Discord Over El Toro

I am a citizen of Newport Beach desiring to stand up and be counted as one who feels an airport is the best and wisest use of the current El Toro land.

We live in a fabulous corner of the world. People want to work, play and live here. Businesses, tourists and prospective residents continue to come.

It’s a given that we need more airport facilities. I have lived in this area for 30 years with airplanes flying over my home several times a day. Let’s share the pain that comes with living in this beautiful community. Use common sense and common dollars to utilize what we have in place for what the majority has already voted!

BARBARA CARR

Newport Beach

* The handsome but often misleading full-color brochure received in the mail by residents of South Orange County this month titled “Orange County Report” appears as an officially sanctioned governmental Orange County news document. Actually it has been published by a pro-airport organization with taxpayer dollars and only reflects the views of pro-airport supporters.

This type of publication should be an outrage to those citizens of Orange County who have opposing views and opinions and had no voice in the preparation of this mailer.

HERBERT FRANKLIN

Laguna Niguel

* Re “Supervisors Agree to Explore Cargo Flights at El Toro,” Dec. 17:

Supervisor Tom Wilson says he wants to put the brakes on air cargo flights out of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station before they “get a foot in the door.” But the point isn’t to stop something that works. The whole purpose of the reuse debate over El Toro is to create the best and highest use for this property.

When it comes to best and highest use, air cargo operations can start immediately. They require no modifications to the base. They interfere with no current military operations. They create no expenses for taxpayers.

The Marines want them. Federal Express is willing to come in. There’s even a healthy bottom line--as much as $4.9 billion in revenue to this county.

Talk about highest and best reuse--who would oppose something so good?

ALICE B. JEMPSA

City Council member

Los Alamitos

* As a 19-year homeowner in Huntington Beach, I was disturbed upon receipt of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s January newsletter, “Washington Update,” which was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayers’ expense.

The front page of this four-page, multicolored mailer was devoted to Rohrabacher’s ongoing fight to ensure that El Toro Marine Corps Air Station will become an international airport.

The statement that the construction of an international airport will “ensure prosperity for our county and a decent life for its citizens in the 21st century” indicates Rohrabacher has spent too much time in Washington and not enough time in Orange County.

Like all other public officials in favor of the international airport, he conveniently fails to address the real issue, which is: How is a homeowner to have a quality or decent life living under the flight path of commercial and cargo jets every day?

The congressman further shows his inability to grasp the point when he states, “The taxpayers paid billions of dollars [for] aviation assets at El Toro. For these taxpayers now to be denied any use of these assets is a travesty.”

An international airport will take thousands of acres of land off the tax rolls and cause the Orange County taxpayers to pay billions of dollars more to develop the airport.

If Rohrabacher and Supervisor Jim Silva lived under an international airport flight pattern, they would realize their damaging position on this issue is the real travesty.

BONNIE CAYER

Huntington Beach

* Re “Airport Backers Launch Public Relations Drive,” Jan. 16:

Developer George Argyros’ pro-airport newsletter quotes Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) as saying that anyone opposed to an airport at El Toro doesn’t care about the economic future of the children of Orange County.

While the pro-airport crowd’s concern for children is touching, it seems to come a bit late. Since they equate local airport capacity with our children’s future, how do they explain the fact that the most ardent supporters of an El Toro airport are the same people who have been trying to limit or close John Wayne airport for the last 25 years?

Despite the claims of Argyros and the city of Newport Beach, the fight to install an airport at El Toro has nothing to do with future airport capacity.

Los Angeles International Airport is planning an 80% increase in capacity; Ontario has recently expanded; March, George and Norton Air Force bases are being converted to either commercial or joint-use facilities; Long Beach and John Wayne are vastly underutilized.

There is no shortage of capacity, and there won’t be for a very long time. The sincerest hope of the pro-airport forces is that a new airport will drive John Wayne out of business. The real agenda is to move an annoyance from Newport’s backyard and install an even bigger annoyance in Irvine’s, Lake Forest’s, and Laguna Hills’.

ARNOLD BURKE

Lake Forest

* The Times’ Jan. 16 article tells us that the Citizens for Jobs and the Economy group headed by George Argyros is unveiling its $100,000 public relations campaign to promote the use of El Toro as an airport.

The millions he and his fellow developers have already invested in this campaign paid for misinformation to fool the public into voting for an airport. Now that that misinformation has been disproved, we are going to be deluged with another attack.

A Jan. 15 article quotes one of the pro-airport supervisors: “The voters have voted twice and they have said that they want the airport. We live in a democracy.”

We in Orange County live in a democracy all right--the best little democracy that developer money can buy.

BARNEY DEASY

Laguna Hills

* The Times continues to print letters from South County residents who find every reason possible to criticize the process and plans for an El Toro airport.

What I find so incredible about many of them is not their fierce determination to fight the airport but their lack of compassion for Newport Beach residents affected by John Wayne Airport.

The El Toro site at 4,700 acres is 10 times larger than John Wayne’s 470. Yet many El Toro opponents’ solution to our county’s expanding air traffic needs is to eliminate plans for developing an El Toro airport and double flights out of the small John Wayne Airport.

They choose to overlook the fact that John Wayne Airport has no buffer zone and therefore homes begin within blocks of the runway, while El Toro’s base and surrounding no-home buffer zone provide neighbors with 18,450 acres of protection.

How can reasonable people suggest it is better to expand John Wayne further into the community that so closely crowds its borders instead of allowing the appreciatively larger El Toro to relieve some of the burden? Where is the compassion, where is the common sense?

ANGIE GALLAGHER

Costa Mesa