El Toro Airport

When I visited New York City last year, our tour guide took us to the top of the Empire State Building after dark. As I looked out at the high-rise buildings and bright lights, what impressed me most was the park land preserved in the midst of a metropolis.

I realized that some individuals in 1863 looked ahead and created a place of respite called Central Park.

The people of Orange County have an opportunity to save El Toro as oasis for now and for the future.

DOROTHY CHAPMAN

San Clemente

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Now that the Board of Supervisors has certified the so-called Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative, county voters should understand one thing: The measure has precious little to do with jails and landfills.

It’s about the future of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. It is, as the Orange County League of Women Voters called it, an initiative by South County NIMBYs to give “a small minority veto power over any project favored by the majority.” To wit, the county’s plans to convert El Toro into a civil airport.

Voters should consider the Newsweek magazine report that airline traffic will double by 2010 “without any compensating increase in airline or airport capacity.” Orange County, north and south, is part of this growing national air transportation problem. The question is: Are county voters willing to be part of its solution? If the answer is yes, then they should vote “no” on the initiative next March and send it down to the defeat it so richly deserves.

NORM EWERS

Irvine