The OC Weekly El Toro Watch - 1999 Archives.

OC Weekly, and principally writer Anthony Pignataro, has been producing a series of "El Toro Watch" articles, since January of 1997, covering a wide range of issues related to El Toro reuse. Through the cooperation of the paper, the web site will carry future pieces of the series and archive back articles. The OC Weekly website is found at http://www.ocweekly.com

The articles are published electronically here as a public service. Statements made by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the El Toro Airport Info Site Team.

Click here for more recent articles in the series.

Merry F#!@*ing Christmas!

El Toro Airport Watch No. 126
by Anthony Pignataro, December 9, 1999

This is the month the county’s draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on the final configuration of El Toro should finally come out. Already postponed twice, the original schedule had the county Board of Supervisors actually voting this month on the mammoth document. Under the county’s revised schedule—which typically changes from month to month—that won’t happen until spring.

"The draft EIR is a very detailed and comprehensive analysis of the biggest public-works project in Orange County’s history," said El Toro program manager Michael Lapin in a Nov. 17 press release. "In order to ensure that the document is complete and accurate and meets the high standards that the board and public expect, we have decided to issue the document in December."

"Complete"? "Accurate"? "High standards"? Lapin protests too much. For five years, county officials have been "planning" their proposed El Toro International Airport. This "planning" consisted mainly of copying runways and flight tracks established by the Marines, releasing new proposals for the airport on a political whim, and attacking the airport’s critics.

Throughout, local commercial pilots and the nation’s two largest commercial pilots unions blasted the plan, saying El Toro’s crisscrossing runways and the county’s desire to throw 70 percent of all departures east would force pilots to make tricky takeoffs uphill into rising terrain with tail winds—a hat trick of dangerous obstacles. Now, according to internal e-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Len Kranser, editor of the El Toro Airport Info Site (www.eltoroairport.org), at least one Federal Aviation Administration official agrees.

"[W]e may eventually be stuck with an airport layout that, while it looks great by itself on paper, is virtually unusable from an integrated [air-traffic control] standpoint," said FAA official Walter White in a Aug. 4 e-mail. "I do not look forward to the years of safety problems and litigation we might undergo as we work to fix a bad initial plan. Many of the plans reviewed to date have significant problems."

The "bad initial plan" White refers to is, of course, the county’s configuration. In fact, White’s contempt for the five years and more than $50 million already invested by the county is so great that as he wrote, he seemed to endorse an alternative plan by two pro-airport activists as one that "appears to offer the most efficient level of integration with current traffic flows and thus potentially the highest level of safety and efficiency."

The plan is the product of two guys—one from Balboa Island and one from Santa Ana Heights—who call themselves the "New Millennium Group." They’re so sick of John Wayne Airport overflights that they sketched their own El Toro runway configuration in hopes of getting that airport to draw flights away from their neighborhoods.

Their compassion doesn’t extend to the many residents of South County who live near El Toro, residents united in their hatred of any future airport, including the one proposed by the New Millennium Group. As for county planners and officials, the FAA memo makes clear that their own secrecy and ineptitude are helping airport opponents more than anyone imagined.

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Losers
El Toro Airport Watch No. 125
by Anthony Pignataro, November 26, 1999

El toro international airport boosters are scared. You can hear it in their statements and see it in their actions. They’re steadily losing, and (I swear this is true)you can smell the stink of their desperation.

They have a lot to fear. Commercial cargo flights, planned to begin the day after the Marines left in July, won’t start for years. The long-awaited environmental impact report is behind schedule. Sensitive lease talks with the Navy Dept. are dragging on with no end in sight.

Sources close to the airport say all this has airport megabooster and bazillionaire developer George Argyros thoroughly pissed. These same sources say the big man’s anger was behind the recent transfers of both the El Toro program manager and the public information manager.

"They [airport opponents] are winning," pro-airport Supervisor Chuck Smith told a recent meeting of the Newport Beach-based Airport Working Group. "We’ve got to fight them on their own ground, and that’s with information."

Smith’s statement reveals his ignorance of Sun Tzu’s 2,000-year-old strategy —never fight on ground chosen by your enemy. It also misses the point completely. The county has spewed out huge quantities of information for years in brochures, mailers, Web sites, reports, fact sheets, speaking engagements, TV commercials and newsletters. The county’s problem isn’t providing information—it’s that the county’s information sucks.

That fact received dramatic emphasis last week with Disneyland’s announcement that the amusement park doesn’t need an airport at El Toro. Instead, the park—which once gave Argyros’ group of airport boosters $50,000—said future LAX expansion, current freeway widenings and other regional airports would be sufficient to move tourists to and from its hyperreal and hyperexpensive attractions.

County officials like Smith—who had actually believed earlier El Toro propaganda saying the airport would attract "international tourists to our county despite stiff competition from Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego"—were dumbfounded.

It’s hard to sympathize with them, considering it’s common knowledge that passenger use at John Wayne Airport dropped for the past two years. Despite the county’s mailers and speeches, the demand for an international airport at El Toro simply doesn’t exist. More and more people recognize that. Someday—hopefully soon—the county will finally join them and move its attention elsewhere. It could start with the deplorable state of the county’s roads, beaches and public transport.

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An Open Letter
El Toro Airport Watch No. 123
by Anthony Pignataro, November 5, 1999

To the Department of the Navy:

As you know, this county’s Board of Supervisors is the Local Redevelopment Authority for El Toro.  You also know the responsibility that entails: the supervisors must find a reuse for the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station that benefits the county without harming those who live near the base.

What you probably don’t know is that the three supervisors who constitute a pro-airport majority on the board have trampled the democratic process and all but declared war on the very citizens who put them into office.

It all started this spring, when the people who live around the base drafted the Safe and Healthy Communities Act—a ballot measure that would make it impossible for the board to build an airport, jail or toxic-waste dump at El Toro or anywhere else in the county without first securing a two-thirds majority vote from the people.   Activists gathered 192,000 signatures—more than twice the required number—to qualify that act for the ballot.

Obviously, the pro-airport majority on the board doesn’t like the measure.   But instead of merely campaigning against it or supporting pro-airport groups in their campaigns against it, Supervisors Cynthia Coad, Chuck Smith and Jim Silva voted last Tuesday to consider three separate initiatives that would run alongside—you might say run over—the Safe and Healthy Communities Act.  The measures serve no purpose except to confuse the voters into political paralysis or make them so bitter about the process that they skip voting entirely.

Actually, this happens a lot in California.  In 1990, state voters had to contend with four separate auto-insurance reform measures—only one of which actually promised real consumer reform.

Two of the new pro-airport measures try to circumvent the Safe and Healthy Communities Act by stealing some of its appeal. One would allow the Board of Supervisors to ask for a popular vote on any new jail or toxic-waste dump construction.  The second measure would require the supervisors to hold such a vote. Both measures are junk. Neither measure mentions an airport as a noxious use. Neither measure defines what constitutes jails, toxic-waste dumps, expansion or construction.  In addition, neither measure includes any provision for holding public hearings.  And neither contains any language on future amendments—leaving open the possibility that future supervisors might rewrite the measures at will.

The last new measure isn’t even binding.  It’s simply advisory, asking voters whether it’s a good idea for the county to turn over airport planning and "implementation responsibilities" to a Joint Powers Authority insulated from popular pressure.  This would allow the supervisors to accomplish by bureaucratic fiat what they have been unable to accomplish through democracy.

The new measures come from Los Alamitos Councilman Ron Bates, a member of the Newport Beach-based Orange County Airport Alliance.  Bates now calls himself chairman of the newly formed "Citizens Right-to-Vote Committee."  Bates comes from a city built around another military airfield, this one operated by the Air National Guard.   But should it close, residents fear it, too, could become a commercial airport—a possibility strengthened should El Toro opponents win.

Clearly, Bates is willing to do unto others as he would not have them do unto himself: ram an airport down the throats of those who live around El Toro to save his own constituents from a similar fate.  It’s hard to find a better example of cynicism.

Of course, this latest tactic is completely in line with the pro-airport majority’s political style.  County officials have already demanded that anti-airport citizens’ groups release their financial statements merely because they opposed county policy; junked the years and millions of dollars spent on developing commercial uses around El Toro in favor of parks, making it easier for Silva to run a re-election campaign against his anti-airport opponent; denied 5th District Supervisor Tom Wilson—who represents people who live around El Toro—information on county officials lobbying Washington; routinely told residents that a big cargo airport would bring in "$4.9 billion" despite the fact that no one could say where that number came from; spent $1 million on noise demonstrations at El Toro only to tell residents afterward the tests were "unscientific."

That’s why I’m hoping that you can step in and do what is obviously beyond the county board: act honorably to ensure the people of Orange County retain their right to decide what to do with the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

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Chuckles
El Toro Airport Watch No. 122
by Anthony Pignataro, October 28, 1999

On Oct. 19, county Board of Supervisors chairman Chuck Smith cast four deciding votes for his airport-loving cronies.  One extended El Toro legal adviser Mark Mispagel's term through the end of the year, despite the lapse that allowed opposition attorneys to delay the county's getting legal jurisdiction over the base.  Another extended El Toro real-estate manager Gary Simon's term through June 2000, despite delays in completing lease negotiations with the Navy Department. The third extended El Toro program manager Michael Lapin's contract through June 2000. And the last added $979,453 to LSA Associates' $3 million contract to write both the county's El Toro environmental-impact review and the Federal Aviation Administration's environmental-impact statement.

A week later, on Oct. 26, Smith attended a lavish $250-a-head fund-raiser for his 2000 re-election campaign hosted by El Toro godfather George Argyros at his Arnel Development offices in Costa Mesa (which isn't even in Smith's district). Considering the makeup of the host committee, which we've partially outlined below, it's hard not to describe the event as a pat on Smith's back for a job very well done.

AWG PAC, the political action committee for the Newport Beach-based Airport Working Group, one of the oldest groups calling for an airport at El Toro

Dave Ellis, public-relations consultant to Argyros' pro-airport group Citizens for Jobs and the Economy (CJ&E)

John Erskine, former Huntington Beach mayor, now a major figure within the Orange County chapter of the pro-airport Building Industry Association (BIA)

Norma Glover, pro-airport Newport Beach councilwoman

Scott Hart, Ellis’ business partner, a former staffer in the Pete Wilson administration

Doy Henley, president of Aeromil Engineering, a pro-airport developer, and trustee at Chapman University

Christine Diemer Iger, chief lobbyist for the OC BIA chapter and member of the pro-airport El Toro Citizens Advisory Commission

Bruce Nestande, former 3rd District supervisor, now one of Argyros’ functionaries at Arnel and ostensible head of CJ&E

Dennis O’Neil, pro-airport Newport Beach mayor

Lyle Overby, big-time OC lobbyist whose clients include the city of Newport Beach. Also a former consultant to pro-airport 2nd District Supervisor Jim Silva

Tod Ridgeway, pro-airport Newport Beach city councilman (that’s right:Smith now has a quorum in a city that isn’t even in his district)

Reed Royalty, president of the pro-airport Orange County Taxpayers Association, which backs just about every tax increase placed on county ballots

Randy Smith, corporate consultant and member of the developer-backed Lincoln Club, which supports an airport at El Toro

Clarence Turner, former Newport Beach mayor and one of that city’s loudest pro-airport voices

Cheers!

Red Batesing
El Toro Airport Watch No. 121
by Anthony Pignataro, October 14, 1999

Supporters of an airport at El Toro have long argued that El Toro’s opponents have a secret plan: to expand John Wayne Airport and, so, destroy Newport Beach.

It’s a powerful emotional argument and one that generates huge political contributions to the pro-airport movement; scared people give money, and the people of Newport Beach have given plenty.

But it was an argument without any evidence—until Oct. 6.  On that day, Los Angeles Times staffer Jean O. Pasco reported that South County Assemblywoman Pat Bates had told an Assembly committee that expanding John Wayne would allow the county to meet projected air-traffic demand.

It was the quote heard round the world.  And it was wrong.

Bates denies she ever made the statement.  In an Oct. 8 press release, she said, "We categorically do not support any expansion of John Wayne."

There were at least three reasons to doubt Pasco’s version of events.   First, reporting on the same meeting, The Orange County Register made no mention of Bates’ shocking quote, nor even of Bates herself.  Second, no South County official advocates expanding John Wayne Airport.  Their view is more novel: don’t build El Toro, don’t expand John Wayne Airport, and instead look to regional airports—at March Air Force Base, Ontario, San Bernardino, Palmdale and Victorville, for example—marketing themselves aggressively as cargo and air-travel options for Orange Countians.

Finally, a transcript of the meeting obtained by the South County cities suggests that Pasco got the story wrong.  According to the transcript, Bates actually said county officials have estimated air-passenger demand at 12 million passengers per year—3 million less than John Wayne Airport’s capacity.  Bates observed that one solution to the county’s air-traffic demand would be to lift the cap on John Wayne.  But in a crucial comment elided from Pasco’s version of the meeting, Bates concluded, "I don’t frankly believe that is the answer."

The final blow to Pasco’s story came from Pasco herself.  Sort of.   Writing for the Times Oct. 9 edition, Pasco included Bates’ statement at the Assembly meeting—"I’m not suggesting the people of Newport Beach should have to endure that expansion."

But the quote was buried in the story, and preceded by nothing like an acknowledgement that, having gotten the story wrong, Pasco had complicated an already difficult story. Nowhere did the Times note that its reporter’s error had fueled conspiracy theories among Newport Beach residents already given to the public-policy analogue of anal probes, flying saucers, and alien abduction.  Indeed, her Oct. 9 article seemed to absolve Pasco of responsibility for the Bates misquote.  In a clever use of the passive voice, Pasco wrote, "Bates said her comments were misunderstood."

What’s clear now, is that only Pasco misunderstood what Bates said.   And by Oct. 9, the damage of that misunderstanding was done.  Newport Beach activists used Pasco’s misquote to attack Bates and the entire anti-airport movement.   "The Pat Bates solution is Playa del Tustin," said Dave Ellis, a consultant for George Argyros and the Newport Beach-based Airport Working Group, in Pasco’s Oct. 6 article.  Ellis then says expanding John Wayne to 24 million passengers per year would require (in Pasco’s words) "bulldozing an area between Tustin and the Balboa Peninsula."

A day later, the Costa Mesa/Newport Beach Daily Pilot ratcheted up the anti-South County rhetoric. Pilot reporter Susan McCormack followed up Pasco’s story by quoting former Newport Mayor Tom Edwards. "What we are really seeing is what [South County’s] strategy has been all along—to expand John Wayne," said Edwards.

To be honest, Ellis and Edwards have been accusing South County officials of advocating the expansion of John Wayne Airport for years. That Bates never said she wanted to see John Wayne expanded won’t stop bomb throwers like Ellis and Edwards from future attacks on South County. It’s been their strategy all along: scare Newport Beach residents into thinking those living south of the 55 freeway want to destroy them.

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Poster Bored
El Toro Airport Watch No. 120
by Anthony Pignataro, October 7, 1999

On Sept. 28, 5th District Supervisor Tom Wilson tried and failed to remove a pro-airport poster hanging in John Wayne Airport. Given the poster’s poor placement and audience, it’s clear county officials are the ones who should worry.

The poster’s huge title, "Ticket to Tomorrow," and subtitle, "Get the facts," loom over the John Wayne baggage carousel. Its green-and-purple charts depicting the proposed airport’s noise levels, traffic congestion and air-passenger demand hardly scream for attention; travelers line the carousel just a few feet away, their eyes rarely darting away from the luggage steadily gathering before them.

The information presented on the poster—far from any "facts"—are simply retreads of old county spins: the average noise put out by the airport will be less than state standards, auto traffic will be negligible, and passenger use will be nothing compared with other big airports around the country. As is usually the case with county airport materials meant for public consumption, the poster ignores critical safety questions concerning El Toro’s runway configuration, the fact that most heavy cargo flights will occur between midnight and 5 a.m., or the fact that the parks county officials plan to place around the new airport will attract wildlife—a big problem according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

More than simple desperation, the new display characterizes the county’s let’s-try-this mentality that substitutes for coherent political strategy. Its placement at John Wayne Airport of all places shows just how clueless county officials can be. The poster’s audience consists of transient tourists and business execs—people who live elsewhere and don’t understand or care about local political issues—and locals who are likely to luxuriate in the fact that John Wayne Airport, built to handle 15 million passengers per year, attracts less than half that number. It’s a little like getting on the 5 at rush hour and finding you have the whole thing to yourself.

And it’s getting emptier. Forty-two thousand more people may have used John Wayne Airport in August 1999 than in August 1998, but that figure is anomalous. For 21 of the past 24 months, John Wayne Airport demand fell when compared with the same month in the previous year. For example, 700 fewer passengers passed through the airport in July 1999 than did so in July 1998. But that’s negligible compared to previous declines: 28,000 fewer people moved through John Wayne Airport in June 1999 than in June 1998. May 1999 was even worse, with 56,000 fewer travelers than May 1998.

Put another way, county officials are promoting the wrong airport.

A Too-Modest Proposal
El Toro Airport Watch No. 118
by Anthony Pignataro, September 30, 1999

That stink you smell emanating from the County Hall of Administration is the stink of defeat.  On Sept. 28, pro-airport Orange County Supervisor Cynthia Coad recycled old proposals to reduce the devastating impact of El Toro International Airport--fewer passengers, no international flights--presented them as new, and demanded that this new evidence of official flexibility be met with immediate concessions on the part of anti-airport South County residents.

The problem, of course, is that pro-airport board members have made precisely the same offers in the past--with no luck.  But the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register offered Coad a big assist, giving her proposal the kind of front-page local coverage that implied this, at last, is something new and different.

It isn't.  Five times since December 1996, supervisors hoping to appease El Toro opponents have offered radical new designs that were neither new nor radical.   You'll remember, perhaps, the people mover that was supposed to whisk travelers between equally diminutive airports at El Toro and John Wayne--a plan that was scrapped when it was revealed within hours to be a multimillion-dollar fantasy.  Or the promise to ban nighttime flights at El Toro -- clearly illegal under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules.  Hoping to blunt South County's popular proposal to build parks and a university at El Toro, county officials countered with a "lean and green" plan of their own, one with golf courses and wide open spaces to attract wildlife—precisely the sort of mixing of ducks and turbine engines the FAA prohibits near airports.  The plan to mollify Irvine residents—by sending flights east, away from the city—ran into reality in the shape of nearby hills and a powerful tailwind.  Each of the plans was a tactical blunder—quickly thrown together, rashly proposed and just as immediately relegated to the shredders.

Coad’s plan will likely end up similarly.  She says she’ll push for fewer passengers, but she conveniently fails to mention the several thousand cargo flights per year in the county’s plan.  Her offer to ban international flights makes a virtue of necessity: the cumbersome, decades-long process of attracting international flights doesn’t involve the county, but rather the U.S. State Department, the FAA, foreign governments and airlines; it was unlikely to succeed even in the county’s most optimistic scenarios until well into the next century.

News from the pro-airport camp suggests the troops are demoralized.  The fact that they would now rally around a collection of tried-and-rejected proposals suggests their leaders are visionless.  Two weeks ago, pro-airport strategist and former county supervisor Bruce Nestande attacked county officials such as Coad for their failure to fully prosecute the war for the airport; this week, he called Coad’s tepid, tired proposal "reasonable."

Reasonable?  Demanding South County residents negotiate in good faith over how—but not whether—an airport will be built in the midst of their communities is a little like asking a woman to negotiate with her rapist, not about whether he will rape her, but how severely he will hurt her in the process.

Coad said her too-modest proposal was prompted by her "sadness" about the heated conflict between pro- and anti-airport activists.  Note to Coad: invest in Kleenex.  There’s going to be a lot more crying before this is over.

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In-Fight Testing
El Toro Airport Watch No. 119
by Anthony Pignataro, September 23, 1999

Supporters of the county’s plans to drop a massive international airport on the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station are squabbling amongst themselves. That’s easy to understand, as there will be no cargo flights until 2001 at the earliest, the June noise demonstrations only succeeded in radicalizing South County residents, and county officials still haven’t finished the airport environmental-impact report.

Thoughtful people might look at these discrete events as a pattern showing the futility of turning El Toro into a commercial airport. But airport boosters have never been a thoughtful bunch. Instead of questioning the county’s ability to shoot 800,000 operations per year into El Toro, they’re questioning whether the county has the propaganda muscle to drown out the bad news.

"[The] county’s community outreach should be dramatically intensified," said Bruce Nestande, president of the George Argyros-backed booster group Citizens for Jobs and the Economy, in the Sept. 10 Orange County Register. "How do you survive if you can’t keep the public on your side?"

In Nestande’s world, the airport is a neat idea, and county officials have failed—or refused—to bring to bear on the issue the powerful propaganda weapons of the modern state. In the same Reg story, 4th District Supervisor Cynthia Coad, a firm airport supporter, defined "community outreach" as "getting information out—it’s not to spread propaganda."

Recent airport history says Nestande and Coad are both wrong—that the county has already been engaged in a massive campaign to manufacture public consent:

• In a now-infamous Nov. 20, 1997, speech, County Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier told the Orange County Business Council that the county loses "$4.9 billion" every year because it lacks a proper cargo airport. Mittermeier said Chapman University generated the figure —an assertion Chapman president Jim Doti firmly denies. No explanation for the discrepancy—other than airport boosters simply made up the number—has ever surfaced.

• Since El Toro planning began, county officials have stressed that Runway 7 (slated to handle 70 percent of all departures) is fine and potentially profitable. County officials have attacked the numerous commercial pilots and unions who say Runway 7’s uphill grade, nearby hills and tailwinds make it treacherous. Yet a report put out by the county’s own consultant shows that Runway 7’s shortcomings would require commercial aircraft to fly light (fewer passengers and less cargo and fuel) in order to make it safely over the hilltops. Those "weight penalties" don’t exist on El Toro’s other runways.

• County officials and boosters constantly define El Toro International Airport as a solution to rapidly rising air-travel demand, completely ignoring the fact that demand at John Wayne Airport has dropped for two years in a row.

• County mailers consistently quote former El Toro program manager Courtney Wiercioch as saying hardly anyone in the county will hear any noise from the airport and whatever noise will occur is less than the noise previously heard from Marine jets. Yet county officials always neglect to mention that commercial airplanes at El Toro will fly all day and all night—something the Marines never did—and by 2020, they will fly roughly once every four minutes.

It’s understandable why Nestande would find all of this insufficient "outreach." After all, he’s a veteran of drag-the-opposition-through-the-mud politicking. During past El Toro ballot campaigns, his group circulated mailers throughout South County advertising how an anti-airport vote would lead to El Toro becoming a maximum-security prison. The mailers contained Charles Manson’s picture with the caption "Your new neighbor."

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Let's Call It Theft
El Toro Airport Watch No. 117
by Anthony Pignataro, September 2, 1999

Avigation lawsuits are perhaps the most lethal weapons residents have in their guerrilla war against the county’s proposed El Toro International Airport.   If brought in sufficient numbers, these suits could cost the county billions of dollars.

An avigation easement is simply the right to fly over a piece of property.   Anyone who wants to live near an airport must first give the easement to the county; otherwise, the column of space above the house would be a legal barrier to overflights. But there are homes in South County—like those in Laguna Woods—where residents retain control over the easements.  If the county wants to use the airspace over those homes, it’ll have to pay for it.

Or not. It’s not surprising that the county is now trying to claim that it ought to own those easements at no cost.  Some might call this theft.

At its Aug. 19 Airport Land Use Commission (ALUC) meeting, county commissioners discussed a new policy that would give the county new and broad overflight and noise rights—far beyond current easements.

"The dedication, acceptance and recordation of an avigation easement in favor of an airport proprietor may be considered as a method for controlling and reducing noise problems surrounding airports," says the commission’s proposed airport land-use policy, which includes copies of the new easements. In other words, the commission is saying the county’s desire to build and run a noisy airport supersedes residents’ right to silence.

More controversial is the commission’s desire to get cities, rather than the county itself, to acquire the easements from all new development applicants.

The cities aren’t likely to go for that. "The city of Lake Forest shares the concerns of a number of Orange County cities relative to the proposal to require avigation easements," wrote Lake Forest city attorney Greg Diaz in an Aug. 19 letter to the ALUC.  "As it is apparent that the commission expects the cities to exact these easements from development applicants within our cities, it also appears that the commission expects the cities to run the legal and financial risks associated with this exaction."  Diaz then added that court judgments requiring compensation for exacted easements "are increasing in number."

The stakes for the county are already high. In the Northwood community being built in Irvine, prospective residents are deeding easements to the county that begin at 1,500 feet above sea level, meaning departing aircraft will probably violate that airspace as they climb through it. And in Laguna Woods, 25,000 retirees regained control of their easements when the Marines pulled out of El Toro on July 2. Laguna Woods lies directly under the arrival path for El Toro. The new ALUC easement policy wouldn’t affect these particular areas, but it would make sure there were no more like them.

In any case, the ALUC has yet to come to a conclusion on its proposed easement and will take up the matter again at its Sept. 16 meeting.

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Down on the Fuel-Tank Farm
El Toro Airport Watch No. 116
by Anthony Pignataro, August 27, 1999

For most residents, the county’s Aug. 4 press conference was notable for the admission that El Toro planning was months behind schedule. But county officials didn’t gather the press just to spin their inability to meet their own deadlines. They actually wanted to talk about their shiny new Technical Report 14, subtly titled Support Facilities.

Among other topics, the new report outlines things like the proposed airport’s cargo-handling areas, general-aviation areas, catering complex and maintenance areas. But what caught our eye was the diagram of the proposed fuel-tank farm.

The tank farm is the future airport’s gas station. Sitting on roughly 11 acres, it consists of eight tanks, each measuring 1,000 feet in diameter and capable of holding 1.75 million gallons of jet fuel. That makes the farm’s total storage capacity 14 million gallons—what the county considers a seven-day supply.

When the Marines ran El Toro, they placed their tank farm on the base’s remote northeastern corner, far enough from civilization that accidents might be limited to radical brush fires and dead deer. But, as we’ve so often seen, county officials aren’t as cautious. They want their tank farm near the railroad tracks along the airport’s southern edge, close to the base’s underground fuel lines. In that location, the tank farm will stand a mere 1,000 feet from Irvine’s Technology Drive, home of many of the high-tech firms that make up the Irvine Spectrum.

Recent history tells us the county really ought to rethink this one. In April, faulty warning alarms led to a 42,000-gallon spill of high-octane gasoline out of a 4 million-gallon tank in Cobb County, Georgia. This occurred less than a year after 40,000 gallons of fuel leaked out of a ruptured pipe in Sandy Springs, Georgia. Of course, both accidents paled before the three tanks that caught fire in Doraville, Georgia, burning for days.

And in March 1995, a nearly empty 3 million-gallon storage tank at 20-tank Amoco farm in Carteret, New Jersey, exploded, belching enough black smoke to turn the noon hour into night. Officials evacuated nearby homes, a school and shopping center. The fire was so hot that it melted the roof of the storage tank. Miraculously, there were no serious injuries.

County officials have had three years and tens of millions of dollars to play around with airport designs. This is the best they can do?

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The Bird Question
El Toro Airport Watch No. 115
by Anthony Pignataro, August 19, 1999

A photograph in the July 29 issue of OC Metro shows seven black turkey vultures perched near the runways of the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.  The runways are desolate, save for the butt-ugly birds.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which must approve whatever airport design the county finally settles on, won’t like that picture.  Birds at an airport are bad, mostly because they get sucked into jet engines and smash up their turbine blades at really inopportune moments, like landing and taking off.  That birds are flying around El Toro right now is bad enough, but the FAA will find the county’s airport plan, one that is likely to make the bird problem much worse, especially disagreeable.

FAA Advisory Circular 150/5200-33 makes that clear. Titled "Hazardous Wildlife Attractants on or near Airports," the 1997 memo warns airport designers against putting anything that might attract "hazardous wildlife" within 10,000 feet of any runway or taxiway.  The FAA further identifies such wildlife as waterfowl, gulls, raptors, vultures, doves, starlings and even deer.

For FAA officials, the county’s "Airport and Open Space" plan for El Toro ought to be a red flag.  The plan calls for a wide swath of parkland, golf courses, wildlife trails and farmland on the airport’s eastern edge to disguise the airport as a giant park. Each of those appears in the advisory as a possible wildlife attractant.

The county wants farms at each end of Runway 34—directly under aircraft flight paths. The county wants a small golf course under the Runway 34 arrival path and another just yards from the end of Runway 7.  And the county wants a massive 1,000-acre habitat reserve, also under Runway 7’s departure path, and a wildlife corridor running between Runways 7 and 34.

In each case, the FAA says "corrective actions should be implemented immediately" if the animals start appearing. If the airport is anything like the county’s new toll roads, it’ll be hard to keep the animals away.  On the Eastern toll road, seven deer and one woman have already died in animal-related car accidents.

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Delayed Gratification
El Toro Airport Watch No. 114
by Anthony Pignataro, August 13, 1999

Air travelers understand delays. Spending an extra 15 or 20 minutes in freeway traffic is nothing: it takes a few hours of resting your feet on luggage while sitting in a hard-plastic seat at some airport gate, alternately staring at fellow travelers, the watch, baggage carts, the watch, aircraft tugs and your watch, to comprehend the special misery behind the word "delayed."

Now all county residents can share that kind of worried anticipation. On Aug. 4, county officials announced they would delay releasing their long-awaited El Toro Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for three months. That report—which will detail the county’s "final" airport design—has been under development for nearly three years. Because of the EIR delay, the county Board of Supervisors will also have to push back their final El Toro authorization vote from December 1999 to at least May 2000.

County officials announced all this at an 11 a.m. press conference outlining the latest El Toro technical report. (Because the county delayed faxing to us the media alert announcing the conference, no one from the Weekly attended.) According to accounts in the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register, county officials served up the same old excuses for their failures.

"This is the largest public-works project the county has ever been involved in, and I wanted to make sure that it came out right," Michael Lapin, county El Toro planning manager, reportedly told the Register. To the Times, Lapin explained that "this doesn’t represent any slippage but shows responsible planning."

Responsible planning. Remember the county’s original 1996 plan for a 38 million-annual-passenger (MAP) airport, which was later rejected in favor of a 24 MAP airport surrounded by commercial development and linked to John Wayne Airport, which was later rejected in favor of a 24 MAP airport surrounded by parkland and linked to John Wayne Airport, which was later rejected in favor of a 29 MAP airport still surrounded by parkland but not linked to John Wayne Airport?

Then there’s the county’s million-dollar flight tests that produced no usable data. And the county’s inability to negotiate a master lease with the Navy Department, which led to the county’s inability to stick to its oft-repeated game plan of starting interim cargo flights at El Toro on July 4. On top of all that, there’s still the problem of runway design, a problem only heightening opposition to the county’s latest airport configuration.

All that "responsible planning" took five years and cost more than $40 million. Yet county officials still haven’t supplied realistic cost figures for the airport itself. Ultimately, this latest delay means residents will have to wait even longer to find out how big a disaster El Toro will really be.

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Flight Test Dummies
El Toro Airport Watch No. 113
by Anthony Pignataro, July 29, 1999

The strangest thing Courtney Wiercioch said into the nest of TV and radio mics during the county’s July 19 press conference wasn’t that she was leaving the El Toro program manager’s job because she just got pregnant. It wasn’t even her comment expressing surprise at the media interest surrounding the long-awaited report on the county’s June 4-5 El Toro flight demonstration. Rather, her strangest comment was undoubtedly that the entire $1 million flight test was "informative," yet at the same time "unscientific."

That, of course, is what airport opponents have said all along. Now, apparently, Wiercioch agrees. She called the data interesting but insisted it was headed to the county’s wastebasket.

"There are simply not enough data points," she said, employing a scientific-sounding phrase meaning "evidence." The report, she said, will not be included in the county’s forthcoming environmental impact report.

That fact hasn’t stopped county officials from leaping to bizarre and far-reaching conclusions based on the "unscientific" test. According to a July 19 county press release, the test "demonstrate[d] that aircraft can operate safely into and out of the airfield." That’s a bold—indeed, fantastic—statement for a test that was lacking enough data points for accurate noise assessment.

But it was nothing compared with the report itself. Page One of the report lays it all out, describing the flight tests as having "provide[d] an opportunity for persons working and living in the general vicinity of El Toro to see and hear actual operations by representative types of commercial aircraft." This was possible because the aircraft carried "representative weights" and used "runways and flight tracks in a manner consistent with the analysis that has been completed to date in the planning process for El Toro."

Even a casual reading of the report makes clear those claims are nonsensical. The first, that the tests showed "persons working and living in the general vicinity" what El Toro would be like, is laughable and the easiest to refute. An average of 25 operations occurred during each day of the test—hardly suitable for an airport proposed to handle an average of 824 operations per day. No flights occurred in the early morning hours, and only two operations occurred during normal Friday work hours—both after 4 p.m. The county barely tested people living near El Toro, and it carefully shielded workers in the massive Irvine Co. commercial properties surrounding the base by directing planes around them.

The second claim, that the tests used "representative types of commercial aircraft" is true, but it ignores the larger issue: it’s not the sound of one MD-90 or one A320 that frightens South County residents—it’s the sound of whole fleets of those planes soaring over their heads.

The third claim is the most complex and, naturally, the most egregious. Throughout the test, county officials claimed they loaded all aircraft to "typical" operating weights. Of course, loading aircraft to "typical" rather than maximum loads produces quieter aircraft. For example, the heaviest 747 that flew on June 4 tipped the scale at 700,001 pounds despite the fact that that plane could have weighed 800,000 pounds. On average, the county’s test planes weighed between 20,000 and 100,000 pounds less than airlines would like.

But that fact pales before the county’s greater dissembling—that the test aircraft used flight tracks and runways exactly as the county planned for the fully functioning El Toro International Airport. For the past three years, county officials have insisted that 70 percent of all departures will take off to the east, with the remaining departures heading north. During the flight tests, just 36 percent of departures headed east—depriving the residents of Coto de Caza, Mission Viejo and Lake Forest of the full fury of even the county’s flaccid test.

The county’s explanation for the massive difference in runway usage is that the Marines had already ripped out El Toro’s instrument landing and departure equipment, requiring pilots to use visual flight rules (VFR). That put operations at the mercy of the low cloud cover that hung over the base on June 4, forcing aircraft scheduled to fly east onto the longer northern runway. Of course, the county’s pretest schedule (written long before June 4) anticipated just 48 percent of all departures using the eastern runway. Clearly, county officials weren’t even trying to test their 70-30 plan.

But the VFR requirement—which the county insists is temporary—also altered the flight tracks county consultants have meticulously planned. In a much-promoted Instrument Flight Procedures report released in May 1998, the county outlined how aircraft departing El Toro will climb at roughly 400 feet per nautical mile to hurdle the terrain surrounding the base. That’s 200 feet more than the standard departure gradient. In that report, county officials compared the climb favorably to other airports, including John Wayne Airport’s politically derived gradient of 1,000 feet per nautical mile.

But according to the new flight-test report, all aircraft departing El Toro during the flight tests had to climb at a rate of 600 feet per nautical mile—again, a temporary course made necessary by the base’s inability to handle instrument departures. In effect, the steeper departure climb acted as a noise-abatement procedure, lessening the already-considerable noise heard by locals and further mocking the county’s insistence that it tested flight conditions "in a manner consistent with analysis that has been completed to date."

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Off Again
El Toro Airport Watch No. 112
by Anthony Pignataro, July 15, 1999

For the past three years, county officials have insisted that at least two-thirds of all planes departing the proposed El Toro International Airport will take off to the east on Runway 7. For just as long, two major commercial-pilots unions have insisted that the plan—forcing fully loaded airliners to take off uphill with tail winds into rising terrain—is madness.

Through it all, county officials have kept their hands over their ears as they endlessly repeat their position that Runway 7 is safe, even as more and more aviation experts speak out against the county’s plan. Runway 7’s deficiencies have become so obvious that an expert the county once thought agreed with them has joined the opposition camp.

"The combination of rising terrain and predominant tail wind will restrict the use of this runway both in terms of certain periods of time when the tail winds exceed allowable levels and for aircraft that are on the heavy side due to the rising terrain," wrote American Airlines executive vice president Robert W. Baker in a June 14 letter to anti-airport Web site editor Len Kranser. "Runway 7 with a tail wind component and rising terrain will never be considered desirable or preferable from an airline or pilot’s point of view."

Baker is merely reiterating what is well-known to any impartial observer. United States Geological Survey data for El Toro indicates that 6-knot winds blow in from the west nine months out of the year. The negative effect of those winds is made perfectly clear in the county’s Jeppeson Analyses, which was released in May 1998. That report (see El Toro Airport Watch No. 71, July 24, 1998) detailed how aircraft departing on Runway 7 would face serious weight penalties of around 10 tons that don’t exist on any of El Toro’s other runways. Weight penalties mean that planes have to fly lighter—fewer passengers, less cargo or both. For that reason, every pilot who selects Runway 7 instead of another runway loses money. For that reason, Baker concluded, "you can fully expect most pilots to reject the offer of Runway 7."

On July 6, Los Angeles Times reporter Jean O. Pasco wrote that "county officials reacted with a collective shrug" to the Baker letter. So typical. But what Pasco didn’t point out is that county officials used to sing Baker’s praises.

During the Jan. 13, 1998, county Board of Supervisors meeting, El Toro program manager Courtney Wiercioch held up a letter written by Baker that seemed to endorse the county’s runway selections. Baker’s letter, she said, was proof that airlines were in complete agreement with the county’s plans. In fact, as Baker later pointed out, Wiercioch had
taken his statements out of context.

Someday soon, county officials will have to admit Runway 7 is useless. And on that day, maybe we’ll react with a collective shrug, too.

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Something’s Remiss
El Toro Airport Watch No. 111
by Anthony Pignataro, July 8, 1999

In mid-April, the city of Irvine released a report detailing the powerful Irvine Co.’s history of opposition to a commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station as far back as 1972.

The report (see El Toro Airport Watch No. 103, April 23) contains extensive quotes from letters written by former Irvine Co. vice president Richard A. Reese at the birth of the city of Irvine in the early 1970s. Of those statements, this was the most powerful: "Civilian or dual use of either or both of the two Marine Corps air facilities shall be opposed for reasons of safety and environmental compatibility."

On April 13, Irvine Mayor Christina Shea, writing for the City Council, asked Irvine Co. vice president Gary Hunt for an explanation.  Surprising no one, Hunt skirted the issue in a May 28 reply. Modestly saying his company was "but one voice in the discussion," Hunt’s  response kept to the now-hackneyed company line: there is not yet enough information to make an opinion.

"As a company with a substantial interest in the outcome [the company owns 60,000 acres of undeveloped land in the county], we have chosen to be a thoughtful and constructive participant in the planning process and leave the ongoing political battle appropriately entrusted to the voters and their elected leadership," Hunt wrote.

Far from leaving the battle to the voters, the Irvine Co. possesses and frequently wields unprecedented power in county government. The company owns the Irvine World News, which it hand delivers to every home in the city each week. It routinely contributes thousands of dollars to the campaigns of city and county supervisorial candidates, including all five current supervisors.

By claiming neutrality, it’s possible the Irvine Co. figures it has a win-win situation: if the airport goes in, the company gets commercial development. (There’s also reason to believe that John Wayne Airport, should the county decide to close it, would revert to the Irvine Co. under a long-standing land-use agreement.) And if the airport doesn’t go in, the company gets to build many more acres of residential housing.

One might say the Irvine Co.’s position is Machiavellian, except that Machiavelli—a teacher Hunt and his colleagues have clearly looked to in the past—would urge the company to take a position. In Chapter 21 of The Prince ("How a Prince Should Bear Himself So As to Acquire Reputation"), Machiavelli wrote that powerful people who fail to take a side will ultimately alienate all sides, "for the victor dislikes doubtful friends . . . and the vanquished will have nothing to say to you, since you would not share his fortunes sword in hand."

There’s substantial evidence that Hunt’s neutrality is already hurting the company. Within the next several weeks, every new Irvine home buyer will receive a handbook on the proposed airport, detailing the risks they’re taking by purchasing a home. And for the first time, assessment-district financing bonds for commercial and residential infrastructure in the city carry a disclosure statement detailing the county’s proposed airport and its potential blight. Such a disclosure makes the bonds riskier and more expensive for the landowner—that would be the Irvine Co.—but they protect the city from running afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

"It’s hurting them now," said Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran. "This airport affects everything. Every issue gets put through that airport prism. The airport is increasingly their problem as well as our problem."

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The Demand Game
El Toro Airport Watch No. 110
by Anthony Pignataro, June 24, 1999

After spending a morning in the cargo companies’ parking lots along the John Wayne Airport (JWA) runway, it’s difficult to understand why the county is pushing so hard for a much larger international airport at El Toro. Sure, the airliners sit nose-to-tail at 7 a.m. at the end of the runway awaiting final clearance. But by 7:15, the planes are mostly gone, leaving the field to its daily dreariness of one commercial arrival or departure every hour or so.

County officials call this phenomenon "rising demand." They trumpet it everywhere—local meetings, glossy mailers, supervisor hearings, TV ads. It is the most fundamental argument they have for proposing to send 825 airliners into and out of El Toro every day.

Too bad no one in the county can back it up. According to the latest figures produced by the county’s John Wayne Airport office, JWA passenger demand decreased 5.4 percent from last year’s demand during the same month. That decrease is typical—just two months out of the past 20 showed any increase in passenger usage over the same period the previous year. The other 18 months showed declines of between 0.3 percent and 6.7 percent. Or, to put it another way, 669,749 people flew in and out of JWA in April 1997. During April of this year, just 605,872 people used the airport—64,000, for whatever reason, went elsewhere.

In 1990, then-assistant airport director Jan Mittermeier (now county executive officer) told the Los Angeles Times that "we expect the number of passengers to increase rapidly to the new cap" of 8.4 million annual passengers. That was eight years ago—JWA air passenger travel is still a full million passengers below federally imposed limits.

This is "rising demand"? You want demand—families in Orange County are taking their children to illegal backroom pharmacies because there are so few convenient community health clinics (19, or roughly one for every 100,000 people). Or consider the 57 freeway—or any OC freeway —between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Or the Newport Beach peninsula from May 31 to Sept. 1. Now that’s demand.

An odd piece of evidence that the county is playing a game with "demand" came from a three-judge panel in San Diego last week. That panel threw out a 1997 Superior Court ruling finding the county’s first El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report had "minimized" the damage the proposed airport would cause. In an ironic twist, the judges affirmed just one part of the earlier ruling: the judge’s conclusion that county officials overestimated demand for El Toro.   

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News Feature (in place of this week's El Toro Watch)
Noise, Noise, Noise
The county’s jet test delivers a clear message: Many OC residents are doomed
By Anthony Pignataro, June 10, 1999

"[B]e sensitive to property owners."
—County advisory faxed to reporters covering the noise-monitoring during the El Toro flight demonstration

Throughout most of the year, Laguna Hills residents enjoy the cool breeze that blows almost constantly from the coast. A screen of pine trees along Lake Forest Boulevard muffles nearby traffic so that even in the middle of the day, the loudest sound is often a chirping bird.

But one neighborhood—small beige homes hidden among thick shrubs and bright-green garden paths—is just two miles south of the planned El Toro International Airport’s Runway 34, the county’s proposed arrival runway. That’s what made it a great place to observe the county’s "El Toro Flight Demonstration"—a two-day, $1.3 million spectacle that, far from "reassuring" local residents about El Toro, explicitly displayed the proposed airport’s likely disastrous effects.

The first commercial plane to land during the test was a Boeing 747-400, the largest and loudest airliner in the world. It flew over Lake Forest Boulevard at 4 p.m.—exactly 10 hours behind schedule. The plane flew so low I could count the tires on its outstretched landing gear. Its high-pitched metallic scream lasted a full 40 seconds—from well before the plane became visible until it disappeared from view over the El Toro Y.

Had that plane landed at 6 a.m. as originally scheduled, it would have shattered sleep for thousands of residents unfortunate enough to live between the base and the Laguna coast.

County officials said low cloud cover and poor visibility made the early-morning landing impossible. Their reason: since the Marines long ago ripped out the base’s Instrument Landing System (ILS), the demonstration pilots had to guide their planes to the base visually. But flying visually gave the test an artificial simplicity. Aircraft lined up like pearls on a necklace in order to land, and the planes roared directly over few homes. Once the county’s airport—and its ILS—becomes operational, planes will arrive at Runway 34 from many directions, forming a wedge of almost solid noise over Dana Point, Aliso Viejo, and Lagunas Niguel, Hills, Woods and Beach.

The 6 a.m. scrub was the first indication that the county’s already-flawed test was in trouble. The test’s greatest flaw emerged months ago, when county officials decided no South County residence—including the Laguna Hills homes a mere two miles from the end of Runway 34—would require any acoustic retrofitting. Its calculations showed no one lived in a zone that receives 65 decibels of noise averaged over a 24-hour period.

The noise from the 747-400 that flew over Laguna Hills hovered around 90 decibels. Had it been fully loaded, it would have been louder. Had it flown over at 6 a.m., when there’s virtually no background noise, it would have seemed even louder. Imagine trying to sleep while resting your head against a ringing telephone.

"This should calm the fears of many residents who are concerned about potential noise from aircraft," stated a county demonstration summary released shortly before the tests. "Given the extreme level of concern in the community, the county believes it is important to provide residents with a practical demonstration of planned flights."

Shortly before 6 p.m., a van pulled up at the corner of Sand Canyon Road and Irvine Boulevard, a part of the county that has been unchanged in decades. It’s also a few hundred yards from the departure end of Runway 34. Out stepped a dark-haired man in a dark suit.

"Excuse me," he called, "are you one of the activists monitoring the tests?"

"No," I replied. "I’m a reporter."

The man’s face fell. "Oh. So am I."

It was Ron Olsen from KTLA, Channel 5. As his cameraman set up a tripod, Olsen told me how the county had thoroughly restricted access at the base to a single designated area and how he wanted one last shot of a departing plane. I told him he was in the right spot, that an aircraft had just taken off at 5:30 and another—the 747-400 I saw land over Laguna Hills—should depart at any time.

Olsen looked over his schedule. "But that was supposed to be . . ."

"5:45, I know," I said, cutting him off. "The schedule’s in chaos. The plane I saw take off earlier wasn’t even supposed to depart on this runway—it was supposed to take off to the east. I have no idea what’s going on over there."

I thought about mentioning how the plane veered farther west than the county’s proposed flight tracks allowed. But I didn’t. I also neglected mentioning how the county wants seven out of every 10 takeoffs heading east off Runway 7, but the tests demonstrated the reverse. Commercial pilots unions have said for years that Runway 7 was the worst of all of El Toro’s runways. In the tests, at least, the pilots seemed to be getting their way.

Olsen asked me if I knew how many annual operations the county planned for El Toro. I told him the plan broke down to about one operation every two minutes. Olsen looked stunned.

After a few more questions, Olsen put away his notebook and looked at his watch. 6:15 p.m. Tired of waiting, the two wished me luck and left. An unscheduled plane took off two minutes later.

Once again, it angled westward, a maneuver county officials said last summer wasn’t necessary. On the one hand, veering west—the Marines’ preferred departure—would steer planes away from the nearby rising terrain and avoid any interaction with LAX traffic. On the other, veering west means pounding with noise Irvine’s not-yet-completed Northwood community as well as parts of central Orange County.

After the test, county officials would say the northern departures went exactly as planned. For the many Northwood residents who heard the overflights, that statement would cut like a cold knife. Or maybe a buzz saw.

By 9:30 p.m., I was tired. And frustrated at constantly having to fumble through the county’s myriad demonstration schedules. And sick of spending my Friday night sitting in the cold evening air in the parking lot of the biggest Mormon church I’d ever seen in my life, just to catch a fleeting glimpse of an arriving 757 or A320.

The test was dragging into its sixth hour. Even at this hour, aircraft were landing and taking off at times that didn’t appear on any of the four schedules the county had distributed in the previous several days. The "latest" schedule—an obviously thrown-together document I pulled off the county’s Web site that day, which showed the county’s lone 747 landing at 4:05 p.m. and again 10 minutes later—was completely useless. Usually, the only way to observe a fly-over was to head somewhere near the flight path and wait. And wait. And wait.

Apart from its maddening inaccuracies, the schedule suffered from three fundamental omissions. First, there were no test flights scheduled for Friday work hours, so none of the thousands of people who work in the Irvine Spectrum directly off the base could hear how the airport affected their work environment. Second, there were no test flights early Saturday morning, despite the fact that most cargo flights and many international flights occur between midnight and 5 a.m. Finally, there were no test flights Sunday morning, when South County residents were in bed, having breakfast or attending church.

I sat in the vast Mormon church parking lot on Aliso Creek Road in Aliso Viejo to hear how the airport would affect some of the county’s most pious residents. The church looked out over the vast undeveloped land that makes up the county’s vaunted "no-home zone" that supposedly protects even the closest residents from mind-numbing jet roar.

After listening to the coyotes howl for a while under the cold, cloudless sky, I finally saw a plane fly over at 9:50 p.m. Its running lights were so bright the whole plane looked like a giant white ball. After 50 seconds of sharp jet-engine whine, the church parking lot became quiet again. Hearing that every few minutes—even once every 20 minutes—can’t be good for communing with God.

Another plane flew over at 10:25—amazingly, right on schedule, according to the latest revised schedule. Heartened that the county had finally gotten its act together, I eagerly awaited the scheduled 10:35 and 10:40 arrivals. I waited vainly until 11, and then left.

On Friday, just three planes out of 13 departed on Runway 7 to the east—hardly a realistic test for a runway slated to handle 70 percent of all takeoffs. County officials later said bad winds had forced the planes onto the longer runway headed north. But that was just more evidence that Runway 7—which forces aircraft to take off uphill into rising terrain with tailwinds—was useless in anything other than perfect conditions. And that suggests that most flights will take off over the densely populated cities to the north.

Saturday afternoon was warm and cloudless. At 2:30 p.m., I drove into the lot at the Fairbanks Corporate Park near the James Musick jail. The big white corporate offices bordering the Runway 7 crash zone offered a perfect vantage point to watch aircraft departing to the east.

The latest schedule (which I thought the county was finally adhering to) showed a departure at 2:40. Ten minutes wasn’t a bad wait, so I waited.

For the next half-hour, the only flight I saw was a hawk, slowly circling above the mustard plants in the crash zone. At 3 p.m., an MD-90 took off. The aircraft screamed overhead, eventually vanishing into the smoggy haze blanketing Coto de Caza and the hills beyond. The ascent had been slower than I expected, with the engine audibly straining in its race to hurtle the diminutive MD-90 (loaded 19,000 pounds lighter than the aircraft’s maximum takeoff weight) up and over the looming ridgeline.

I looked at my several official schedules. Either the MD-90 was 20 minutes late or the county had gone back to its original schedule. If a 757-200 took off at 3:15, then the county had finally returned to its earlier plan.

The departure was actually 3:20, but that was close enough. This time, the aircraft was 48,000 pounds less than its maximum takeoff weight. Still the engines argued as the plane headed for the hills. Still the plane lumbered slowly into the haze.

All departing aircraft in the county’s demonstration were underloaded, some by just 5,000 pounds and others more substantially. The 747-400 used Friday departed 105,000 pounds less than its maximum weight—it carried a mere 30,000 pounds of payload substitute. The county explained the weights were "typical" of the proposed airport. In any case, an aircraft 40,000 pounds underweight is a lot quieter than a maxed-out plane.

The tests went on until 8 p.m., but I was done by 3:30. I’d seen how the county could contrive special circumstances to show El Toro functioning. How it will do with 800 more operations per day is something no one will know until it happens. 

El Toro Airport Watch No. 103
No Fly Zone
By Anthony Pignataro, April 22, 1999

Sensible observers of county politics suspect the Irvine Co. secretly supports the county's disjointed, disingenuous plans for an international airport at El Toro. They know this because it's ludicrous to think a company that owns 60,000 acres of undeveloped land in OC-3,000 of which sit near the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station-hasn't yet formed an opinion on the base reuse. They know this because Irvine Co. boss Don Bren (net worth: $2.5 billion) is by far the richest and most powerful man in the county. They know this because not one supervisor has ever done or will ever do anything to displease the Irvine Co.

Mention El Toro to anyone at the Irvine Co., and you get the same answer, usually a variant of company senior vice president Larry Thomas' "the plans thus far proposed do not provide sufficient information" to say whether the company thinks flying 277,000 airliners a year over South County will hurt residents' quality of life. We've already seen one environmental impact report (ruled by a San Diego Superior Court judge to be misleading), four separate airport plans, and countless technical reports and studies funded by booster and opposition forces. When will the Irvine Co. have enough information?

Here's another piece of information for the company to consider: according to an April 13 city of Irvine report called "It's Always Been Non-Aviation," the Irvine Co. opposed using El Toro as a commercial airport during and after the city's incorporation in the early 1970s.

"Civilian or dual use of either or both the two Marine Corps air facilities shall be opposed for reasons of safety and environmental compatibility," wrote Irvine Co. vice president for planning Richard A. Reese in an Oct. 5, 1972, letter to the Orange County Planning Commission. "It shall be a policy to cooperate in the planning of systems which provide ground-transportation linkages to air-transportation facilities."

That sound logic-opposed for reasons of safety and environmental compatibility-was revealed 27 years ago, when no one had any plan, report or study on what an El Toro International Airport would look like. And that wasn't the first time Reese had written on El Toro. Two years earlier, on Nov. 3, 1970, he wrote the county planning commission that "logical extensions of the circulation elements have been anticipated which will accommodate any ultimate reuse of these facilities for urban development."

So when Irvine was becoming a city, the Irvine Co. made clear to the county that the only planes flying out of El Toro would belong to the Marine Corps. And once those were gone, the base would be gone, too. But once the base made the federal closure list in 1991 and information on a commercial-aviation reuse began emerging, the company suddenly became "neutral." Was the company's early opposition a mere public-relations ploy to get people into their "planned community?" Or is their current neutrality a tactic to keep the city of Irvine from declaring war on the company?

Thomas wouldn't comment "substantially" on the Irvine report, except to say the company was "taking a look at the documents, since they aren't documents we were immediately familiar with."

For Irvine City Councilman Larry Agran, the documents and report provide a priceless insight into the mysterious Irvine Co. mind. "The study confirms what many of us have been asserting all along, which is that Irvine was founded as a planned community on the assumption that the air station would never be converted to [commercial] aviation use," said Agran. "That was the historic position of the Irvine Co. before and after incorporation."

At the April 13 meeting, the Irvine City Council decided to "seek clarification" from the Irvine Co. on the Reese letters. We anxiously await their reply. 

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El Toro Airport Watch No. 102
Dirty Work
By Anthony Pignataro, April 15, 1999

Tired of engaging our toy soldiers in living-room battlefields, my childhood friend and I once dug a pit in my back yard. Of course, my mother later wished we hadn't, but we needed the pit to make mud for our Western Front re-creation-a 2-inch layer of mud slathered over some plywood from the garage. Factoring out the trenches, dugouts and shell holes we cut in the mud, I doubt we used more than a cubic foot of mud for the whole project.

County officials face a similar situation. Tired of playing with John Wayne Airport, where limited space and short runways keep commercial passenger and cargo operations to a minimum, they now want to go out and build a new airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

But to build an airport big enough to satisfy their needs-277,000 commercial operations, when we last checked-they need dirt. And according to the county's Facility Requirements technical report (first available in December 1998), they'll need plenty of it: roughly 5.9 million cubic yards.

The reason is simple: El Toro is fine for single-seat fighter jets and turbo-prop cargo planes, but it lacks the safety refinements commercial pilots and passengers flying in multiengine airliners demand. For instance, because of Loma Ridge and the other hills and mountains that lie to the north, south and east of the base, both sets of El Toro's runways run uphill at a 1.55 percent grade. It seems like nothing, but that grade requires planes rolling the length of the 10,000 foot north-south runways to climb the equivalent of a 10-story building.

Because that grade exceeds Federal Aviation Administration limits, the county-which has always boasted that the Marine base would become an international airport overnight-wants to flatten the runways. To do that, they intend to cut more than 4.4 million cubic yards of dirt from the base's higher northeastern and southeastern quadrants and fill 10.3 million cubic yards of dirt in the lower northwestern and southwestern quadrants. That imbalance leaves a dirt deficit of 5.9 million cubic yards.

That's a lot of dirt. The 29-acre Pentagon in Washington, D.C., contains a mere 435,000 cubic yards of concrete. Only 4.5 million cubic yards of concrete went into the monumental Hoover Dam-where construction killed 112 workers. Only Grand Coulee Dam, which spans the Columbia River, seems larger. Then again, the Grand Coulee's 10.5 million cubic yards of concrete makes it the largest dam in the world.

Getting that much dirt to the base will require more than 30,000 rail cars, which if linked in one train, would stretch 340 miles.

Exactly where the county intends to get the dirt remains a mystery. "Why don't they just scoop it off of Loma Ridge," said airport opponent and attorney Ron Steinbach, who once worked on earthwork calculations for a developer. Noting that a Marine troop transport once crashed into the ridge, Steinbach figures his proposal "would pretty much solve the airport's departure problems." 

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El Toro Airport Watch No. 101
Bring on da Noise
By Anthony Pignataro, April 8, 1999

Sometimes we just have to ask: Is it possible for the county's planners and officials to display more contempt for the residents who have to pay for and live near the proposed El Toro International Airport?

In October 1997, San Diego Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell said the county's Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for El Toro had "the effect of artificially minimizing the proposed project's environmental impacts."

County officials denied they had done anything wrong. McConnell told them to fix it anyway.

A little more than a month ago, the county released its "Draft Supplemental Analysis," the rewritten DEIR portions mandated by McConnell. It is, to say the least, simply more of the same double talk and public-relations spinning we've grown accustomed to.

For starters, the county continues to insist that El Toro's air traffic in 1994 constitutes "existing conditions." In 1994, 60,000 military jets flew in and out of El Toro. Today, the existing condition is that no military jets are using El Toro. Then again, how attractive would an international airport look when compared to an empty air station?

Even when the DEIR supplement shows the new airport will cause increased air pollution in Irvine-a city airport boosters are fond of saying will experience no ill effects from the airport-the county still wants to spin the data their way. For instance, Table S4-6 indicates traffic from the proposed airport will raise carbon monoxide (CO) emissions at seven Irvine intersections above state or federal environmental regulations.

Mostly located in and around the Irvine Spectrum, the sites seeing the greatest increases are the corner of Bake Parkway and Trabuco Road and the Sand Canyon/5 freeway interchange. Of course, the county was also quick to point out that five of those intersections already have excessive CO emissions-as though knowing those intersections are bad today makes further damage okay.

Also missing from the new DEIR was any discussion of the latest South Coast Air Quality Management District data on CO. That data, which is from 1997, shows CO didn't exceed state or federal standards on any day in central or south Orange County. By contrast, the southwest coastal region of LA County-that would be the area encompassing LAX-experienced one day that violated state standards and one day that violated federal standards. The same region reported LA's dirtiest air, with the exception of South-Central, the largely minority community over which incoming planes make their final approach to LAX.

Someday the county may come clean on the noxious future of El Toro. But that day may come long after El Toro opens, long after El Toro International Airport does its part to darken the skies over Orange County. 

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El Toro Airport Watch No. 100
Disneyland Stops Here
Was the county ever serious about a two-airport system?
By Anthony Pignataro, April 1, 1999

For 100 weeks, this column has been a cannon firing mercilessly at the county's international airport plans for the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. In that time, readers-inspired by the drama, infatuated with the slow-moving target-have said, "Sure, you can do this for 10 weeks (or 43 or 76 or 84), but how long can you keep it up?" The answer: for as long as there is official stupidity.

And as if to provide evidence that there is an inexhaustible supply (and not just of stupidity, but also arrogance, deceit and willingness to spend the public's money), the Board of Supervisors voted on March 30 to scrap its El Toro "people-mover."

The people-mover was supposed to be a 7-mile railroad linking El Toro International and John Wayne airports, whizzing air travelers between the two airports at a tremendous cost ($500 million to the taxpayers in additon to the gut-punching $110-per-passenger ticket price for the 14-mile roundtrip).

The project's cost was always exorbitant (it was introduced at an outrageous $300 million and then, like all things related to the airport, ballooned to nearly twice that before the March 30 vote). But its purpose was always unclear-unless, that is, you know how county officials inside the Hall of Administration think. From their perspective, the people-mover served two ends: to capture the public's imagination with a Disneyesque piece of useless technology and continue the pretense that once El Toro International opens, the county will continue to run John Wayne Airport.

"You can't put your arms around this thing," said airport commissioner L. David Markley of the rise and fall of the county's if-not-this-then-this planning style. The only member of the county's El Toro Citizen's Advisory Commission who opposes the airport, Markley has seen one expensively studied plan after another put before the focus group of public opinion, only to see each trashed in favor of something more saleable. Killing the people-mover, he said, is only the latest -"part of an evolution," he called it.

That evolution is headed toward a planning certainty, Markley said. "Ultimately, county officials will admit they have to close John Wayne Airport and re-orient El Toro's runways," he said. "But then the airport won't cost $1.6 billion-it will end up costing $5 billion or $6 billion."

But closing John Wayne Airport means shutting down a perfectly acceptable, expensive and modern airport. And tearing up the Marine base's old runways -however inevitable-gives the lie to the county's argument that El Toro is a turnkey operation. The cost of both initiatives would be in the billions. Since no one would buy into such a massively destructive and costly proposal, the logical answer is to say otherwise-that the county could simply "reuse" El Toro as a commercial airport and keep John Wayne fully operational. The Marines will bug out on July 2, and the next day at 6 a.m., skycaps will show up ready to tag your bags for the next SAS flight to Stockholm.

For two years, county planners have handed the supervisors a steady stream of airport plans to suit the latest transient political goal. The plans have been almost too numerous to recall-unless you have a bound copy of the first 44 installments of this column. Let's see: when 2nd District Supervisor Jim Silva campaigned for re-election against a well-funded candidate who backed South County's non-aviation reuse plan, county officials suddenly and inexplicably replaced their longtime plan to surround the airport with high-tech international-trade stuff with more popular "green" parks and agricultural land. It fooled no one.

When residents raised concerns about night flying, county officials floated news that they had asked the Federal Aviation Administration for a complete ban on night flights. The FAA always says no, but saying you're asking makes for great press.

And when airline pilots and former transportation officials complained about the safety of El Toro's runways, the same officials produced a glowing report saying El Toro was perfectly safe under all conditions. Never mind that the Air Line Pilots Association-the largest commercial pilots union in the country-rejected the report and has broken off all relations with the county; the county has its own study.

In this same style of sleight-of-hand public planning, the people-mover pulled into the station. Last year, the people-mover allowed then-4th District Supervisor William Steiner to pretend he was an honest broker: by linking the two airports, he could say everyone in the county would pay (in the coin of noise, pollution and traffic) their fair shares of airport costs. But Steiner is gone now, and his pet project is gone with him.

By getting rid of the people-mover, the supervisors approved "Plan B." That plan calls for El Toro and John Wayne to operate independently, with the "market" to decide how big John Wayne Airport should be. It also calls for a massive increase in air operations at El Toro.

Under Plan B, 277,700 commercial jet airliners will operate out of El Toro, compared with 183,500 in the previous plan. With a single vote, the supervisors added 90,000 additional commercial-airline flights to El Toro every year-roughly one flight every two minutes. Cargo-usage numbers alone are astonishing: 2 million tons of cargo per year will move in and out of El Toro-the same amount that passes through Memphis Airport, home to Federal Express and the largest air-cargo hub in the nation today.

No one knows how long the county will stand behind Plan B before trashing that one, too. What airport activists, county officials and sources close to the planning process do know is that eventually, the county will have to admit what they've known all along: John Wayne Airport must close, and the runways at El Toro have to go.

Slowly but methodically, the evolution has been taking place. The next step, of course, is to rebuild El Toro's runways. After a few more years of studies and a few more million dollars are spent on planning, officials will begin mentioning the unmentionable-that El Toro's runways are useless and John Wayne Airport will close.

And when they do, we'll be there. Look for it in El Toro Airport Watch No. 253.

For a copy of the El Toro Airport Watch compilation, please send $1 for shipping and handling to El Toro Airport Watch, OC Weekly, P.O. Box 10788, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. 

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El Toro Airport Watch No. 99
Put-Down Central
By Anthony Pignataro, March 25, 1999

County officials can really be insulting sometimes. You'd think the responsibility of planning and constructing a $1.6 billion international airport would at the very least cause them to pause now and again and think really carefully about how they go about their jobs. You'd think they'd take seriously the fact that people pay them to go about their work openly and honestly.

But no. Instead, they huddle in their offices, walled off from the press and public, quietly chipping away at the $1.6 billion while they design one of the largest airports in the U.S. in near-complete secrecy. Then, on those rare occasions when they do offer information freely, it's contorted into a public-relations pretzel-detailed on trivial matters and vague on such issues as cost and feasibility.

On March 19, the county sent out an eight-page release titled "The El Toro Airport Takes Shape." Ostensibly containing fact sheets on two new county reports dealing with terminal design and roadway access, the release is actually just another dose of the same sugary blather we've come to expect.

"The airport is really starting to come to life," Courtney C. Wiercioch, El Toro program manager, is quoted as saying in the release. "[W]e believe the terminal should reflect the vibrancy and history of the county. This airport terminal will be a sleek gateway to Orange County's business and tourist attractions."

Sure. Think about this: the last time the county gave a price tag for the airport, it was $1.6 billion. Think of what the county could do with that kind of money. It could, well, get out of debt for one-$1.6 billion should just about cover it.

Now think about this: the only other part of the airport ever given a price tag was the 7-mile "hard-link rail system" selected by the county Board of Supervisors in April 1998 to link El Toro and John Wayne airports. At the time, county planners said the line (or connector system, as the county technocrats like to put it) would cost $300 million. But according to the March 19 release, the cost of that link "would add nearly half a billion dollars in construction costs."

Wow. That brings the total price tag to $2.1 billion. And a half mil for a rail line is a lot of money, especially since it's still only on paper and when completed will travel 7 miles parallel to the 405 freeway. But at the very end of the release, the county adds this caveat: "However, it is expected that none of the operationally feasible connector systems, including a system in the I-405 alignment, would be accepted by passengers and airlines. This is due to the relatively high costs per connecting passenger."

So at least a full quarter of the money spent on the county's "sleek" airport is for something that is completely unacceptable to the airlines and flying public. And as a result, county officials now say they'll scrap the rail line because it's so expensive.

Yeah. I can think of a few insults, too. 

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