Airport Backers Launch Public Relations Drive

Supporters of a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, long frustrated with the county’s efforts to promote the controversial project, Thursday unveiled their own $100,000 public relations campaign.

Since last month, Citizens for Jobs and the Economy has been putting together a publicity drive to increase public support for plans to build an airport at the surplus 4,700-acre base.

The group, whose chairman is George Argyros, one of the county’s most influential business leaders, has been successful before. It spent $3 million to help pass Measure A, the 1994 ballot initiative calling for an airport, and then to defeat Measure S, which would have reversed Measure A.

Within the next few days, the group plans to mail 500,000 glossy brochures to voters throughout Orange County, hoping to counter what they say has been a campaign of misinformation from airport foes.

“People who oppose the airport are deciding to write off the future of young people in Orange County,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), a member of the group. “Unfortunately, their opposition is not based on rational judgments, it is based on hysteria and fear.”

Airport backers maintain that those who oppose the plan exaggerate the number of flights that will be coming in and out of the airport as well as the environmental, safety and traffic problems that an airport could bring.

Proponents tout the benefits an airport will bring.

Although 38 million tourists visit the county every year, contributing $5.1 billion annually to the local economy, there has not been an increase in tourism over the last five years, said Charles Ehlers, president of the Anaheim/Orange County Visitors Convention Bureau and a member of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy.

Ehlers said having an international airport at El Toro could help the county get over the hump. “It’s very important to tourism to have a local airport.”

The pro-airport group is also trying to ease fears that Orange County’s airport will become like Los Angeles International Airport.

“El Toro airport opponents are attempting to scare people with horror stories of an LAX-style international airport,” the brochure reads. “That is nonsense. This is Orange County, not Los Angeles, and we plan things better here.”

Over the next 18 months--until the Marines leave the base in July 1999--the group plans to organize forums to discuss the economic benefit of the airport as well as the aviation needs of the county.

Members of the Orange County Business Council and of the Citizens Advisory Commission, organizations that support the airport plan, have criticized the county’s efforts to generate public support for the El Toro project.

Members of both organizations, mainly business people and elected officials who support an airport, are also a part of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy.

Without criticizing the county, Bruce Nestande, president of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, said Thursday that it is important for the county to focus on providing substantial and accurate data on the airport project, while the role of the citizens group will be to educate the public.

But airport opponents say their fears come from information they have gathered from county documents, such as the project’s environmental impact report that was found inadequate in several key areas by a Superior Court judge.

“The EIR says there will be 447,000 flight operations a year,” said Len Kranser, publisher of the anti-airport El Toro Web site. “From there, we just did the math and it is about one plane flying every three minutes. We didn’t invent the number.”

To paint concerns as being irrational or hysterical is wrong, said Paul Eckles, chairman of the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, the agency charged with creating a non-aviation plan for the base.

“I think there are a whole lot of very rational people who have serious questions about this airport, and to write them off is very insulting,” he said.

The brochure, which has different information targeting North County and South County residents, also includes quotes from David Hinson, former Federal Aviation Administration chairman. Hinson, who retired in 1996, states that the runways at El Toro are safe to operate and that the FAA backs El Toro.

Two of the nation’s pilot unions have stated their concerns with Runway 7--which is the east-west runway that county officials have designated for 70% of takeoffs--since planes would have to take off with a tail wind, on a short runway going toward the mountains.

A 1988 FAA report on joint military/civilian use of the airport stated that use of the runway would have to be restricted because of the “tail wind conditions, runway gradient and payload limitations.”

The FAA has yet to come out with a public statement on the safety of Runway 7 or comment on the county’s plans.

Still, members of Citizen for Jobs and the Economy maintain that passing up an opportunity to build an airport at El Toro would be disastrous for Orange County.

“Orange County has always had a tradition of self-reliance,” said Tom Daly, mayor of Anaheim and a member of the citizens group. “It is completely out of character for Orange County to limit its economic future.”