Irvine Plans Homes, and Airport Tension Builds

Re “Irvine Planning Homes for a No-Fly Zone,” June 17:

There seems to be no end to the perfidy of the city of Irvine in pursuing its jihad against the airport at El Toro.

First we heard that the city refuses to allow low-income Orange County citizens to rent homes in the veritable town of vacant dwellings left behind when the Marines vacated, as this occupancy might in some way intrude upon their “Great Park.”

Now the latest outrage: They are deliberately planning to build 2,500 homes in the extensive buffer zone that surrounds the El Toro airfield, simply stating that as no airport will ever be built, it makes no difference.

What it will provide, very obviously, is 7,500 or so pitiful old folks, innocent children, endangered golfers, etc., to be added to the number who are already storming and carrying petitions against the badly needed El Toro airport.

If they don’t watch out, they will have people living as close to El Toro as the people of Newport Beach are to John Wayne.

Keats Hayden

Newport Beach

Irvine has to be the most selfish, insensitive, vicious municipality in California.

Betting on the outcome (no El Toro airport), it plans to build more than 2,500 homes near a potential flight path and thus continue its approval of masses of new apartments, homes and development of industrial sites.

Over the past approximately five years, Irvine has paid no attention to proliferation of traffic congestion nor to energy demands associated with expanding a suburban community.

Neighboring Lake Forest notes the idea is not wise and so, I guess, we must continue to hope that Irvine’s El Toro panic and its drive for the tax dollar will eventually drift off into the night in the form of a different City Council.

Zane W. de Arakal

Irvine

Instead of publishing individual letters on the El Toro airport, The Times should simply list the names and locations of the letter writers to spare space for other subjects.

Most of us do not need the psychic hot-line to predict what a writer’s opinion would be by simply noting his place of residence.

Since we are all NIMBYs at heart, whether the El Toro airport be built or not should be based solely on our future transportation needs instead of the voters’ sentiment at the moment.

Meanwhile, our county government should do all it can to halt Irvine’s preemptive strike in sabotaging the El Toro option until this important issue is firmly settled.

Nonetheless, Irvine’s action may be acceptable if all the residents of Irvine and South County voluntarily relinquish their right to fly in and out of all neighboring airports as part of the deal.

No one argues that we need to expand our transportation network. The only issue is in whose backyard.

John T. Chiu

Newport Beach

I believe that the Camp Pendleton Marines can live with an international airport provided it is carefully located on a causeway extending out into the shallow offshore waters.

If so, then this answers the question: What are we going to do when El Toro is replaced by a Central Park?

Orange County doesn’t need or want an El Toro international airport. What it does need is a regional transportation system to increase direct-rail and freeway access to LAX and Ontario airports and commuter friendly access to jobs inside Orange County.

Morning airport-bound traffic would be on the opposite side of the freeway from incoming work-related traffic. Similarly, outbound airport express trains would become commuter friendly locals on the return trip into Orange County.

However, Orange County must plan now for the time when LAX and Ontario reach their operational limits. A jointly sponsored Orange-San Diego Pendleton International Airport will fulfill both counties’ future needs. Although the Pendleton location is remote from both urban areas, it is easily accessible by existing rail and freeway.

David L. Hammond

Foothill Ranch

The June 3 letter quoting the Southern California Assn. of Governments as being a reliable source in predicted air travel demand is quite laughable.

In 1982, SCAG predicted that by 1995 flight demand in the region’s six airports would reach 109.6 million air passengers. SCAG was a whopping 36 million passengers too high in its estimate. Even today, the actual demand is still 21 million passengers fewer than what it predicted for 1995.

SCAG expected the idle Palmdale airport to be crowded with passengers by now. Had SCAG’s 1982 predictions been followed, we would have built one more Southern California airport than we actually needed.

Now SCAG’s crystal ball gazers want us to believe that air travel demand will nearly double to 167 million annual passengers by 2020.

With such grandiose forecasts, one would expect Southern California’s passenger demand to keep increasing at a rapid pace. SCAG’s forecasted 3.2% annual growth so far this year is not even close. Air traffic has declined at the region’s six airports compared to the same period last year. John Wayne passengers are down by 4.6%

SCAG is just a political body with an agenda. And it is this sort of reckless political forecasting that fuels the drive for an unneeded airport at El Toro.

Nicolas G. Dzepina

Mission Viejo