FAA Builds a Stone Wall Around El Toro
It came as no surprise that the Federal Aviation Administration refused to answer key questions about the recent test flights at El Toro. Local FAA officials, in alliance with county employees, continually withhold information from the public about the flight paths and environmental impacts of their airport proposals.
Since 1998, I have submitted 11 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the FAA on behalf of Orange County residents. Bureaucrats have stonewalled, and documents that could shed light on the plans for El Toro and John Wayne are systematically withheld.
The Freedom of Information Act is intended to give citizens access to federal documents. Federal agencies are required to disclose records, except for exempt trade secrets, personal privacy and sensitive law enforcement and national security matters. Even exempt documents can be disclosed “when that would not cause any foreseeable harm.” The FAA makes a joke of the FOIA law. It hides El Toro documents or claims that their exposure would “harm” the free exchange of ideas between federal employees.
For example, one recent request for three months’ worth of El Toro-related documents, e-mails and meeting notes brought this belated response: “A records search was conducted . . . [and] did not find any documents on file pertaining to your specific request, and we are unaware of any other offices likely to possess additional responsive records.”
Do you believe that the FAA is planning the future of El Toro and John Wayne without keeping any written records?
Nevertheless, I keep submitting requests, because they can produce rare glimpses inside the FAA bureaucracy. One FOIA request unearthed this key e-mail between managers in the Air Traffic Division: “Especially after our experience with the [June 1999] flight demonstration, I am concerned that the Airports Division is not going to let us comment on anything to do with El Toro. Thus we may eventually be stuck with an airport layout that, while it looks great by itself on paper, is virtually unusable from an integrated ATC [Air Traffic Control] standpoint. . . . I do not look forward to the years of safety problems and litigation we might undergo as we work to fix a bad initial plan.”
Disclosure of this e-mail and its publication on the El Toro Airport Web site and in the newspapers provoked a flurry of internal FAA correspondence. We know this from my next FOIA request. After waiting almost six months, I received a long list of documents being withheld from the public. It included eight pages of internal messages regarding the apparently accidental release of the Air Traffic Division e-mail quoted above. Since then, the FAA has been careful to hide its internal dissent.
The FAA cover letter also said the agency “is withholding records related to the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) that the FAA is preparing, the EIS that the Navy is preparing and the FAA review of airspace and flight safety aspects of Orange County’s operational plan for the proposed El Toro airport.” In other words, there’s a plan but citizens can’t see its environmental and safety impacts.
Last July after waiting seven months, I received a response to a 1999 FOIA request. The regional administrator sent me only two pages from the public Federal Register. He withheld “35 pages of [unidentified] documents.” After four more months and nine phone calls, I obtained the list of withheld documents. Most were from Orange County’s El Toro staff, which also hides information from the public.
Recently, Supervisor Tom Wilson asked for the FAA’s study of the crowded airspace over Orange County. Herman Bliss, head of the FAA’s regional airports division, refused to release the report. A sympathetic insider subsequently “leaked” it. The MITRE report is now on the El Toro airport Web site at https://www.eltoroairport.org. It reveals serious airspace conflicts between planes from El Toro, LAX and John Wayne.
John Wayne Airport may be closed. The county’s official Community Reuse Plan, submitted to the federal government, states that “all commercial aviation operations at John Wayne Airport would be moved to the MCAS El Toro site.” The FAA is keeping mum on this. However, the air traffic controllers union, the Air Line Pilots Assn. and aviation industry leaders have said that economics and safety make the two airports incompatible.
Experience shows that Bliss and William Withycombe, the FAA western regional administrator, are allies of El Toro airport supporters in the county. They repeatedly refuse public access to vital data on the safety, efficiency and environmental impacts of their plans for the two airports. The information that has gotten out has served to turn majority opinion in Orange County against the El Toro project.
The public is being stonewalled while millions of dollars continue to be wasted on a new airport that is unsafe, unneeded and unwanted by the residents of this county.
