Noise Remains at Center of El Toro Fight : Land use: Proponents say many residents have lived under JWA flights for years. Foes argue that’s no reason to make others suffer effects of a new airport.

Columbus Tustin Middle School in Tustin sits 5.4 miles from John Wayne Airport, about half a mile from the flight path and clearly within earshot of planes on their final approach.

“Noise has never been an issue,” Tustin Unified School District spokesman Mark Elliott said. “I guess it’s something you get accustomed to, like living near a freeway or a busy street.”

But not in south Orange County.

Oak Grove Elementary School in Aliso Viejo is 5.5 miles from the approach runway at the former El Toro Marine air base, and noise has been a major issue there and in South County’s fight to block the conversion of the base into a commercial airport.

The difference in noise levels?

Hardly any, according to a study by the Airport Working Group, a Newport Beach organization that supports the conversion of the El Toro base. The group has been annoyed at all the hoopla about noise levels generated by commercial flight tests at El Toro in June.

If anything, jet noise is slightly louder at Columbus Tustin than at Oak Grove, according to the study of sound levels monitored at both airports June 4 and 5 during the El Toro flight demonstration.

“We wanted to demonstrate the levels that John Wayne experiences day in and day out,” Airport Working Group President Tom Naughton, a retired aerospace manager, told an El Toro citizens advisory group last week.

David Markley, an El Toro opponent who sits on the airport advisory panel, said the county’s noise data from the test flights at El Toro are “extremely suspect.” For example, the county’s highest noise level in Laguna Woods was significantly lower than that recorded by equipment owned by Leisure World.

“The point is, noise sucks around an airport,” said Meg Waters, spokeswoman for the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a coalition of eight South County cities opposed to El Toro.

Even assuming the noise around the two airports is the same, she said, it’s still too loud. “We’re arguing the same thing,” she said. “We need to figure out a way to handle our air-travel demand without ruining neighborhoods.”

As opposition heightens to the county’s plans to build an airport at El Toro, concern has spread throughout neighborhoods near John Wayne Airport that, without El Toro, pressure will build for the county’s only commercial airport to expand. Limits on the size of John Wayne Airport expire in 2005.

The warnings come as a coterie of South County airport foes tries to persuade residents around John Wayne Airport to support an anti-airport initiative headed for the March ballot. The initiative would require approval by two-thirds of county voters to build or expand any airport.

Naughton said promises that the initiative would stop an expansion of John Wayne Airport are a “pacifier.” If El Toro isn’t built, demand for air travel options would overwhelm opposition by those living around John Wayne Airport, he said.

About 300 residents packed a recent meeting at the Newport Beach library to hear a host of doomsday scenarios for what might happen to John Wayne Airport if El Toro isn’t built. Among them: the demolition of Santa Ana Heights, the neighborhood nearest the airport where the closest home is 1,500 feet from the end of the runway.

Santa Ana Heights is in a high-noise zone where uses are restricted under state and federal law. Most houses that remain have been soundproofed at government expense. County officials have said that, under current flight patterns, there will be no homes or schools within the high-noise around El Toro.

There are other differences between the two airfields: John Wayne Airport has one short runway on 500 acres; the airport at El Toro would be built on 2,000 acres, with two long runways capable of handling jumbo jets. There is a nighttime curfew at John Wayne, which has limits on the number of passengers and flights through 2005. Flights at El Toro are planned around the clock, with the bulk occurring during the day and evening.

Pro-airport forces want to see a nighttime curfew imposed on El Toro and extended at John Wayne Airport, Naughton said. He said he also supports a passenger cap at El Toro to limit its future size.

“What’s fair for the people around John Wayne should be fair for the people around El Toro,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to have to deal with aircraft at 2 or 3 in the morning.”

South County residents aren’t soothed by such talk, Waters said.

“If Newport Beach was truly concerned about keeping caps at John Wayne Airport, South County would embrace them,” she said. “But their real agenda is closing John Wayne.”

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Airport Noise Wars

A group supporting the proposed airport at the former El Toro Marine base say that jet noise at John Wayne Airport is as loud or louder than levels registered in an El Toro flight demonstration in June. Here are comparison figures for flights on June 4 at both airports:

Source: Comparison by Airport Working Group from Orange County noise monitors.