Costs and Benefits of a New Airport

* The prediction of the Orange County Business Council (Oct. 10) is that without the conversion of the El Toro airport, some 500,000 Orange county air travelers will not be served, and hence be unable to fly in the year 2020.

Assuming $2,000 per trip in current dollars, it appears that the would-be travelers will save $1 billion a year--presumably to spend it at home in Orange County.

Not being able to fly has other positive benefits: no lost luggage, no upset stomach from airline food, no leg cramps and sore back, no headaches from breathing airplane fumes.

On all counts I vote for no airport

at El Toro.

BYRON EDWARDS

Orange

* Should it surprise anyone that the Orange County Business Council declares an El Toro airport is “essential” for Orange County’s business growth?

This of course is the same group of folks that hijacked the county’s planning process via Measure A in order to disengage any alternative. The only difference is that they now use county funds to support their agenda, which is the only thing that’s essential.

“The economic benefits of an airport are clear,” UC San Diego Professor Steven P. Erie states. So why aren’t the costs and the runway alignments also clear? Why aren’t the economic benefits of the Millennium Plan also clear to everyone?

The initial estimates were “the conversion of El Toro won’t cost the taxpayers a penny” in the Measure A pamphlets. We’ve already spent well over $20 million in studies alone for a county-owned and -run airport, a tax-exempt government entity. Of that, $3.9 million in county taxpayers’ funds were wasted on plans that had to be scrapped for “environmental improvements” or runway alignment problems, depending on whom you believe.

The costs to “convert” El Toro have grown steadily since Measure A was passed to somewhere between $1.6 billion and $5 billion, depending on whom we hear it from. What this all means simply is Orange County taxpayers will pay for the business a commercial airport at El Toro “stimulates.”

The El Toro Reuse Planning Authority’s Millennium Plan developed by South County is the only real alternative to Measure A. I don’t expect it to be perfect either, just cheaper and of better overall economic benefit for county taxpayers in the short and the long run.

DEREK QUINN

Laguna Niguel

* I am an 80-year-old, three-war Marine combat pilot who served 14 of his 28 military years flying in and out of El Toro.

I’m astounded at the opposition to El Toro as the answer to the 15-year search for an airport of international status to augment John Wayne Airport. It is needed for the future dynamic economic growth of Orange County, the future Silicon Valley. To develop John Wayne to meet Orange County’s future air traffic needs would be disastrous.

Miraculously, El Toro has become the answer to the long airport search. Suddenly, some people who don’t recognize progress when they see it have mounted a barrage of false and misleading propaganda against El Toro. I pray that people will be able to recognize facts over falsity.

I have lived in north Tustin for 37 years; at no time have any El Toro cargo or passenger aircraft flown over my house after takeoff. The preliminary approach and departure path proposed by the Orange County El Toro Master Development Program shows that aircraft taking off north will fly over Irvine Lake; aircraft taking off to the east will climb out over the hills. Modern jet cargo and passenger aircraft climb out like “homesick angels.” No one in north Tustin will ever have any noise problems. Landing aircraft, descending at reduced power from the south or west, won’t present noise problems to South County residents.

The only aircraft that fly over my area are from John Wayne. If El Toro is rejected, the John Wayne air traffic will compound to infinity.

One gentleman mentioned “the terrible traffic problem the El Toro airport would cause.” Los Angeles International Airport is much greater than El Toro will ever be and has solved all its road problems in an excellent manner; as time goes on, so will the road problems of El Toro be solved.

With reduced air traffic at John Wayne, the Newport area will gratefully benefit. With El Toro, there won’t be any noise problems with the current operating plans.

And, what a benefit to all the South County people and businesses that currently must go all the way up to LAX to make flight connections.

E.H. WINCHESTER SR.

Lieutenant Colonel

U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

Tustin