Airport Foes Will Seek 113,000 Signatures

Foes of a planned airport at El Toro will kick off a signature-gathering drive Monday for a new initiative that would require a public vote before the county could build or expand airports, jails or hazardous-waste landfills.

Volunteers will solicit signatures from voters door to door, in front of grocery stores and at malls, volunteer organizer Jim Davy of Monarch Beach said Friday.

Though much of the activity will focus on South County, volunteers will canvass other areas such as Tustin, Cowan Heights and Seal Beach, he said.

Backers of the initiative, called the Safe and Healthy Communities Act, hope to collect 113,000 signatures, about 59% more than the 71,206 signatures needed to qualify the measure for the March, 2000, ballot. They must submit the signatures by August.

Davy said the job should be easier than in 1996 when South County airport foes qualified a measure for the ballot in an effort to overturn previous voter approval for an airport at El Toro. That measure made it to the ballot but was defeated by voters.

“We have a basic network now,” Davy said. “We’re going to grunt through this.”

Airport supporters said the measure will be tough to sell outside South County, where most of the anti-airport sentiment exists. North County voters accounted for two-thirds of those who cast ballots in the 1996 El Toro election.

“This is a no-growth, anti-El Toro initiative, and that will be our message from this day forward,” said Bruce Nestande, chairman of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, which supports construction of El Toro.

The proposed international airport would replace the 4,700-acre Marine Corps Air Station, which is scheduled to close in July. The federal government is expected to deed the property to the county next year.

The proposed measure would ban construction of new or expanded airports, large jails or hazardous-waste landfills unless county voters approve the project by a two-thirds majority.

The initiative applies to any airports or hazardous-waste landfills undertaken by county planners, though there are no such landfills planned. Jails would be subject to a public vote only if they are larger than 1,000 beds and are within a half mile of 100 or more homes.

Sheriff Mike Carona has said he opposes the initiative because it doesn’t give him enough flexibility to alleviate overcrowding in the county jail system. Carona said this week that he must build a facility with 5,100 jail beds by 2010 or face federal court sanctions.

The Board of Supervisors has approved expansion of the 1,100-bed James A. Musick Jail in Lake Forest to as many as 7,584 beds, many of them for maximum-security prisoners.