Rally by 700 El Toro Airport Opponents Raises $85,000
In what organizers described as the largest such rally yet, more than 700 people showed up at the Ritz-Carlton hotel Wednesday to protest the El Toro commercial airport plan.
Charging $100 a person for wine and cheese, organizers raised more than $85,000, which will be used to support a legal challenge to an airport environmental report approved by the county.
“It was fantastic; everybody was there,” said Jim Davy, publicity chairman for Homeowners Coalition, a group of South County homeowner associations that sponsored the event. “The enthusiasm was great.
“There was an outcry and outrage against that airport plan,” Davy said. “We were all kindred spirits in our opposition.”
The plan to put an international airfield at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station after the base closes in 1999 has drawn strong protests across South County.
Throughout Wednesday’s rally, loudspeakers blared with a tape of a jet in flight, forcing several speakers to pause.
“It interrupted the speakers, but that was the point,” Davy said, “to show how annoying these jets can be.”
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