Anti-Airport Initiative Is Voters’ Right

The Times seems to have difficulty coming up with a good, short headline reference for the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative.

The Times’ March 11 descriptor, “supermajority,” never appears in the initiative, and that is not what it is about.

The initiative does call for a two-thirds vote of the people for approval of new or expanded large jails in residential areas, new or expanded airports, or toxic landfills. However, it also says that the people would adopt the initiative, with or without the two-thirds ratification vote, if a court ever rules against that provision.

That is why we urge everyone to read the initiative for themselves online at https://www.safe-and-healthy.org.

The Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative is a good planning measure, which holds that no Orange County neighborhood should be forced to accept these projects unless there is wide agreement that they are necessary.

The initiative sets out a planning process wherein projects are evaluated, public hearings are held, and then the people vote.

Most important, the initiative is a voters’ rights measure. The short, four-page measure speaks of the people, the public, taxpayers, residents and voters and their rights more than 20 times.

LEONARD KRANSER

Dana Point

* It would be very interesting for the citizens of Orange County to get an honest comparison of the cost to build the proposed airport at El Toro vs. the cost of upgrading John Wayne to handle international flights.

It would be a wasteful shame to unnecessarily duplicate the excellent infrastructure that already exists or is under construction at John Wayne.

As an example, what would be the cost to build runway extensions at John Wayne, cantilevered over Bristol Street and the [Corona del Mar] Freeway to the south and, if necessary, over a new San Diego Freeway underpass to the north?

Certainly, such construction would have a significant cost; but how would that compare to the cost of building an entire airport from scratch at El Toro, or anywhere else, for that matter?

I think that the Board of Supervisors, if it is really acting in the best interest of the county, owes us such an analysis. Absent that, perhaps there are other groups that could voluntarily generate a rough comparison of costs.

CHARLES YOUNG

Irvine

* The Times should get its crackerjack reporters to work on the story that is “NIMBYism” in South County--not in my backyard.

My friends and neighbors don’t want to expand the Musick Jail, preferring instead to have about 30,000 convicted criminals every year released before serving their sentences. Some “justice.”

Nor do the South County NIMBYs want El Toro Marine Corps Air Station converted to a civilian airport. Better, they say, to drive to Los Angeles or Ontario or even Riverside on congested freeways. Better to litigate for the next 50 years, according to Larry “The Lawyer” Agran.

Better to overturn the democratic results of not one but two separate elections approving El Toro international airport, first in 1994 and then in 1996.

Voter nullification, litigation, phony excuses by the hundreds, there is nothing NIMBYs won’t do because, in the words of presidential apologists, “they want to win too much.”

Irvine is too “good” to be burdened by these offensive developments. Sniff. “Environmental racism,” anyone?

JOHN JAEGER

Irvine

* Once again, airport proponents are deliberately trying to deceive the people of Orange County by perpetrating the fallacy of a “noise-free” airport at El Toro.

The Board of Supervisors finds it necessary to promote a $3-million flight demonstration even though the test data are too unreliable to be part of the airport master plan and the environmental impact report. Referring to a simulated noise study, they indicated that neither homes nor people are within the so-called noise-impacted area surrounding an El Toro airport.

The board contrasted these “favorable” findings with John Wayne Airport, where, according to the same study, 120 homes and 300 people are impacted by its noise contour.

If these findings indeed reflect reality, why does John Wayne remain such a major threat to the people in Newport Beach?

The fact is that serious noise complaints documented for the past 20 years extended far beyond the so-called acceptable noise-impacted area surrounding John Wayne. Moreover, most complaints come from areas where the noise is only half of what the county considered to be acceptable.

Is it not curious that the board withholds the most relevant and tangible information from the public? It is time to question the credibility of the county’s planning process.

Henceforth, I am challenging the Board of Supervisors to immediately disclose for public review all empirical noise data as they relate to John Wayne Airport.

PAUL WILLEMS

Laguna Niguel