Last Nails in Coffin for an El Toro Airport?

The last-ditch campaign to keep the El Toro airport plan alive appeared to have collapsed this week, with even some die-hard airport advocates saying it’s time to move on.

The latest piece of bad news for the pro-airport camp came Friday, when Gov. Gray Davis declared the airport proposal dead and let die a bill that would have pressured Orange County to provide a greater share of the region’s air passenger and cargo service.

Davis’ decision came two days after a Los Angeles judge threw out a challenge to the voter-approved ballot measure that rezoned the closed El Toro Marine base from an airport to a park.

“We saw the fat lady singing with the judge’s decision, and now the governor is harmonizing with her,” said Stan Oftelie, president and CEO of the Orange County Business Council, a leading backer of an El Toro airport.

Some airport proponents had hoped Davis would sign the bill, which called on Southern California counties to provide their “fair share” of future air passenger and cargo traffic or risk losing some aviation funds. Orange County currently provides far less air service, proportional to its population, than Los Angeles County.

But Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim), a vocal El Toro airport advocate, said Friday he urged Davis to veto the legislation, concluding that enough is enough. “I’ve been a proponent of the airport and we’ve fought over this issue for God knows how many years,” Correa said. “[But] at this point, we need to move on and bring some utility to this base.”

Davis, in his first public comments on the controversy, said local voters have spoken.

“While this bill is intended to bring about a more balanced distribution of the expected increase in aviation traffic, it also ignores the will of many Orange County residents,” Davis said in a prepared statement.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors, which for a decade has been trying to plan an international airport at the 4,700-acre base, formally dropped its efforts after voters approved a ballot measure in March that would convert El Toro into a “Great Park.”

Despite the action, some airport loyalists continued to hold out hope that the measure would be found unconstitutional and that the Board of Supervisors could somehow be pressured to reconsider the plan.

But there is growing division among pro-airport forces over whether this is still the correct strategy.

Oftelie, for example, says business interests should now focus on ways to increase passenger and cargo service at existing Southern California airports. Orange County has just one commercial airport--John Wayne--and its flight capacity is limited under a court settlement with Newport Beach residents.

Some airport advocates remain convinced that an El Toro international airport still has a chance.

In a strategy even some airport proponents concede is a longshot, the Airport Working Group of Orange County hopes to persuade the Bush administration to keep El Toro as an airfield for national security reasons.

The group is circulating a petition asking the secretary of the Navy, which owns the base, to turn over 2,000 acres of the 4,700-acre base to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA would then lease the property to Los Angeles World Airports as an airport. El Toro airport advocates also plan to appeal the judge’s decision on the ballot measure.

“There are definite options out there,” said Barbara Lichman, attorney for the Working Group.

Others aren’t so sure.

“It has a last-gasp quality to it,” Oftelie said.

That view is shared by anti-airport forces, who say this week’s events speak for themselves.

“For probably the first time, I really feel it’s over,” said Meg Waters, spokeswoman for the anti-airport El Toro Reuse Planning Authority. “The battle for an airport at El Toro is over once and for all.”