Irvine’s Plan to Annex El Toro Is Challenged

Irvine’s plan to annex the former El Toro Marine base has been challenged in a lawsuit that, if successful, would dash the Navy’s hopes of auctioning the base land by year’s end.

The suit was filed Friday in Orange County Superior Court by the Airport Working Group of Orange County and the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, two groups that support building an airport at the site. It asks a judge to reject the city’s environmental analysis for redeveloping El Toro into homes, commercial space and parkland, and to stop the base’s annexation to Irvine.

The groups criticize the city for failing to properly address the noise, traffic and air pollution that would accompany private development of about 2,400 acres of the former base. They also contend that Irvine dramatically understated the amount of building allowed by its zoning.

For example, zoning for a 270-acre parcel slated for 850 homes allows for as many as 1,755, the suit alleges. There is no impediment to a developer renegotiating new densities once the property is bought.

What Irvine calls its Great Park is a defunct blueprint for spacious parkland, meadows and open space that cannot and won’t be built because of the Navy’s desire to sell the land for top dollar, the lawsuit contends. Buyers will receive development rights from Irvine in exchange for paying fees to fund much smaller public areas.

What’s left isn’t much of a park, said attorney Barbara Lichman, executive director of the Airport Working Group.

Irvine officials hadn’t yet read the suit Monday but said they were confident in their plans for the base. The city has prevailed in other suits challenging large development projects, said Dan Jung, the city’s director of strategic planning.

“We stand by our work 100%,” he said. “This is not going to slow us down with the fine work we’ve been doing in the past 15 months.”

The suit shouldn’t immediately affect Irvine’s plans for El Toro, said Dana Smith, executive director of the Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel that must approve the annexation. Unless the judge orders a halt to the process or throws out the environmental review, “we’ll just keep marching forward” with plans for a November hearing on making the base a part of the city, she said.

Once annexation is approved, the Navy will open the bidding on base property, which has been divided into four parcels. The Navy plans to use the proceeds -- estimated at between $800 million and $1.2 billion -- to pay for toxic cleanup at El Toro and other former bases.

A year ago, Orange County voters changed course on the fate of El Toro by rescinding zoning that called for a commercial airport. Instead, voters approved zoning for large swaths of parkland, open space and public uses. A month later, the Navy announced it would sell the base at auction after the property was annexed by Irvine, which would remove it from the restrictive zoning approved by voters.

City and Navy officials pledged to honor the spirit of Measure W through a mix of private and public development on 3,738 acres at the site. About 1,000 acres already were transferred to the Federal Aviation Administration, which is using some for navigation equipment and is preserving the rest as wildlife habitat.

The lawsuit contends that the city’s continual references to the Great Park are “the quintessential red herring thrown into the mix to distract” Orange County residents who voted to establish a park with the passage of last year’s Measure W.

Instead, a great deal of development will be allowed and its impact has been ignored, the suit says. For example, the environmental review fails to discuss what will happen to 3.4 million cubic yards of debris from the demolition of nearly 900 acres of concrete runways. There is no mention of truck traffic needed to move the debris or of the dust generated from demolishing the runways, the suit says.

There also is no discussion of the potential toxic material that could be found in the runways or the soil underneath, it said. If debris taken from the base is later discovered to be contaminated, the Navy will not indemnify the city against paying for damages suffered by other parties, it says.

In other areas, the suit alleges that the city failed to discuss the need for traffic and other improvements over time. Instead, it discussed only 2007 and 2025. The city said in its environmental review that carpool lanes on the area’s toll roads would help ease traffic by 2025, despite the fact that there are no plans to build any.

The city further contended that as many as 148,000 vehicle trips a day would be generated by development of El Toro; the state Department of Transportation said the number was closer to 500,000, the suit says.

Another area of the lawsuit discusses the Navy’s environmental review of the base, upon which the city based much of its analysis.

The Navy review hasn’t been finished, the suit says, and includes at least 76 locations where toxic materials were potentially released that haven’t been investigated -- including the base storm drain system.

“Thus, until studies of potential contamination are completed, the public must assume that hazardous materials are, and have been, migrating from all” locations, the suit says.

A separate lawsuit already filed by Airport Working Group challenges the Navy’s environmental review. It is being heard by U.S. District Judge Gary Taylor in Santa Ana.