Anti-Airport Solidarity Fills Air in Auditorium

Nearly 1,000 South County residents packed Aliso Niguel High School’s auditorium Wednesday night to rail against plans for an international airport at El Toro.

“You look at the three supervisors supporting it. You look at their stone-hard faces. Where is the compassion for the hard-working, honest people?” asked Pastor John Steward of the Mount of Olive Lutheran Church in Mission Viejo.

“In their pocketbooks!” an audience member shouted in response.

A crowd favorite was Dave Schlenker of Laguna Woods, who sang a country song he wrote for the occasion:

“I’m in love with a beautiful place,” he sang, “but they want to take it away. . . . I’ve got the airplane blues.”

The county Board of Supervisors, which has a 3-2 pro-airport majority, spent $1.3 million earlier this month for two days of flight tests at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which the military is closing next month. The aim was to prove that the noise would not be as bad as residents had feared. But the tests mobilized people concerned about noise, pollution and safety, prompting Wednesday’s meeting.

South County resident Len Kransner, who has an anti-airport site on the World Wide Web, said he received hundreds of e-mails after the flight demonstrations June 4 and 5. He said he is angry at the pro-airport board majority “for selling out the people of south Orange County for the big campaign donors of Newport Beach.”

Anti-airport Supervisors Thomas W. Wilson and Todd Spitzer gave brief remarks at Wednesday’s session. Supervisors Charles V. Smith, Cynthia Coad and Jim Silva, who support the airport proposal, did not attend.

“We invited all of the supervisors,” said Meg Waters, spokesperson for the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, an eight-city coalition that organized the meeting. “I’d love to hear what they’re afraid of.”

The standing-room-only crowd packed the auditorium, which seats about 500 people, while dozens of anti-airport protesters carried signs and shouted slogans for the TV cameras outside.

“House for sale, four bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths. Jet every 2 1/2 minutes,” read Jeana Dagley’s poster. The Aliso Viejo resident said her family will move away if the airport is built.

“The tests were very noisy,” she said, “and it wasn’t a true test of what an international airport would be like.”

Eight commercial airliners landed and took off about four dozen times over the two days.

Many of the flights were delayed because pilots were restricted to flying only in clear weather.

County testers placed 10 noise monitors beneath El Toro’s southern approach route and the northern and eastern departure routes. Each black, tripod-mounted box held a microphone to record decibel levels.

Officials said final decibel readings will not be available until the end of the month. But observations of the county monitors, as well as hand-held noise monitors used by airport opponents, revealed noise readings between 70 and 107 decibels.

Airport opponents insist that the demonstration was rigged, sending lightly loaded planes along flight paths that federal aviation officials will not approve for routine commercial use.

Aliso Viejo resident Mike Thompson, waving a protest sign Wednesday, said of the tests: “We had all of our windows closed and all of our doors closed. That could have wakened the dead. It was horrible.”

A complaint line set up by the county to handle calls during the test further infuriated South County residents. Many callers heard a “mailbox full” message within the first hour, prompting a flurry of scathing e-mails to county officials.