Southland’s Airports

* I am delighted with the advice that Mike Gordon, the mayor of El Segundo, has given in “Put Airports Where They’re Most Needed” (Commentary, May 17). He has blithely invited South Orange County to suffer the fate of his own city, complete with a 24-hour international airport, decayed neighborhoods, congestion and pollution. Following his logic of spreading the misery around, I am astounded he has not also proposed the conversion of Newport Harbor to a container shipping facility so as to expand the port capacity of Southern California.

Heavy industry such as an international airport belongs in industrial areas, which are planned and built as such. To inflict them on established residential neighborhoods represents the worst of civic irresponsibility. South Orange County residents have long known that the haphazard airport planning touted by Orange County bureaucrats would destroy our communities. It may be too late for El Segundo: LAX has already done its damage. The low growth Gordon anticipates around LAX may reflect the fact that no one wishes to live, work or go to school near an international airport or its flight paths. Neither do we.

CINDY GREENGOLD

Mayor, Laguna Hills

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I live in the Antelope Valley, and LAX has owned property in this area for over 20 years. The reason expansion of LAX has not occurred is because of the military in this area. This is the home of the SR-71, B-1, T-38, F-5 and most recently the B-2. However, this aspect of the aerospace industry has been dying a slow death and now with the B-2 program nearly complete, it will soon be dead. With the exception of the Space Shuttle, this industry is finished in the Antelope Valley.

We need and want the expansion of LAX in this area. The 14 Freeway is expanding to include carpool lanes, which should be complete in the next few years. The Antelope Valley is a bedroom community that requires industry so the economy will flourish in the area, as the aerospace industry once did.

As I sit in my backyard and watch the B-2 fly over, in the new millennium it should be 737s, 747s and L-1011s.

E.M. SCHILLER

Palmdale