Airport’s Biggest Ally Says It Has to Shrink

The chief booster for a new airport at the mothballed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station says Orange County’s Board of Supervisors must immediately cut the project in half to have any chance of ever getting the long-planned project off the ground.

Businessman George Argyros, who has pushed the hardest, spent the most and dug the deepest for the new airfield, said the capacity of the airport currently conceived by the county is so large it wouldn’t be exhausted for another 100 years.

The airport plan is vehemently opposed by neighboring cities and residents. Public support has eroded, Argyros said, because residents aren’t convinced such an airport is really needed.

“People don’t want people to take an unnecessary burden,” said Argyros, who has invested about $3.5 million out of his own pocket promoting the airport, but has spoken little publicly about the county’s handling of it.

So far, a majority of the board has stuck to the plan to build a commercial airport at the 4,700-acre base that would handle 28.8 million passengers a year by 2020. A year ago, Supervisor Cynthia P. Coad--at Argyros’ urging--proposed to cap the airport’s size at 18.8 million passengers a year. That idea was rejected by then-County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier.

South County airport opponents, meanwhile, accused Argyros of using bait-and-switch tactics--pushing for a smaller airport that would start growing as soon as the first planes touched down. Many El Toro foes have homed in on Argyros as their lone target in the airport fight because he nearly single-handedly funded the campaigns of three pro-airport ballot measures, dating to 1994.

Board Chairman Chuck Smith insisted last week that changing the county’s plan now would jeopardize an ongoing review by the Federal Aviation Administration and could stop the Navy’s process of handing the property over to the county. Smith said he told Argyros as much in a recent meeting.

“The FAA already has told us that if we start messing with the numbers now, they’ll trash what they’ve done,” Smith said. “I’m not about to stall the process for a couple of years.”

That said, Smith acknowledged that there is no support among his two pro-airport colleagues on the five-member board to build an airport that handles nearly 29 million passengers a year.

Once the base is under control of the county, Smith said, he likely will recommend board approval to build only the first phase of the new airport--to serve 8.8 million passengers a year, roughly the size of John Wayne Airport.

“From that standpoint, I agree with George that it should be downsized,” Smith said. “I think that’s automatic. Then it’ll be up to the board 15 years from now to deal with the airport to meet whatever demand is there.”

Supervisor Jim Silva said he also would support reducing the airport’s capacity to between 10 million and 14 million passengers, with John Wayne Airport staying about the same size. John Wayne serves about 7.5 million passengers a year.

Argyros’ prodding comes as the county awaits a decision by a Los Angeles County judge on the fate of Measure F, passed by local voters in March, which would require a future vote on the airport, with two-thirds approval needed.

An survey released last month by Cal State Fullerton showed continued strong opposition to a new airport, with only about a third of county voters supporting it. For the first time, a majority of North County voters were opposed to the county plan, the poll found.

That the airport will be headed back to the ballot appears certain. It would be automatic if the judge upholds Measure F, and highly likely even if he doesn’t because of South County’s determined opposition. In either case, a smaller version would be a far easier sell, Argyros said.

“If you have a sensible plan for the airport that’s sized realistically, I think the general public in Orange County would vote for it,” he said.

That strategy is transparent, said Len Kranser, who operates an anti-airport Web site and message board. “It’s a big push for the ‘Let the camel get its nose into the tent and the rest will follow,’ ” he said.

Airport adversaries claim the county’s intentions are even more nefarious, noting that the only environmental review yet approved by supervisors calls for the airport to handle 38 million passengers a year, with John Wayne Airport closed to commercial aircraft. That plan, though, is being downsized for supervisors’ final vote next year.

Argyros conceded that the anti-airport temperament in South County won’t change no matter how much the airport plan shrinks. But the rest of Orange County has been “hoodwinked,” he said, by a multimillion-dollar campaign of misinformation that has ignored the county’s airport needs and the ability of John Wayne Airport’s single runway on 500 acres to fill them.

“I don’t think the county--and I hope that changes--has the ability to properly articulate . . . the need for an airport and to position it properly with the public,” he said. “We’ve got to have our elected officials have the courage to do the right thing and get on with it.”

Part of the county’s quandary, Smith said, is that it has been required by state and federal environmental laws to study the maximum impacts of a new airport at El Toro--such as pollution, traffic and noise--and whether they could be mitigated. The county’s first pass at an El Toro airport suggested the maximum capacity would be 38 million passengers a year, so that’s what was studied, he said.

Since then, the proposed capacity has been reduced once--in December 1996--and probably will drop again, he said.

Moreover, in March, the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which oversees regional transportation issues, will release new airport-demand estimates for Southern California over the next 20 years, numbers that should be analyzed before any final decision on the size of the airport, Smith said.

“We’ll construct an airport to meet the demand,” he said. “Certainly, it’ll be more palatable if it’s downsized, and it will be downsized. But we don’t have enough data to make that decision yet.”

But studying a huge airport when there was little support for one that big was a bad idea promulgated by airport attorneys, Argyros said. It created false fear among South County residents about the level of flights, noise, traffic and pollution that they’d be subjected to, he said.

“They’ve let their legal counsel run that planning instead of common sense and really putting the case forward for the public to understand,” he said.

“It’s a political issue that needs to be solved and the public needs to be educated. This is an opportunity we’ll never have again.”