Marines Reject Use of El Toro for Training

To the joy of officials in San Diego and to the disappointment of those in Orange County, the Marine Corps announced Tuesday that it is dropping the idea of moving its West Coast basic training camp from San Diego to El Toro.

Marine Commandant Gen. James Jones, in a letter to members of Congress, said that the “urban setting” of the Marines’ former base at El Toro makes it unsuitable as a site for firing ranges.

“Accordingly,” Jones wrote, “the Marine Corps will not pursue the potential relocation of [the recruit depot] to El Toro, and has advised the Navy secretariat of my concurrence in their efforts to rapidly dispose of this property.”

Closed as part of the post-Cold War military cutback, the El Toro base is being returned to civilian use. A coalition of Orange County officials waged an eight-year battle to turn the base into a civilian airport; county voters turned down that idea in March--opening a wide-ranging discussion about the property’s future. Jones asked his subordinates to study whether El Toro might be an alternative to San Diego--able to accommodate the firing ranges and 54-hour field exercise called the Crucible, both key parts of the grueling 13-week Marine training program.

At 388 acres, the San Diego base is too small to accommodate those aspects of training. As a result, the Marines must send recruits to Camp Pendleton, 40 miles north, for four weeks. The San Diego base is also affected by jet noise from adjacent Lindbergh Field, the city’s overcrowded airport.

Opened in 1923, the Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego is one of two Marine Corps training bases nationally, training more than 21,000 recruits annually from west of the Mississippi.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) called the decision “good for San Diego, good for the Marine Corps, and good for America.”

City Councilman Byron Wear said that “no one could be more pleased than I.... This historic site lives proudly in the hearts of Marines throughout the world.”

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad called the decision a blow to the county. The supervisors had voted, 5 to 0, to invite the Marine Corps to return to El Toro, which was once a Marine air station.

“Our county is so patriotic. This is quite a loss to Orange County,” Coad said. “But the Marines made their decision based on study, and that’s the way it goes. We still have the red carpet out for our nation’s military, if they want to move back here.”

After Navy Secretary Gordon England announced his decision last month to declare 3,700 acres of the El Toro property as surplus and return ownership to civilian authorities, Jones said he wanted the Marine Corps to study whether a portion of the site could be retained for a recruit training depot.

Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-San Diego) had suggested that the Marine facility in San Diego could be used to help expand Lindbergh Field. But airport planners said the property is too small and oddly shaped to alleviate the airport’s main problem: the lack of a second runway.

Jones was initially interested in El Toro because it has thousands of housing units. The San Diego base has little housing, and the local civilian rental market is one of the country’s most expensive.

Now that the Marines appear to be staying in San Diego, Jones made a note at the bottom of his letter to Rep. Hunter: “I’ll need your help re housing in San Diego.”