No Quorum, so Panel Has No Stance on El Toro Flight Test

A citizens group advising Orange County supervisors on El Toro airport issues couldn’t make formal recommendations Thursday on a controversial flight demonstration because only five members showed up for a meeting--two shy of a quorum.

Chairman Gary Proctor, who heads the El Toro Airport Citizens Advisory Commission, downplayed the poor attendance. He said the lack of a quorum was caused by holiday vacations and recent elections, which created several vacancies on the commission’s board.

“We didn’t have a quorum, but I’m not that concerned,” Proctor said. “We have voted on the demonstration flights in the past and we’ve approved it.”

But Courtney Wiercioch, the county’s lead planner on the airport proposal, kept asking commissioners, “Well, what do I tell the board on Tuesday?”

The commission was appointed by the Board of Supervisors as its advisory body on the county’s plan to turn the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into an international commercial airport.

The commission was set up because federal law requires citizen input for such reuse decisions. Its recommendations are not binding on the board. At least seven members of the 13-member commission are needed for a quorum.

County supervisors are expected to go over a revised plan Tuesday for a two-day demonstration that would include night flights and noise measurements. The idea for the demonstration is to give South County residents an opportunity to hear commercial jets flying overhead, county officials said.

If the board approves the plan, the county will begin contract negotiations with airline companies to handle the flights during the first half of 1999.

David Markley, an airport opponent appointed to the commission by Supervisor Tom Wilson, said he is against the demonstration, partly because it will cost $2 million to $2.8 million.

Markley said he also opposes the demonstration because airplanes will take off and land on proposed flight paths already objected to by one major airline, an industry trade group and the pilots union.

“It occurs to me, before spending a whole lot of money on this, the county ought to check with the airlines and pilots first,” Markley said. “After all, what’s the point of having a party if nobody attends? We’re wasting a lot of money on this.”

The latest proposal would include at least five aircraft taking off and landing up to six times on two days. The flights’ noise levels would be measured at eight sites, three on arrival and five along the two departure corridors.

The jets used would range from 747s to 737s, the largest and smallest commercial jets now flying. The airplanes would take off to the north directly over Irvine Lake and to the east over parts of Rancho Santa Margarita. Arriving jets would land from the south directly over Leisure World in Laguna Hills.

The flights would occur on consecutive days, a Friday and Saturday or a Sunday and Monday. The majority would come during daylight hours, representing anticipated operations in 2020 when 80% of the airport noise would occur--between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Supervisor William G. Steiner, who favors an airport, pushed for the latest additions after threatening to vote against the two days of flights at a board meeting in October.

But many South County residents oppose the flight test, arguing that it represents little more than an expensive smoke screen for county officials to present a skewed picture of noise from individual jets.

“Yes, I think they’ll cheat,” said Jim Shaw, who lives in San Clemente and has relatives in Leisure World and Lake Forest. “There’s absolutely no utility in doing it unless there’s credibility, and the only way to get credibility is to have an [independent] commission run and monitor the tests.

“There are people in South County who wouldn’t trust anything unless we have an advocate right there in the cockpit,” he said.

He said many residents distrust the county’s technical reports because the documents provide a simple average of noise levels between loud jets and periods of no flights. Information on how much noise each jet is expected to generate will be available in several weeks, county officials said.

Paul Eckles, executive director of the antiairport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, said the county’s inclusion of night flights in the flight demonstration still “doesn’t justify the cost.”

“They have rearranged things a little bit, but they’re going to have such a limited number of flights that it’s not going to give anyone a credible experience,” Eckles said.

Bill Kogerman, executive director for another antiairport group, Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, said he wouldn’t approve of any demonstration no matter how many “little trinkets” the county adds to “confuse and minimize” the impact of a commercial airport.

Kogerman pointed out that county officials already have stated publicly that despite the cost of the flights and noise monitoring, the anticipated demonstration will not be considered a scientific test.

Despite criticism, Wiercioch said the demonstration has value.

“What we’ve said all along,” Wiercioch said, “is residents near El Toro have asked us, ‘What would it be like for me--in my home, in my office and at my school?’ And this is that opportunity.”