Think Through El Toro

The struggle over a commercial airport for the closed Marine air base at El Toro has had ripple effects far beyond Orange County. Regional planners have earmarked this site for a major new airport, and opponents of LAX expansion have hoped fervently for it. The nation’s airline pilots, meanwhile, have expressed serious concerns about the safety of the flight plan.

Now, despite the postponement this past week of an FAA briefing on airspace analysis that could shed some light, a thin majority of Orange County supervisors appears determined to sign off on the airport Monday. The nation is trying to regroup from a major disruption of aviation and some important information is missing about El Toro. You have to ask: What’s the rush?

This is an airport plan that is in serious political trouble locally, and about which there are a host of questions. Three supervisors want to ram it through and complete the rubber-stamping process that they began in 1996. It’s very possible that this airport will be killed outright as soon as opponents are successful in getting an initiative, offering a large park as an alternative, on the ballot.

There is an argument to be made for a smaller, better-designed airport at El Toro, but it likely would take a completely new planning authority--not the current supervisors--to make a credible case for it.

The recent terrorism does underscore that a part of Southern California where almost 3 million people live could be left in a national emergency with just the one major runway at John Wayne Airport, now that El Toro’s air base has closed and its future uncertain.

Unfortunately, planners have clung stubbornly to a runway configuration for El Toro that defies common sense, and most important, to a size--now at 28.8 million annual passengers--that is larger than Boston’s Logan International Airport. This in the middle of a mature suburban area bordered by mountainous terrain.

The alternative to a better airport plan will be more expansion at John Wayne, which has a short runway, is hemmed in by housing and businesses and has a complicated takeoff procedure. These factors mean that, while it has room to grow, it is not really a good candidate for extensive expansion.

Orange County has a regional responsibility to do something to add passenger capacity. The supervisors should scrap the big airport plan.

From there, it’s either a fresh start for a smaller El Toro, which at this date would be a very tough sell, or for inevitable expansion at John Wayne. Either would put Orange County on track to supplement new or expanded facilities elsewhere in the region.

Finally, the question of airport versus park at El Toro is an entirely separate matter from how good any particular airport plan might be. Orange County needs to start by fixing the flawed and unpopular airport plan, and then have a full debate when final proposals for the future of the base go before the voters.