Support for Airport Plan Takes Dive

Public support for Orange County’s proposed new airport at the former El Toro Marine base appears to have taken a major nose dive after years of relative stalemate on the issue, according to a UC Irvine opinion survey released Wednesday.

“These are pretty dramatic findings,” said Cheryl Katz of Baldassare Associates, co-director of the survey. “There’s been a big shift in opinions, and the gulf is pretty wide. I’d say that the idea of an airport appears to be fading.”

Of the 1,000 randomly selected residents polled from May 3-14, 54% said they opposed the airport, compared to 46% last year.

In addition, 49% of county residents interviewed said they believed it was “somewhat” or “very” unlikely that the airport would ever be built.

In North County, 45% of those surveyed opposed the proposed airport--the biggest swell of criticism in that region since UCI began conducting opinion polls on El Toro in 1997.

“The opposition appears to have spread,” Katz said. “People no longer see the airport as a reality.”

In large part, the trends in the UCI survey mirror findings in a Times poll conducted earlier this year.

Katz attributed the shift, in part, to the successful campaign for Measure F, which county voters approved overwhelmingly in March. The initiative requires two-thirds voter approval for the construction of new airports, large jails and landfills.

“There have been a considerable number of recent negative messages put out about the airport, and they seem to have hit home,” Katz said. “A lot of the mailings and fliers seem to have resonated: Orange County residents have lost confidence in the airport and the airport planning process.”

That observation was borne out by the survey, in which 49% of the respondents said that they disapproved of the way county government is handling the El Toro airport issue, compared to 42% in 1999.

As in previous surveys, about half the respondents said they would prefer continued reliance on the county’s existing airport, John Wayne.

The most dramatic shift, Katz said, appears to have taken place among non-Latino whites, women and upper-income groups.