For El Toro Runways, V Marks the Spot
The El Toro airport issue has been one path occupied by two groups with totally opposite plans for reuse. Unfortunately, the path is not wide enough to accommodate both plans, so the political tug of war continues.
There is another way to look at the issue by which everyone can win. The Millennium Plan is just another “city” whose elements easily can be relocated. What cannot be so easily relocated in Orange County is an international airport. To remain competitive in the future, a balance of all key elements must be maintained. Air transportation is one of those elements.
What the county’s proposed commercial airport plan currently has against it is both feasibility and negative impacts. How communities will be affected depends on the noise contour used.
Residents of Lake Forest, Foothill Ranch, Portola Hills, a small portion of Mission Viejo, Rancho Santa Margarita, Dove Canyon and Irvine, as well as Laguna Woods and Aliso Viejo, will be adversely affected by the county’s proposed plan, which includes east/west and north/south “X-configured” runways. Who wants to live in sound-proofed houses with closed windows?
We are proposing abandoning the problems within the plan without abandoning the airport. The compromise solution is to eliminate all potential noise impacts to all existing residential communities surrounding El Toro’s flight paths, as well as design an airport that outperforms the county’s plan.
This can be accomplished only by reorienting the runways. Our proposed “V configuration” is a widely spaced, dual runway design that efficiently operates as two independent runways with new flight paths that adversely affect no one. After our lobbying effort, it is now accepted as a proposed alternative option in the county’s El Toro Airport Master Plan Draft Environmental Impact Report.
The Federal Aviation Administration will choose the plan that fits effortlessly within airspace parameters and can safely handle the proposed demands with no conflict with arriving/departing flight patterns. Negatives such as intersecting runways and taxiways, limited takeoff performance due to precipitous terrain, and spacing between runways all affect safety.
Our proposal conforms to FAA and pilots’ concerns and requirements, and works in harmony with John Wayne Airport’s air traffic. Our flight patterns for landing over Loma Ridge from the north and departing into the southwest have been proved feasible. The design proposes one new runway with departure directly over the Laguna Freeway, and to extend one existing north/south runway to enable primary landings to the south, which also serves as a secondary departure runway.
Unlike the county’s proposed four-crossed runways configuration, which operates as a single runway operation due to closely spaced intersecting parallel runways, the V configuration allows for simultaneous departures into the southwest, and can operate without curfews with no adverse effects to residents.
What currently exists is a southwest three-mile-wide swath of open land, and a vast expanse of open space to the north. We are fortunate to have all this open space in which to propose flight paths. But in doing so, we are asking the Irvine Co. to make adjustments to its development projects that have been planned but are not yet approved.
To keep all future residential villages out of unsafe noise contours, the proposed projects in the southwest near Quail Hill, Turtle Rock and Laguna Woods would need to be relocated and/or rearranged. Planned developments in the hillside north of Northwood and around Irvine Lake would require minor changes.
The existing Irvine residential villages as well as those currently under development and being sold are all more than a mile and a half away from the proposed flight paths, including the newest Oak Creek development. That means it is safe to continue touting Irvine’s villages as safe and healthy.
We realize we are asking a lot. Our entire compromise solution is riding on the wings of not what Irvine wants but what the Irvine Co. sanctions. We are aware of the prominence of the Irvine Co.’s development surrounding El Toro.
The cost for our proposal is considerably less than the county’s plan. We have a rough cost of $100 million to $120 million for runways, extensions, taxiways, grading and bridges. Our dual-runway plan costs $20 million to $29 million less than the county’s proposed plan to reconstruct the four unsafe and inefficient intersecting runways/taxiways.
Our proposal can only be an asset to the city of Irvine and the county. We are confident the county will replace its X configuration with our V configuration. Give it time.
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On the left is the current Orange County runway plan for the proposed El Toro international airport. On the right is an alternate runway proposal by the New Millennium Group, whose column appears below.
