El Toro and Rohrabacher’s Commentary

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher has displayed a true politician’s knack for half-truths and twisted facts in his attack on proponents of a Great Park at El Toro (Commentary, June 4). First, he derides critics of the airport’s safety as “environmental extremists,” but it takes a very odd point of view for anyone to consider the airline pilots’ association and the FAA as either “environmentalists” or “extremists.” All of those organizations have expressed doubts about the safety of the county’s plan.

He states that military jets have used El Toro for 40 years, so it must be safe for commercial aircraft. The congressman, who fancies himself an aerospace expert, does not appear to comprehend the difference in performance capabilities between military and commercial aircraft. After all, military jets have also taken off from aircraft carriers for 40 years, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe for a 737.

The congressman pooh-poohs El Toro’s worst aviation disaster to date as merely pilot error. What he fails to understand is that pilots are human, and humans make mistakes all the time. That’s why takeoff and landing paths are designed to provide the greatest margin of safety allowable. El Toro’s takeoffs (uphill, with tail winds, into rising terrain) don’t have the appropriate margins.

To design an airport that allows no margin of error for a pilot to recover from a mistake is negligent and criminal. Does Rohrabacher believe that no pilot will ever make a mistake in the future?

The congressman grows even more ludicrous when he touts the benefits of an airport. He claims it will provide lots of jobs, although most of those jobs will be low-wage positions that would not pay enough for workers to afford to live in Orange County. As the piece de resistance, he states that the airport will also have (ta-da) a shopping mall! Is there any sane person who believes that the one thing Orange County is lacking is another shopping mall?

Arnold Burke

Lake Forest

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Rohrabacher’s diatribe on El Toro once again epitomizes the depths to which the pro-airport faction will stoop.

He acknowledges the tragic crash of the Marine Corps transport in the early ‘60s, killing all aboard, but writes off the safety issue as having a no-housing buffer zone. Well that may be all well and good for those on the ground, but what about the passengers in the airliner? I guess Rohrabacher considers them expendable. Well, the pilots don’t, and they are the ones he chastises for raising these significant safety concerns. And by the way, President Nixon departed to the south, away from the mountains, right over Leisure World, one of the largest concentrations of senior citizens in the country. But not to worry, Rohrabacher would have you believe that there is no issue with noise, that it is exaggerated. Even pro-airport Supervisor Chuck Smith admitted during the flight demonstrations while visiting Aliso Viejo that this was a very serious problem.

Gary Thompson

Council member

Rancho Santa Margarita

Board member, ETRPA

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There is little that can be added to Rohrabacher’s article about NIMBYs, except to say that the same kind of people who oppose the project are also in favor of the proposed El Toro international airport. What else is new? The pro-airport coalition has Democrats, Republicans, NIMBYs and environmentalists, business interests, working people, retired citizens, new citizens, and yes, even home-building citizens, all uniformly opposed to crime in the parks and environmental racism as implicitly promoted by the anti-airport extremists.

The population of North County, where the victims of John Wayne Airport live, is more diverse than South County. The same can be said for LAX and Ontario, other airports Irvine promotes. One environmentalist I know, who is worried about continued damage to Newport Bay by the airplanes, also carefully points out, they don’t have a bay over at El Toro.

As the arguments for the El Toro airport are made, we must pray that our leaders soon will open the airport, which may be unpopular with some, but which will be best for the country and the nation’s air system in the long run.

Donald Nyre

Newport Beach

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As a Leisure World resident of nearly 20 years, I can testify that a U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 jet that did not land or take off between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. is not the same as a 747 taking off and landing over us 24 hours a day. Leisure World residents fought to keep the Marines at El Toro, knowing that powerful political forces were pulling strings behind the scenes to remove the Marines in order to close John Wayne and move it to El Toro. Rohrabacher should obtain a copy of the Airport Site Consensus Team’s 315-page “Final Report” of March 12, 1990, that was presented to the Board of Supervisors on April 3, 1990, and rejected the Marine Corps Air Station at El Toro as a site for a commercial airport. This FAA-financed, $700,000, 20-month, in-depth search for a commercial airport site in Orange County was conducted by more than 300 community leaders from all areas of the county from May 1988 through December 1989.

The study group achieved a consensus on 21 site selection criteria, examined 31 variations at 24 locations and narrowed the list down to four candidate sites including March Inland Port and South Camp Pendleton. El Toro was dropped from consideration in July 1989. As a commercial, long-haul airport, MCAS-ET ranked 14 among 17 sites; as a medium-haul airport, 15 out of 17.

Dave Blodgett

Laguna Woods

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Having recently read the opinion of Rohrabacher about the El Toro airport plan, I must say that he does know how to strike fear into the hearts of the citizenry with bogus facts and logic. But, for me, he strikes fear not in the way he intended. I am now frightened by the fact that this man, with the wild fear tactics he used in his written newspaper opinion, is offering opinions to the Congress and helping make decisions that affect the United States of America. A troubling concept to ponder, indeed.

Dick Campbell

Laguna Niguel

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So Rohrabacher considers the alliance between Republicans and the anti-El Toro airport groups to be “unholy.” This comes as no surprise coming from an ultraconservative who represents unbridled growth in Orange County. God forbid that Republicans, Democrats and Independents can find common ground on this issue. Maybe common sense--reasoning among well-intentioned people--can transcend partisan politics. Rohrabacher’s contention that an airport, with all the negatives it would bring, actually would increase property values amply illustrates the false logic being voiced by the large developers who stand to profit from population growth and the infrastructure which such growth brings. Who else in the county feels that rampant growth in both population and construction projects benefits anyone but the few who stand to realize financial gain? Talk about unholy! Look in the mirror, Mr. Rohrabacher.

Jerry Waller

Mission Viejo

*

Right on, Rohrabacher, on the El Toro Airport vs. the NIMBYs!

If we convert this perfectly good airport to any other use, 50 years from now our grandchildren, while slogging their way through traffic to LAX, will be wondering how we could have been so insane.

D.T. Parker

Cypress

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There he goes again, to paraphrase his hero Ronald Reagan. Rohrabacher, who never puts the welfare of the average citizen over that of his giants of industry and business sponsors, has written an attack on the idea of a Great Park in the center of Orange County from his lair in Jurassic Park. His simplistic list of “can’t do’s, won’t work,” sounds like child’s play compared to the monumental folly of an airport at El Toro. The good citizens of Orange County are too wise and too knowledgeable about his associations to fall for his transparent charges. It must wound his sense of adoration of the robber barons of a previous century to find that the average citizen can believe in a vision that will improve the quality of life for us all.

Leonard Doerfler

Huntington Beach

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I think we all owe Rohrabacher a debt of gratitude for once again clarifying the important issues of our times. Imagine my surprise at finding out that a park at the closed El Toro military base would cause not only the virtual financial destruction of Orange County, but would also become a haven for “prostitutes, drug addicts and other criminals.” Here in southern Orange County, no less!

Imagine the chagrin of having spent half my life studying criminology and never having known that parks are the major cause of crime. “Build it and they will come,” Rohrabacher so knowledgeably informs us. I hope he will join me in following through on his remarkable insight to propose the immediate elimination of all Orange County parks and grassy crime breeding grounds--Mile Square Park, Fairview Park, Crystal Cove and the like--before it’s too late.

Steven A. Bloch

Laguna Niguel

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After reading Rohrabacher’s gut-busting, hilarious diatribe, I am reminded why I love living in Orange County. While the rest of the species has evolved into relatively intelligent homo sapiens, we here in progressive O.C. can still observe firsthand the guttural rantings of Pithecanthropus, as exemplified by our illustrious government representative. As for all those hookers and pickpockets who will infest the park, we can hire them as truck drivers to haul all that old runway concrete to LAX, where they want to expand the airport to the moon. Thanks, Dana. You just added 50,000 more signatures to support the Great Park. We’ll add a wave pool just for you.

Mikel Harley

Laguna Niguel