be discussing what would become of the base itself. All that changed in 1993, when federal officials decided to close the facility at the end of the century. Since that announcement was made, the future of this vast tract has been contested fiercely.

Orange County has had two ballot measures on the question of whether there should be an airport at the site, and proponents have won both of them. One, Measure A, passed, and zoned the site generically for an airport. The other, Measure S, failed, and virtually would have prohibited one.