Of Airports, Needs and Future

* Re “Board Abruptly Cuts El Toro Airport Plan,” Sept. 29:

Once again the pro-El Toro airport camp has shown themselves to be too clever by half. Supervisor Cynthia Coad tried to portray airport opponents as unreasonable by making what appeared to be a big concession: offering to cap El Toro at 18.8 million passengers per year.

If she had stopped there, she might have made her point, but instead she continued on to say that future county boards would still be free to expand the airport to whatever size the market would allow.

Chairman Chuck Smith dug the hole a little deeper by chiming in that the county had planned all along to build the airport in phases. In other words, what appeared to be a compromise would still lead to the same final result: a 28-million-passenger airport.

Even if Coad hadn’t slipped up, the fallacy of an 18.8-million-passenger cap had already been exposed. In April 1998, the board was presented with four options for El Toro. Former Supervisor Bill Steiner said he was leaning toward Plan A, which called for a 19-million-passenger cap. Three days later, he shifted his vote to the (now discredited) Plan C (24 million passengers and a “people mover” between John Wayne and El Toro). His reason for changing was that county planners had assured him that Plan A was not viable, and that an airport with a 19-million-passenger cap would be too small to support itself. This suggests that Coad’s proposed “compromise” was less than sincere.

Now that the wheels are coming off the county’s plans, airport boosters appear to be willing to make any kind of outrageous offer just so they can get their foot in the door. After all, it’s much easier to expand an existing airport than to build one from scratch.

ARNOLD BURKE

Lake Forest

* The Southern California Assn. of Governments forecast of air passenger travel (“New Study Has Bad News for Airport Foes,” Sept. 24) fails to consider one very important option, the possibility of closing John Wayne Airport. Where would John Wayne’s 7 million passengers go if it were no longer around? Where would El Toro’s 22 million forecast go if they could not go to John Wayne?

Let’s be realistic about the future. We need both El Toro and John Wayne. The sooner we get flights at El Toro the sooner we will have equity.

DON NYRE

Newport Beach

* Several letter writers have suggested that a two-thirds, rather than a simple majority should be required to pass the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative.

If that’s fair, then so too is rescinding Measure A, which predetermined an airport for El Toro with no regard for the impacted South County cities, and starting over on the reuse planning, this time incorporating the full input of South County, as mandated by the Department of Defense’s Community Guide to Base Reuse.

F. CHEN

Irvine

* I believe it is the intent of those in South County to subject residents already affected by John Wayne Airport to endure two or three times more air traffic over their homes and schools than they now have.

That is so South County people can live in their prestigious, quiet neighborhoods free of all airplane problems.

Are they forgetting they bought their homes fully aware of the much louder military jets over their heads every day? Now that the military has left, how can they be so hypocritical as to expect other communities to endure three times as much so that they have none?

I say it is only fair to share the responsibility, and therefore El Toro Airport must be built.

C. FLYNT

Newport Beach