Get a Plan Before Voting

County supervisors are being encouraged to put an airport plan before voters as soon as possible. It’s a bad idea for several reasons.

First, the current big international airport plan at the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station has been discredited.

Second, an alternative plan for an airport of more modest scale--one that might stand any chance of community acceptance--has yet to be developed for voter review.

Finally, residents know so much about this issue already that any, “Should we have an El Toro airport?” question would be meaningless.

Exactly what would residents be voting on, anyway? What’s most needed now is a way for county residents to choose between detailed and credible aviation and nonaviation plans.

After all the distractions of ballot initiatives, environmental impact reports and false starts, the county is not yet far enough along in planning realistically for El Toro base reuse that it could present a meaningful choice to voters. It seems incredible after seven years of community turmoil, but it’s true.

The recent special meeting on El Toro was heavy on details and light on a big-picture reassessment. Where should the base reuse process go next?

Supervisor Jim Silva, a crucial vote on the pro-airport majority of three, has led the push for a vote sooner rather than later, perhaps as early as November. If there weren’t all this history, that might make sense in the aftermath of the overwhelming passage of Measure F, the initiative requiring a two-thirds approval by voters for an airport. An advisory vote would be fine if the county were starting out, but that is not where we are. It is clear that the county already is at a very advanced state of public opinion on the airport question. Survey after survey has revealed very little movement on the issue over time. There is a huge block of opposition in surrounding communities.

The framing of the question put before voters would be all-important. Unless the county puts the current environmental impact report on the ballot, with all its dubious takeoff and landing patterns, questions about flight paths, wind direction, noise and so forth, there would be little to learn.

Various pilots groups and airport experts have raised doubts about whether the current proposal is safe. Running through the entire debate has been a sense that it is only a matter of time before the county would have to say, “Sorry, we wanted to operate the airport as described, but the Federal Aviation Administration just won’t let us do it.”

Residents are too sophisticated now for that sort of shuffle. And merely asking, “Would you like an airport?” (with the county to fill in the details) is no longer an option because of the low credibility of the planning process.

An airport proposal that might stand a chance of acceptance probably would have to be much smaller, operating as a kind of reliever airport for John Wayne Airport. Recently, the county got confirmation from controllers that John Wayne Airport has the second highest number of near-collisions nationally involving aircraft on its runways, largely because of the number of small planes it handles. Donald R. Segner, a former FAA official, earlier had described that problem in an Orange County Voices article, and at the same time made a convincing argument that El Toro was on track to be unsafe for several reasons.

The county is going to have to go back to the drawing boards and rethink how it could meet its own and the region’s future aviation needs through a two-airport system--and indeed, whether it is preferable to have such a system at all. The El Toro Reuse Planning Authority is raising credible questions about future regional airport demand.

A plan that deals with safety issues at both El Toro and John Wayne Airport is a long way from being ready. The supervisors and their subordinates in the county planning apparatus have wasted a lot of time.

For all the conversation pro and con airport, the county now needs an entirely different discussion about how to address the regional aviation component. This includes how runways would work, what kinds of aircraft would be at each facility, how surrounding communities would be affected and so forth.

In short, before the county votes again on any airport plan, it needs a more credible plan, one that serves the localities and the region, which avoids double-talk about operations, and addresses obvious flaws. Moreover, it is time for a serious consideration of the nonaviation alternative. After three airport-related votes since 1993, let voters have a say on that idea as well.