Panel Needs a Reality Check

The airport at El Toro is dead. Uncle Sam knows it. So do Orange County voters who on March 5 voted to rezone the 4,700-acre former Marine air base for a large public park and other non-aviation uses. Not to mention neighboring cities and the growing cadre of developers drooling at the prospect of building on 14,000 acres of prime real estate surrounding the former El Toro Marine air base.

That leaves the Airport Land Use Commission, a little-known but necessary panel that’s charged with keeping urban development from encroaching on airports and, conversely, protecting the public from the adverse effects of aircraft noise and accidents. No one will quarrel with those objectives -- as long as they are being applied to a commercial airport or a military airfield.

The problem is that neither of those options is in El Toro’s future. The federal government knows it. So do the other aforementioned parties with an interest in shepherding El Toro into its long-delayed, post-military future. So it’s difficult to understand why the panel would vote to keep development restrictions in place until the federal government completes the complicated process of turning over El Toro for commercial development -- a process that could take several years.

The panel’s vote is scheduled for Dec. 19 as part of a review of existing limits surrounding John Wayne Airport and other local airfields. There’s nothing up in the air, so to speak, about the other airports. But commissioners seem to think they have no option other than continuing restrictions at El Toro because the field is still owned by the federal government.

The stance clearly frustrates city officials in Irvine, Lake Forest, Laguna Woods, Rancho Santa Margarita and Aliso Viejo who use such words as “appalled” to describe their reactions. It also says something about the dangers of bureaucracy.

No matter, it seems, that the U.S. Navy doesn’t plan to return to the base. Military brass made that perfectly clear last month in a letter addressed to panel members. If the commission members won’t take Uncle Sam’s words at face value, they should look at his actions. The cash-strapped Navy is moving at flank speed to sell land on the base that will be used to make room for new homes, businesses and public parks.

And, if words and deeds aren’t enough, how about logic? The panel is charged with safeguarding the general welfare of people who live and work in the shadow of airports. But if the federal government is readying blueprints that show subdivisions and business parks on the former base, what’s the rationale for restricting development outside of the former airfield?

What’s more, the restrictions that the commission wants to continue are themselves out of date. The panel is relying upon an “Air Installations Compatible Use Zones” report that the Department of Defense uses to ensure that civilian life doesn’t encroach on military bases. But the data in the most current report were last updated during the 1980s, and the Navy won’t be readying another report because the last military aircraft took off from El Toro in 1999. The Navy recently told The Times’ Jean Pasco that existing data “should not be used as a basis for any land use planning effort.”

Members of the Airport Land Use Commission should let reality, not regulations, guide their thinking come Dec. 19 and vote to eliminate development limits on land surrounding El Toro.