More Views on Voters’ Defeat of Airport

Re “El Toro Airport Advocates Lost to a United Suburbia,” April 28:

The article fails to accurately describe what occurred during the planning for a commercial airport at El Toro. From the beginning, county supervisors hijacked the planning process and used highly paid “experts” to minimize and hide adverse environmental impacts.

The driving force behind El Toro was always Newport Beach’s big-money interests, who, fed up with aircraft noise from John Wayne Airport, wanted to move commercial jet service to El Toro. Cramming a giant airport down the throats of south Orange County residents was the end game.

South County residents were fighting a corrupt planning process that was intent on concealing noise, pollution and traffic impact from an El Toro airport. The more people became informed about the proposed airport, the more they realized what was taking place.

Todd Thorton

Laguna Beach

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You write that “hundreds of thousands of residents across Orange County who battled a commercial airport at El Toro celebrated a common victory this past week: the triumph of suburbia.” I can assure you, as one of many who battled the El Toro airport, what was celebrated was the triumph of hard-working men and women fighting to protect their quality of life against super-rich, Newport Beach-based special interests and, in particular, resident billionaire George Argyros.

El Toro had nothing to do with economic necessity. El Toro was nothing more than a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Newport Beach to shut down John Wayne Airport. As knowledge of this spread throughout Orange County, so did opposition to the airport.

Another glaring omission of the article were the repercussions from the county’s failed 1999 flight demonstration. What was intended to be a “snapshot” of the nonintrusive nature of an El Toro airport instead became the most galvanizing event in the history of airport opposition.

Sergio Prince

Laguna Hills

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No wonder the people of Los Angeles hate us. I have been living in Orange County my entire life and I am getting fed up with the selfish views of the majority of people living in this county. Do Orange County residents ever put themselves in other people’s shoes? Do we think the citizens living around Los Angeles International Airport want their homes destroyed to accommodate Orange County’s soaring population?

If Orange County wants to continue building thousands of new homes, I think we should pick up the slack for our travel and air cargo. Orange County will never be a major force in the business world as long as it doesn’t have an international airport.

Bryan Wilson

San Juan Capistrano