The El Toro Impasse

The elusive consensus on the future of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station never seemed farther from grasp than last week, when two developments highlighted Orange County’s great divide.

Months after announcing that they had begun crafting a third countywide ballot initiative for this year, anti-airport activists have seen their effort derailed. . A coalition of cities and others acknowledged they had run out of time and could not agree on what a ballot initiative would say. Instead, efforts are now aimed for a broad initiative for next year that would call for a two-thirds vote of the public for new or expanded airports, landfills or jails anywhere in the county.

Assuming that a third ballot initiative is inevitable, there are no doubt strategic political arguments on whether there should be a ballot initiative this year in a special election or next year in a general one. But there is really only one big question that remains for base reuse, since the “airport-versus-no-airport” argument has played out in all of its dimensions since 1993. That remaining issue is whether El Toro should be an airport or something else specific.

It would be a real disservice to the county to change the focus of the initiative away from specificity, wherein voters can come to grips with tangible scenarios. The pro-airport side has won the “airport-versus-no-airport” argument in two ballot initiatives. They won it convincingly in Measure S, designed to prohibit any airport while posing no alternative. Voters in Orange County have demonstrated that they recognize a parochial argument when they see one.

To shift the choice of the airport alternative from a specific non-aviation plan to an amorphous, Not In My Backyard grab bag would risk turning people of good will off. And there clearly are many who would like to revisit the El Toro question. Last May, a Times Orange County poll found that nearly two-thirds of residents would like another chance to cast a ballot on this question.

Until last year, it was only the airport advocates who were clear in their stated aims for base reuse. Then the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority crafted the Millennium Plan, and essentially changed the framework of the discussion.

It took five long years to get to that point. Now that they have something positive to focus on as an alternative to a commercial airport, anti-airport forces appear poised to retreat to negative generalities. They risk marginalizing their arguments, as they did in the ill-conceived Measure S initiative.

In the meantime, the premise that surrounding communities have a collective stake in base alternatives is further diluted, even beyond the damage already done by Measure S. The city of Irvine has recently authorized a $2-million effort to make its case for the Millennium Plan and against the airport on its own, with or without the participation of others. What’s happening on the initiative suggests that communities with a direct stake in base reuse are running in different directions.

Into this environment came the county supervisors’ stated intention to vote this week on a plan to allow some cargo flights at the base as soon as the Marines leave in July. Rushing this process--even as the Department of the Navy is going more deliberately--may bring the desired result for those who are itching to get a commercial airport operational. But the component of predawn and late-night flights contained in the proposal is sure to aggravate the existing split between the county and communities surrounding the base. At the very least, it signals further difficulty ahead in getting a consensus flight plan.

Speaking of flight plans, this remains an area where a rational resolution of the airport impasse is needed. There are sufficient questions about the county’s intended two-airport system and about the proposed patterns of runway use, which were designed with community politics in mind. The Federal Aviation Administration needs to get more directly involved in saying whether a plan designed around community anxieties also will fly from a safety point of view.

So where are we? When the El Toro debate first began earlier in this expiring decade, an expert on global base reuse plans told Orange County leaders that what matters is having a real community plan--one that reflects consensus. Today, sadly, Orange County still seeks that common ground for El Toro.