Airport Opinions Fly Fast, Furious

* The El Toro airport controversy has been running for years and the gulf between the two sides gets deeper and irreconcilable.

Unfortunately, there seem to be no new ideas or suggestions. The two parties just repeat their position in louder and more shrill voices.

Here is an idea to breach the gulf. It is based on the following premises, all expounded by the opposing parties: Newport Harbor wants relief from the air traffic noise of John Wayne airport. They feel others in the county should share the pain.

* All current proposals involve retaining John Wayne as an airport.

* South County adamantly opposes an airport at El Toro.

* Aircraft noise on takeoffs is much greater than on landings.

* County plans for El Toro involve downwind, uphill takeoffs.

By putting these elements together we can come up with a proposal to eliminate the need for an El Toro airport and at the same time significantly reduce noise and annoyance to Newport Beach. This can be done by making all takeoffs from John Wayne directed inland. If it’s good enough for El Toro, it should be good enough for John Wayne.

JOHN A. BING

Laguna Beach

* As a resident of Leisure World, I find no sincerity in the testaments of county airport planners when they say noise from an airport at El Toro will not affect us.

They evidently believe that noise stops at their predetermined noise “contour” lines. If they are so confident in their ability to mitigate noise from an airport, I encourage them to move the county Hall of Administration within their contour lines as an example.

We’ll see if they are sincere or not.

IDA M. WOOD

Laguna Hills

* Seems like the Christmas truce has been ended by Angie Gallagher of Costa Mesa (Letter, Dec. 30). So, Happy New Year and let the El Toro rhetoric begin!

Gallagher should attend some county meetings where she can get numbers she can sink her teeth into. Those supposed experts who have “studied both plans” were paid by pro-airport lobbyists. I was at most of those meetings; they were paid to deflate anything they could about the Millennium Plan.

Gallagher was quite correct in saying that “there is a financial reason most business leaders” support El Toro. That financial reason will only benefit the big developers and the “good old boys” of Orange County, mainly Newport Coast.

After they are through reaping everything they can from this new land source, they will throw a few minimum wage jobs to unskilled labor. But, while they are at it, they will even deprive the homeless of the shelters they had promised in the original environmental impact report.

The wisest thing anyone ever said was “follow the money.” The only people in South County who stand to gain from an airport are the developers who threw fund-raisers for Supervisor Jim Silva. The rest of us are out here trying to expose the deception.

GAIL REAVIS

Mission Viejo

* It should not be too difficult for the average taxpayer to see through the “No El Toro in my backyard” smoke screen to see that a certain circle of developers stand to gain a stratospheric amount of money from their Millennium Plan.

The icing on the cake: Joe Taxpayer pays for the excavation costs at El Toro before the developers’ bulldozers move in. Somehow this does not sound like a proposition I care to invest in, thank you.

The clincher: In addition to paying for El Toro’s excavation costs, friendly Joe Taxpayer also pays the bill to further expand John Wayne Airport into a semi-international airport. Another stratospheric tab, likely to bankrupt the county and kill the Millennium engine.

Utilize El Toro for Orange County’s sole commercial airport site with a scaled-down version of the Millennium Plan alongside.

John Wayne is redeveloped into a rapid-transit “web” center hub with the remainder of the Millennium Plan occupying the space of the runways.

RUSSELL NIEWIAROWSKI

Santa Ana Heights