Marines May Seek Delay on El Toro

Just days before the Navy is expected to announce its decision on how it will dispose of the El Toro Marine base, Commandant Gen. James Jones said he may ask for a delay to allow study of a proposal to move the Marines’ West Coast boot camp from San Diego to the closed base.

Jones said Friday that he plans to meet with civic leaders in San Diego and Orange County before deciding what he will recommend to Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England. The Navy is set to announce Tuesday what it plans for the former base.

“There might be good reasons to take a deeper look” at moving the recruit depot, Jones said, speaking in San Diego.

Jones said a study could be completed in 90 to 120 days. He said England has not made a decision about El Toro: “He’s exactly where I am on it--not leaning too far one way or another.”

Conceding that “it’s a very emotional issue,” he said he would want the move to be satisfactory to both San Diego and Orange counties, and beneficial to the Marine Corps.

“If San Diego is radically opposed and sees no value in expanding the airport [Lindbergh Field, which is next to the recruit depot], then I’m not particularly anxious to stir that up,” he said.

Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham (R-Escondido) caused a political stir in both counties recently when he revealed that Jones had spoken to him about shifting the recruit depot, which has been in San Diego for 79 years, to El Toro.

Noise from Lindbergh Field often causes problems at the depot, which trains 20,000 recruits a year.

Also, the depot has no live-fire ranges and no space for a crucial piece of training known as the Crucible, where recruits spend several days in the hills to determine their fitness to be Marines.

For weapons training and the Crucible, recruits are sent to Camp Pendleton, 40 miles north. What makes El Toro attractive, Jones said, is the possibility of having firing ranges and Crucible terrain.

Another factor favoring El Toro, he said, is that it has several thousand housing units. San Diego is so short of affordable housing that the City Council is on the verge of declaring a “housing emergency.”

At 388 acres, the San Diego recruit depot has long been deemed too small. The El Toro base is about 4,700 acres.

Still, Jones conceded that there are “legislative problems” that would have to be overcome if the Marine Corps wanted to move its San Diego training base, which handles all recruits west of the Mississippi. Another problem is the cost, estimated at $500 million.

He said the shift would have to be a “zero sum”--that is, that the money would have to come from the sale of the San Diego property and possibly a portion of the El Toro property.

Orange County supervisors voted unanimously to welcome the Marines back, with three of the board members overwhelmingly supporting such a move. But San Diego officials seem split: the City Council has taken no position, and the congressional delegation is split.