The
OC Weekly El Toro Watch - 1997 Archives.
The
OC Weekly El Toro Watch - 1997 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.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 44--
The Race Begins
by Anthony Pignataro December 26, 1997
The hottest thing in Orange County right now is George Argyros’ signing hand.
Last week, the father of the proposed El Toro International Airport held a $250-a-head cocktail party for one of his old friends, 2nd District Supervisor Jim Silva. The reason: the good supe actually has an intelligent, capable opponent for next year’s election.
Sandra Genis, former Costa Mesa mayor, ignited a firestorm through Newport Beach last month when she announced both her candidacy and her desire to kill the county’s airport plans. The Newport Beach/Costa Mesa Daily Pilot even published a few hit pieces, quoting numerous outraged city officials. Newport Beach City Councilman John Hedges speculated that Genis’ anti-airport position springs from her desire to “say anything to get elected”--a stupid move, if true, since most consider the 2nd District solidly pro-airport.
Newport Beach isn’t even a part of the 2nd District, but their fear is well-founded. Throughout Genis’ career in Costa Mesa politics, she’s proven herself ruthlessly anti-developer. If she wins, odds are she’d provide the third vote to kill the airport--a possibility developers like Argyros take very seriously.
With public opinion going south throughout the county on the airport, airport boosters need every supervisor vote they can get. Which is why they like Silva. The morning before the fund-raiser, Silva was in the Board of Supervisors hearing room, voting to allow cargo planes to use El Toro while the Marines are still in control--an old Argyros dream the Marines vehemently oppose. Since the Marines are steadfast in the objection to “joint-use,” and Congressman Chris Cox sponsored legislation a few years ago effectively banning the possibility, it’s unlikely any commercial cargo planes will touch the El Toro tarmac until the Marines leave. But Silva came through, anyway.
Silva’s campaign finances between 1993 and 1996 illustrate the sordid world of the airport boosters. In those years, Silva took $2,000 from Argyros, the man who, in 1994, gave the county Measure A, which mandated an airport at El Toro. Silva’s also taken $3,000 from the Irvine Co. and $3,000 from the Mission Viejo Co., both of which stand to make a large fortune off the airport. Lyle Overby, the one-time county lobbyist who now lobbies for Newport Beach on airport matters, has given Silva $1250 since 1993.
Other contributors are closer to home. Silva’s taken $699 from Nelson Communications Group, the PR firm the county hired in August to conduct a $329,000 El Toro media blitz. P & D Consultants, who wrote the county’s El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report and will write the Airport Master Plan, gave Silva $500 in 1996. Michael Gatzke of the law firm Gatzke, Mispagel & Dillon gave Silva $1,000 in 1994. Today, Gatzke is the county’s outside counsel for El Toro matters. He’s already proven his worth by demolishing the airport opponents’ Measure A lawsuits. In addition, partner Mark Mispagel works as Special Counsel to the El Toro Master Development Program.
Silva voted for all of the above contracts. His actions exemplify how a small elite permeate not just the El Toro issue, but the entire county.
Godspeed, Sandy.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 43--
Have We Got Your Attention?
by Anthony Pignataro December 19, 1997
Last Wednesday, after two months of bureaucratic fact-finding and consulting, the leading anti-airport coalition gave the public its first glimpse of what the El Toro Marine Corps Airstation could look like if the current airport plan meets the fate it deserves--the bureaucratic spike.
Meeting at Irvine City Hall, the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA) unveiled three proposals with uninspiring and imprecise noms de guerre--"urban core," "college town" and "central park"--for 100 local residents. The good news is that any one of the plans is preferable to a noisy, smog-puking, road-snarling international airport with "GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!" signs flashing all night.
Costs are not yet available, but consultants projected excellent job growth and economic revenue for each. The bad news, as Irvine resident Irv Smith pointed out at the meeting, is that the plans lack "an attention getter." Which may have been the point: South County residents aren't trendsetters.
They're the kind of people who made Irvine famous for homeowner's associations, master planning and "consistent uses." The plans also lacked compelling detail. Worse than uninspiring, that shorting of particulars could allow pro-airport forces to re-define each plan.
Take the "urban core": without specifics, it's possible the place will look like a movie set--I'm thinking Blade Runner, Batman or Fritz Lang's scary epic Metropolis. Or even LA's government-engineered Bunker Hill, which City of Quartz author Mike Davis has described as a "demonically self-referential hyperstructure" with an "anti-pedestrian bias" exemplified in its "fascist obliteration of street frontage." Shudder.
"College town" sounds better, even if it isn't, but its economic numbers were lower than the other two plans. That might be offset by the advantages to both the proposed college and the nearby Irvine Spectrum's myriad high-tech companies.
But the "central park" option seems the most promising--indeed, insiders say, it already has the edge. One problem: the park in this central park is just 300 acres--more like Fountain Valley's Mile Square than New York's world famous 843-acre Central Park or the 1,000 acre San Francisco Golden Gate Park. Golden Gate Park is a model of what Orange County Central Park could become: a vast public space of museums, green meadows, lakes, gardens, ball fields and even a buffalo preserve.
What unique attractions would our central park have that would unite county residents no matter where they live? Airport opponents have until April 3, 1998 to figure out an answer.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 42--
Stress Test
By Anthony Pignataro December 12, 1997
Courtney Wiercioch is under a lot of pressure.
A San Diego Superior Court judge recently ruled that the her El Toro planning office had produced a misleading Draft Environmental Impact Report. The city of Irvine has begun efforts to eliminate the county from El Toro planning entirely by annexing the base. Paul Eckles, the executive director of the seven South County cities fighting the airport, has been pushing for access to boxes of records detailing the county’s dealings with P & D Consultants--the chief airport consulting firm. Worst of all, sources say the El Toro planning office is unhappy with the job Nelson Communications Group, the public relations firm hired in July, has done selling the airport to a weary public.
In the midst off all that, Wiercioch found the time on November 25 to labor over a three-page letter to Times OC reporter Lorenza Munoz, author of three recent November stories on El Toro. Wiercioch’s tone was that of stern mother: “I asked and strongly recommended that your story carefully and accurately characterize the factual information which I provided,” she wrote. “This, unfortunately, did not occur.”
Wiercioch added that “the three stories referenced above are simply not representative of the type of fair and accurate reporting you have committed to providing.” Frankly, the letter shocked us. The stories, while critical of county actions and decisions, were hardly hit pieces. In fact, they seemed like the classic Times El Toro story--balanced to the point of pointlessness.
Wiercioch started into Munoz by accusing her of misreporting El Toro travel costs as exclusively lobbying costs--something Munoz obviously did. But Wiercioch’s righteous indignation over that minor point ignored a larger one: since 1995 the county spent $80,000 on official travel for a variety of reasons. All of that travel dealing with El Toro--call it “lobbying,” “planning” or whatever--is aimed at ramming an airport down the throats of South County.
Her next beef dealt with Munoz’ handling of County CEO Jan Mittermeier’s November 14 refusal to grant 5th District Supervisor Tom Wilson’s request to link the county’s website to the anti-airport website. According to Wiercioch, she told Munoz the night before her story ran that Mittermeier had, in fact, authorized such a link “in at least one” location, whatever that means. Wiercioch also criticized Munoz for holding the story’s “positive resolution....until page 11.” That resolution, was, of course, the news that Wiercioch’s own husband would be creating a new county El Toro website.
The last story Wiercioch blasted was the most important. That story, from November 18, dealt with the county’s recent meetings with airline pilots union officials in Washington, D.C., during which they allegedly discussed El Toro’s inherent dangers. In her letter Wiercioch takes Munoz to task for using the words “configuration” and “orientation” interchangeably, explaining that she had already told Munoz that “the County is not considering altering the compass heading [orientation] of any of the runways.”
But Wiercioch went on to say that the original purpose behind her planners meeting with pilots union officials was to discuss safety issues. In fact, it is the orientation of the El Toro runways that lay at the heart of the pilot’s union opposition to the El Toro plans. The orientation, the pilots say, hurls planes uphill with a tailwind into rising terrain--a hat-trick of dangers pilots say they won’t risk. The two largest pilots unions maintain that the only way to make El Toro safe is to alter the runway orientation.
There’s an easy cure for Wiercioch’s stress--the county could simply have her and her staff work on something else, something like an El Toro reuse plan that isn’t despised by the vast majority of the 1.3 million people who live around the base.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 41--
What’s Your Vector, Victor?
by Anthony Pignataro December 5, 1997
Two weeks ago, 10 commercial pilots showed how desperate El Toro airport boosters are getting. The pilots, virtually all Newport Beach residents, held a press conference to say that the proposed El Toro International Airport runways are fine and safe. Their statements came just days after a series of revelations that county officials have been discussing possible changes in El Toro’s runway configuration with Washington, D.C. officials.
For the past year, the numbers of pilots opposed to the county’s plans has been getting larger. Both the Airline Pilots’ Association and the Allied Pilots’ Association--each representing thousands of pilots--oppose the county’s El Toro plans. So does the Airline Transport Association, which represents the airline industry. So do commercial pilots and Laguna Beach residents Charles Quilter and Todd Thornton, both of whom told the Weekly that the county’s emphasis on runway 7--the east/west runway--is unnecessarily dangerous. Both pilots added that the only way to make El Toro truly safe is to pave new runways parallel to the 5 freeway.
Now Donald Segner has entered the fight. On October 31, Segner--a Laguna Beach resident and former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) associate administrator--wrote a detailed letter to Jane Garvey, the current FAA administrator, concerning the county’s El Toro plans. His point was simple: “[the county’s] plan, in my opinion, and in the opinion of many other aviation experts and professional aviation organizations, has created many safety and environmental concerns.”
“I’m not for or against the airport,” Segner told the Weekly. “I’m just trying to break information free.” But Segner added the commercial pilots who support the current El Toro plan “don’t understand the [Federal Aviation Regulations].”
Segner’s letter is a scathing critique of the county’s plans. In his discussion of runway 7 Segner first pointed out that runway requires planes to depart downwind, uphill and into steeply rising terrain--three factors that lay at the heart of the commercial pilots’ opposition.
Segner then added that “the recently published Education and Training Aid on ‘Controlled Flight into Terrain’....states that 80 percent of the over 9,000 fatalities that have occurred by large jet aircraft flying into terrain have occurred when they were within 10 miles of an airport that had nearby terrain up to 6,000 feet.” Santiago Peak, which lies just northeast of the El Toro base, is 5,720 feet.
The commercial pilots who support the county’s airport plans insist that pilots merely have to reduce their load of passengers and cargo during times of tailwinds to be safe. This, of course, would cut into airline profitability. But what really worries Segner is the possibility of an aircraft losing an engine on takeoff from runway 7. Quilter previously told the Weekly that the pilot would have to make a hard right turn immediately after getting into the air, leaving just 12 feet between the right wing tip and ground.
“More then enough safety issues have surfaced out of the county’s proposed El Toro airport configuration and proposed operations,” concluded Segner in his letter, “that we think that the best interests of the flying public are not being taken into account.” Segner added that “the people of Orange County need to know what the noise and environmental impacts will be. Lack of information as to the real noise impacts is misleading many buyers and developers.”
Segner, who hasn’t yet heard back from the FAA, says he can’t understand why the county hasn’t simply opened up its planning process to reassure the public. “I want to know why they’re doing all their work in secret,” he said. “What are they afraid of?”
El Toro Airport Watch No. 40--
Read No Evil
by Anthony Pignataro November 26, 1997
Nearly everyone in Orange County knows of the escalating war between County CEO Jan Mittermeier and Board Supervisors Tom Wilson and Todd Spitzer. Earlier this month, Mittermeier bluntly denied Wilson’s request to see the El Toro planners’ travel schedules, sparking furious calls from the two supervisors for the board to curtail her power.
But that wasn’t the only request from Wilson that Mittermeier shelved. Long before Wilson requested the El Toro planning office travel schedules he asked the county to link its website to Len Kranser’s El Toro Airport Information website.
“The El Toro Airport Info site....provides current, historical and practical information on the issues surrounding the reuse,” wrote Wilson. He added that “the presence of a link...will be of assistance in disseminating much information and of no detriment to the County’s process.”
Mittermeier rejected this one the day after she killed the travel schedule request. “I do not believe it appropriate to direct my staff to provide a link between the County’s web site and a web site which is actively and aggressively opposing current Board policy,” she wrote. Mittermeier added that she didn’t think Kranser’s site contained “accurate, timely and factual information regarding the reuse process.”
Sometimes, Mittermeier is just too damned funny. Kranser’s site contains digests of the latest newspaper articles concerning El Toro and aviation issues. Wilson was probably just proud of the video interviews with him and Spitzer that Kranser had posted on the site. Kranser also posts information on El Toro litigation efforts, anti-airport activist groups and links to aviation-related sites including the County. Long-time readers of this space know the site also archives nearly the entire El Toro Airport Watch. Kranser updates the site every couple of days.
When Mittermeier criticized Kranser’s site, the County’s El Toro site was over a year out of date, even though it was last updated on May 13. Its planning office contact list lacked key managers. Only one meeting schedule was accessible and that ended in October 1996. The site contained no information on the recent court decision slamming the county’s Draft Environmental Impact Report, the failed Measure A lawsuits or the recent planning office cost overruns.
In a quiet admission of defeat, the county shut down the site on November 18, posting the message “Coming Soon...A completely redesigned and updated El Toro [Local Redevelopment Authority] Site!” But don’t worry--as Wilson’s office has pointed out, the County website will still be linked to some of the most important websites around: ESPNET Sports Zone, MTV, The Sci-Fi Channel and the ever popular Let’s Eat OC. Which reminds us--guess which OC newspaper website isn’t linked to the County?
El Toro Airport Watch No. 39--
Wrong-Way Runways
by Anthony Pignataro 13 November 1997
Since the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station was first trumpeted as a potential international airport in the 1980s, boosters and county officials have insisted the site was perfect for a huge commercial airport. They talked about “analogous use,” economic need and job creation. But the centerpiece of their argument was this: runways are one of the most expensive parts of new-airport construction, and, they pointed out, El Toro already has runways. No new ones would be necessary.
Critics--aggrieved cities, airport experts and airline pilots--disagreed. They said the runways would direct El Toro’s air traffic into arrival corridors for John Wayne Airport and LAX. More terrifying, the most-used runway would send commercial airliners hurtling toward foothills below the Santa Ana Mountains.
Now, it seems, the county may acknowledge the critics have been right all along. According to a Nov. 12 public-records request by the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA)--the seven South County cities opposed to the county’s airport plans--the county has quietly moved away from its early proclamations and intends to bulldoze the existing runways and construct expensive new ones.
“We were informed that you no longer anticipate that the proposed airport would rely upon the current runway configuration and place 70 percent of takeoffs on [the runway pointing east],” wrote Paul D. Eckles, ETRPA executive director, to county officials. “Instead, we were told, most operations would take place from two parallel north-south . . . runways.” Eckles added that “it is contemplated that a new 11,000-foot runway would be built.”
Eckles got his tip during a recent two-day fact-finding trip to Washington, D.C. Traveling with three ETRPA board members, Eckles said they met with FAA officials, as well as members of Congress and public-interest groups.
“We heard that the county had been circulating an alternative plan designed to overcome some of the objections that had been made,” Eckles told the Weekly. “Obviously, this is very important, which is why I’m trying to pin this down.” Eckles described his sources as “very credible” but refused to name them.
Critics say new runways could cost the county an extra $1 billion--a figure that would double the county’s current estimate for airport construction. And that would make it more difficult for the county to maintain the official fiction that El Toro International Airport isn’t going to cost taxpayers anything.
County officials were unavailable for comment at press time.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 38--
Let the Whitewash Begin
by Anthony Pignataro November 7, 1997
October was a tough month for the county.
First a UC Irvine poll showed that most residents thought county planner were fouling up the El Toro reuse process. Then yet another pilots union denounced the airport plans as dangerous. But real damage occurred October 28.
That’s when San Diego Judge Judith McConnell issued her final ruling on the El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), reiterating her earlier statement that the DEIR “artificially minimized the proposed project’s environmental impacts.” In other words, the county’s projections that noise wouldn’t be significant, pollution would decrease and traffic would be neglible are wrong.
If the fifth-largest international airport in the U.S were truly “the highest and best use” of the El Toro base, the county wouldn’t have had to produce such a bankrupt document.
Attempts by county officials and boosters to whitewash the judge’s ruling were cynical--and comical. “I am surprised by the judge’s ruling and do not believe that her decision accurately reflects the facts of the case,” said county CEO Jan Mittermeier in a terse press release. “This EIR is thorough and accurate and complete.” Mittermeier, who added that the county would appeal the decision, reassured those in the county with a vested interest in the airport that “We will continue full speed ahead.”
Mittermeier’s righteous indignation contrasted sharply with her own attorney’s take on the judicial disemboweling. “We can fix those [objections] without a great deal of strain,” said Michael Gatzke, the attorney handling the county’s case. “It is all correctable.”
So the DEIR is “accurate” but “correctable.” Maybe Gatzke and Mittermeier should let the Newport boosters handle the spin this time. After all, it was their eternal whining that John Wayne Airport will “destroy” their modest community of Mediterranean villas and seaside mansions seems to be the ultimate reason behind this impending disaster. “South County will continue to shriek about victory and obstruct the process,” said Newport councilman Tom Edwards. “And the process will continue forward.”
Now that’s what George Argyros and the big developers want to hear. Never mind the fact that the DEIR is misleading--there’s a process going on, and the South County should stay the hell out. Who knows what could happen if those people got to decide whether jet overflights every couple of minutes would be good for their neighborhood.
Former Newport Beach Mayor Clarence Turner who put the best face on the decision. “To me this is one big victory,” said Turner, Newport’s dark-horse candidate for next year’s 5th District supervisorial race. The reason for his optimism, when so many of his comrades are trying to downplay the ruling, was McConnell’s statement that the county should reassess the future airport’s capacity.
In other words, Turner sees the county building an even bigger airport in El Toro as a result of the ruling. It’s too bad McConnell didn’t throw out the DEIR--using Turner’s logic, that would free up the county to turn El Toro into a spaceport.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 37--
Cloud Cover
by Anthony Pignataro October 31, 1997
If George Argyros gets his multibillion dollar wish, it’s going to get a lot cloudier around here. And warmer.
In 2020, when the county estimates El Toro will be at full capacity, the airline industry estimates there will be 20,000 jet airliners in the skies. According to new data published in the Summer issue of Earth Island Journal, these airliners pose the single greatest unregulated threat to the atmosphere. Jets aren’t environmentally-friendly.
When taking off, a jumbo jet will devour over 500,000 gallons of air per second. After five minutes, that adds up to the air produced by nearly 50,000 acres of forest. Jet exhaust makes matters worse. An airliner spends 32 minutes a day taxiing on the ground, during which it emits 190 pounds of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)--an ozone-eating emission which the California Air Resources Board considers its “No.1 concern.” That 190 pounds is equivalent to 2,000 cars dring on the freeway for a half-hour.
But as the Journal points up, what jets do at high altitudes that causes the most concern. “Aircraft emissions are the only significant man-made source of pollutants in the upper troposphere and in the stratosphere,” wrote University of Munich meteorologist Werner Metz. At the edge of the stratosphere, around 35,000 feet, jet engines inject soot, carbon monoxide and sulfuric acid into the thin air, artificially seeding clouds and producing condensation trails. These “contrails” can stretch for thousands of miles and linger above the Earth for months, contributing to global warming.
Heavily traveled air traffic regions are most at risk. In 1981, Stanley A. Chagnon of the Illinois State Water Survey said air traffic regions over the midwest had been getting increasingly cloudy since the 1960s. A NASA Langley Research Center study concluded in April 1996 that there were contrails over New York state 40 percent of the month. The NASA study added that satellite data confirmed that “in certain heavy air traffic corridors, cloud cover has increased by as much as 20 percent.”
And at a March 1997 NASA conference on atmospherics in Virginia Beach, one European scientist produced a composite photo showing Europe covered with clouds except for one area--Bosnia, where commercial planes visit as rarely as possible.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 36--
The Ministries of Misinformation
by Anthony Pignataro October 24, 1997
Two weeks ago a Superior Court judge gave the county’s El Toro planners a public spanking. That’s when San Diego Judge Judith McConnell ruled that the county’s El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) “has the effect of artificially minimizing the proposed project’s environmental impacts.”
In short, county residents learned their planners had misled them about how bad the proposed commercial airport at El Toro would be. The Times OC and the Register--both of which carried the story on their front pages--were just as guilty.
Since that hot August day in 1996 when El Toro planning head Courtney C. Wiercioch handed out the DEIR to a mostly compliant O.C. press corps, both major dailies have spun the proposed airport the county’s way, virtually ignoring key warning signs that a train wreck was coming.
When real-estate appraisers said noise from the proposed airport would demolish South County property values, the papers found a pro-development study that concluded the opposite. When commercial pilots started saying the proposed airport was dangerous and that El Toro’s current runways might have to be completely rebuilt, the papers quoted county officials who said everything was fine. When former Irvine mayor and anti-airpoprt leader Larry Agran said the proposed airport would require billions of dollars in freeway expansion, the papers ignored him.
After laying out the October 10 ruling’s details and giving anti-airport groups the chance to yell yippee, the Times went on to quote county apologists. “I don’t know that any of this is going to have a terribly significant impact,” said Michael Gatzke, one of the county’s attorneys. Airport booster and ex-Newport Beach mayor Clarence Turner described the ruling as a “short-term victory, at best, for the opponents,” adding, “all you do is make the developer do it over.”
The Register followed the same strategy, ending its story with quotes from Newport Beach City Councilman Tom Edwards and Citizens Advisory Commission member Bruce Nestande. “I read it as there are certain technical items that need to be taken care of,” said Edwards. Nestande razzed anti-airport activists by concluding, “They have not slowed down the planning process.”
The question neither paper answered was why the county minimized noise, pollution and traffic impacts in the first place. After all, county officials have always maintained that the airport is necessary for Orange County’s future. They have said the noise it produces would be less than what South Countians put up with now. They have insisted that the airport wouldn’t create any air pollution. They have stated emphatically that the airport will require only a few relatively cheap road improvements.
Clearly, all of that is wrong. Yet neither paper indicted the county for misleading residents. Instead, they treated the decision as a mere procedural hump the county must scale in its efforts to build an airport at El Toro.
The day after the ruling, the Times editorialized that the county merely had to explore more airport alternatives. Just one sentence dealt with McConnell’s ruling, and it only affirmed that the decision “supports the seriousness of residents’ concerns.” At least the Times did that much--the Reg drew no conclusions from the ruling.
The basic reason for the county’s misleading DEIR is obvious: an honest DEIR would predict massive pollution, incessant noise and horrific traffic congestion following the opening of El Toro International. But such candor would pretty much kill any airport plan.
The major dailies should have been detailing these problems for the last year. Had they been, it’s doubtful the county would be this deep in an airport plan that doesn’t add up.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 35 -
October 10, 1997 Newport’s Nightmare
by Anthony Pignataro
Defying commercial pilots and FAA statements that an airport at El Toro will hurl scores of planes over its most luxurious homes, Newport Beach continues to view the Marine Corps base as its savior. In fact, the 1997-1998 city budget has $500,000 allocated to private lobbyists and attorneys for “control[ling] the growth of flights out of John Wayne Airport and for studies supporting the commercial use of El Toro Airport.”
Of course, Newport didn’t settle for anything less than top-notch representation. The Washington, DC-based firm Ball, Janik and Novack takes Newport’s case to the federal government. Closer to home, lobbyist Lyle Overby--who was so close to ex-county treasurer Robert Citron he knew of the impending bankruptcy a year before the rest of us--works the county halls. The city is also paying $15,000 a month to local firm (and Irvine Co. lobbyist) Government Solutions to counter efforts by anti-El Toro groups in the South County. Newport is also retaining attorney Clem Shute, whose efforts battling the South County citys’ Measure A lawsuits proved so successful.
Since 1981, the city of Newport has spent $5.5 million on airport-related lobbying. In public, city officials echo supreme airport booster and land developer George Argyros’ ostensible altruism, saying their efforts are in the best interest of the county. But Newport has tremendous self-interest in the future of John Wayne Airport.
John Wayne sends departing planes directly over Newport 15 hours a day. Newport’s past lobbying against John Wayne resulted in nighttime bans on operations, a special noise-reducing departing procedure and a temporary service limit of just eight million passengers per year. That limit expires in 2005, freeing John Wayne to serve its physical capacity of 15 million annual passengers.
It’s perfectly understandable that Newport residents hate the planes that fly over their homes every day. What’s not is the city’s belief that El Toro will solve its problems. If the county decides not to build an airport at El Toro, the worst Newport will have to face is John Wayne running at full capacity.
But if Newport gets its wish and 38 million passengers fly in and out of El Toro every year, planes from both airports will overfly the city day and night, making the city the most-overflown in the county. Officials may believe that El Toro is tucked safely away in South County, but airplanes need a lot of space to maneuver. To avoid the mountains that nearly surround the base, to avoid aircraft arriving at LAX and to avoid planes landing at John Wayne, planes taking off from El Toro will have to fly over Newport--precisely what Newport wants stopped.
In Newport, even the irony is expensive.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 34--October 3, 1997
It’s gonna cost ya
by Anthony Pignataro
The county needs good bargains. It’s not easy to lose $1.5 billion and still expect to pay off developers with big contracts.
On paper, the El Toro International Airport proposal certainly looks like a winner: 38 million annual passengers and 1.64 million tons of cargo shipped yearly for just $1.6 billion.
Larry Agran knows better. “I believe the public cost of the El Toro International Airport will be at least $5 billion--roughly $2,000 for every man, woman and child,” said Agran, chairman of Project ’99, at a briefing the anti-ETIA group held last week.
“I call it the rule of three--multiply whatever number the county gives you, and that will be the real cost.” Agran’s point: the county’s airport-cost projection is understated in the extreme. He spoke from experience. In the six years he spent as the mayor of Irvine, Agran watched numerous “megaprojects” balloon out of control.
Recalling the 1980s plan for a new Irvine City Hall, Agran said costs rose from $5 million to a remarkable $33 million. Other examples are more notorious. “Remember when officials swore the [San Joaquin Hills] toll road would cost no more than $340 million?” asked Agran. “At the time, I bet they couldn’t do it for twice that much. In the end, I lost because it ended up costing $1.5 billion.”
According to Agran, it’s common for governments to underestimate one-time project costs. Agran cited the troubled Denver International Airport, a giant, state-of-the-art facility that took years to make right and ended up costing $5 billion--$3.3 billion more than originally stated.
Taking a page out of the El Toro Community Reuse Plan labeled “Infrastructure Costs,” Agran had some fun. Starting with the line item “Terminal Complex,” Agran said the $987 million projected cost is wildly off-base. “It cost the county $300 million to build a 14-gate terminal at John Wayne Airport,” he said. Then he added “El Toro is supposed to have at least six times that number of gates. I think we’re conservative if we say the terminal price should be $2.5 billion.”
The line “Off-Site Roads . . . $66.2 million” proved just as interesting. “This doesn’t include any improvements to roads outside the base or the 5 and 405 freeways,” said Agran. “We see that as costing at least $2 billion to the state and local cities.”
Of course, the county is well on its way to proving Agran correct. The Airport Master Plan is already 43 percent over budget at $20 million. As yet, no one is predicting how high it will eventually get.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 33-- September 26, 1997
Listen! Up in the Sky!
by Anthony Pignataro
Dave Kirkey hopes everyone who listens to his new album suffers. He hopes they lose sleep at night. He hopes they’ll get nauseous. He hopes they’ll go mad. He hopes they’ll experience what’s in store for his neighborhood.
Kirkey--who runs Eagle Canyon Music and lives in Coto de Caza--utterly hates the proposed El Toro International Airport. So he headed out to John Wayne and LAX and recorded what he heard. The result is a 72-minute CD entitled “Under the Flight Path: A Preview of El Toro International Airport.”
We got a copy of the CD through the anti-airport citizens’ group Project ’99, which distributes the disc. It’s nothing more than a recording of airplanes landing, over and over, every minute and half. Playing it in the office taught us a couple of things--mostly that Kirkey did a damn good job.
If you set the volume so the opening narration is as loud as room conversation, what follows will be as loud as actual jets flying just feet above your head. Played at home, in a quiet room at night, the CD is eerie. It realistically recreates the full metallic clarity of screaming turbo-fan jet engines. We couldn’t help but imagine the trepidation brought on when the sounds come from real jets flying really low.
Apparently, Kirkey even managed to unnerve the O.C. Register. On September 10, the paper’s opinion page took a clumsy swing at Kirkey, saying the airport’s proposed 18,000 acre buffer zone would protect residents from noise. In fact, this figure refers to the current buffer that surrounds El Toro--a buffer the county intends to scale back significantly once commercial jets start landing.
The editorial adds that “the recording is based on as-yet-unverified ideas about what kinds of flights that El Toro would host.” This time the Reg was being disingenuous. The El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) not only lists each proposed aircraft type, but graphs what they sound like when landing and taking off. Kirkey says the DEIR numbers correspond to what he heard when recording the CD.
Kirkey’s disc creates numerous opportunities to liven up the airport debate. For instance, someone could play the CD at supermarkets and shopping mall parking lots all over the county and give residents an idea of what’s to come. Opponents could also rent small boats at Balboa Bay and sail out to George Argyros’ house on Harbor Island. Since he loves airplanes so much, we’re sure he’d love hearing the disc day and night.
You can obtain a copy of the disc by writing Project ’99 at P.O. Box 252, Irvine, CA 92650.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 32-- September 19, 1997
Mi Vida Local
by Anthony Pignataro
The county board of supervisors--designated as our El Toro Local Redevelopment Authority last year--is anything but local. In late August the anti-airport group Project ’99 sent a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer detailing that fact with excerpts from the Navy’s Community Guide to Base Reuse.
“The local jurisdictions and interest groups impacted by the base closure oppose the LRA’s plan,” wrote Larry Agran and Stephen C. Smith, chair and deputy director respectively of Project ’99. “The track record over the last two years is clear--the County did not include south county cities.”
To clarify their point, Agran and Smith quoted directly from the base reuse guide. “The LRA should have the complete support of local jurisdictions and interest groups, who speak with one voice through the designated LRA.” In other words, the El Toro LRA is violating Navy Department base reuse guidelines by dictating terms to the affected cities, which hold minority representation on the Board of Supervisors.
The letter must have stung the county, because both CEO Jan Mittermeier and 1st District Supervisor Chuck Smith met with an aide to Senator Boxer in Washington this week. Mittermeier outlined her reason for the meeting in a September 4 letter to Boxer. “We [Mittermeier and Smith] will be happy to discuss, point by point if you like, Project ’99’s allegations,” Mittermeier wrote. “We look forward to presenting to you the facts.”
But there was really only one fact, which Mittermeier summed up as “each time we invite the surrounding communities to participate in the planning process, they reject any type of cooperation.” What Mittermeier neglected to tell Boxer was that county officials usually attach unacceptable conditions to South County cooperation, such as last month’s demand that south county cities must first drop all their litigation against the county before they could develop the county’s non-aviation alternative reuse plan.
The inclusion of Smith in the meeting was also interesting, considering that the Project ’99 letter made reference to the Supervisors’s acceptance of $4,000 from pro-airport booster George Argyros during last year’s supervisorial campaign.
Although Boxer’s office and county are tight-lipped about what transpired in the meeting, we’re sure they had plenty to talk about.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 31 --September 12, 1997
(Over)runways
by Anthony Pignataro
Two months ago, the South Orange County Chambers of Commerce discovered that its memberships utterly despise the proposed El Toro International Airport. A Chamber of Commerce survey sent to its members showed that 79 percent of South County’s companies oppose the airport.
This is the kind of opposition that Courtney Wiercioch--El Toro program manager--held up as an excuse for her budgetary mega-blunder. In late August, Wiercioch told the O.C. Register that her staff needed $20 million to answer all the questions generated by hostile South Countians.
The only problem with that was Wiercioch’s previous assurances to her county bosses that her staff needed only $14 million. Her excuse for the 43-percent increase was courageous, to say the least. “We have never done a plan like this,” she told the Register. “We did our best to estimate and we underestimated.”
The overrun, outlined in the recommended 1997-98 Local Redevelopment Authority budget, is a mockery of how governments mesh with private-sector firms. The Airport System Master Plan came in at over $3 million over budget and the Planned Community plan tipped $2.6 million over budget. The reasons noted in the budget were the same for both items: “Cost increased when contract negotiations finalized.” In other words, P & D Associates--the consulting firm that will write the above plans--asked for a lot more money. The county board voted 3-2 to give it to them.
Ironically, the OC Metro recently named Wiercioch--who makes over $100,000 a year--one of the county’s 10 rising stars, fawning over her public-private liason skills. “Wiercioch does represent one potential future for the county,” the Metro wrote, “a future where government and private enterprise work together.”
For the county, that future means rubber-stamping P & D’s work, irrespective of price and content. And if the planning snafu is any guide, the entire airport should end up costing the county at least $2.3 billion, instead of $1.6 billion the county currently boasts of.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 30-- September 5, 1997
Abject Objectivity
by Anthony Pignataro
Airports aren’t built from asphalt and concrete. They’re built from highly political numbers--numbers of flights in and out, tons of gasoline fumes released into the air each month, cost overruns in planning, and so on. But the most political number is likely to be the value sucked out of nearby residents’ homes by the airport’s noise, pollution and traffic.
Last month, Orange-based Experian Inc. rode in to rescue the county with its grand news--the proposed airport hasn’t done a thing to locals’ property values. Experian--once known as TRW Information Systems--deals in credit, marketing and real estate information. The company reported that home values within seven miles of the airstation were comparable to the rest of the county. The company’s April 1997 study had similar results.
In fact, the studies were rife with methodological sleight-of-hand. What about seasonal changes? What about lumping together homes in areas that might be affected and homes that won’t? What about the recent economic recovery?
Most important, what about the fact that the studies claimed to measure the impact of something that doesn’t exist--namely, El Toro International Airport?
“Mere announcements of airports do absolutely nothing to property values,” said real-estate appraiser Randall Bell, head of Laguna Niguel-based Bell & Associates. “No one can tell what the airport will do to values until it’s built.” In other words, it’s possible to read stable home values in South County as a measure of homeowners’ political faith that the supervisors will come to their sense and drive a stake through the heart of the airport.
There are only two explanations for such a meaningless study: Experian analysts are morons or they’re not being objective. Despite consumer complaints about innacurate reporting in the credit industry, it’s probably not the former. And the later? When the April findings came out, Experian took pains to describe their research as “objective,” conducted with no “preconceived notions.” In August, the Times O.C. took over the matter of shilling for Experian by reporting matter-of-factly that the company “is not affiliated with groups on either side of the contentious debate over the airport plan.”
In fact, Experian has ties to Chapman University in Orange--the intellectual center (such as it is) of the pro-airport movement. David Van Skilling, Experian’s chairman of the board and CEO, is a “senior advisor” to the Chapman School of Business. One of Van Skilling’s fellow senior advisors is Charles E. Packard, executive vice president of Arnel Development, a company headed by George Argyros, the development king who spent $2 million of his own money on ballot campaigns designed to mandate an airport at El Toro. Packard also sits on the Chapman University Advisory Board, along with George Jurkowich--Experian’s senior vice president in charge of corporate affairs.
It’s well known that Chapman president James Doti not only supports the proposed El Toro International Airport, but he also produced some of the earliest (and screwiest) predictions on how many jobs the airport would create. In addition, Argyros is Chapman’s chairman of the board of trustees and an “executive fellow” at the business school. Some of the other executive fellows are Doy Henley, a rich airport proponent and a Chapman trustee, and Gary Hunt, executive vice president of the Irvine Co.
But remember: Experian executives merely sit on Chapman boards with these men--they aren’t “affiliated” with them. And to Experian, that makes a world of difference.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 29
by Anthony Pignataro
August 29, 1997
The proposed El Toro International Airport will screw Newport Beach bad.
For nearly a year, commercial-airline pilot and Laguna Beach resident Todd Thornton has been saying planes departing from El Toro will have to fly over the Newport coast to avoid crashing into planes heading into LAX and John Wayne, hurling fiery wreckage and (we presume) equally fiery bodies to the ground.
A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) report recently obtained by the Weekly suggests Thornton is right. The report outlines an April 30, 1996 meeting between the firm P & D Consultants and the FAA at the agency’s regional office in Lawndale, California. P & D was busy preparing the El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for its August 1996 release.
According to the report, the FAA sees no problem with El Toro and John Wayne running at the same time. Airport proponents will delight in the news that the agency said the rising slope of the east-west runways and their exposure to 7-knot tailwinds weren’t “fatal flaw[s]” that would bar commercial use of the military airport.
But El Toro supporters shouldn’t cheer yet. The report goes on to say that further study must be made to determine how those limitations--slope and wind--affect aircraft performance. The reason: the FAA worries that planes taking off uphill and with a tailwind would to reduce “load”--pilot talk for people and luggage. People, of course, pay for airline tickets, and having fewer of them on planes departing from the east-west runway would cut into airline profits.
If the east-west runways prove economically useless, then the north-south runways will have to take virtually all the traffic. But planes taking off to the north would have to avoid traffic heading into not one but two airports--John Wayne and LAX. Ouch. The FAA’s proposed solution? Fly over Newport Beach, where residents already whine about air traffic.
The FAA report says “the preferred procedure for departing [the north-south]Runway 34 would be to initiate a left turn within 1.3 nautical miles of the departure end of the runway and stay within MCAS El Toro airspace.” Translation: somewhere over east Irvine, up to 50 planes an hour will bank left and fly over Newport. The report added that aircraft “would probably be kept under 4,000 feet until reaching the coastline”--low enough and often enough to get on your nerves.
Keeping this in mind, let us all take a moment to thank our civic-minded neighbors in Newport Beach who continue to support the construction of El Toro--despite the head-banging they’ll take when it begins operations sometime early in the next decade. Unless, of course, they change their minds.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 28- August 22, 1997
No Sue is Bad News
by Anthony Pignataro
The most amazing thing about last week was that the county Board of Supervisors’ decision to hire Nelson Communications Group to conduct a flashy spin campaign on the airport wasn’t the worst news for El Toro opponents. What really cut last week was the Board’s 3-2 vote to blackmail the seven South County cities opposed to the airport--the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA).
The county’s blackmail plan--engineered by CEO Jan Mittermeier herself two weeks ago--would make Henry Kissinger proud. Essentially, Mittermeier told ETRPA the county would adopt their non-aviation alternative as a backup to the airport only if ETRPA first drops its lawsuit against the county. ETRPA hopes to overturn the 1994 Measure A ballot iniative which first mandated an airport at El Toro. To make matters worse, the county added that even if ETRPA drops its lawsuits, the cities will still have to pay to study the plan, to the tune of $500,000.
Now we’ve said before that litigation by private groups against the county is pretty much a doomed battle. But lawsuits filed by cities--which have access to vastly greater reserves than citizens’ groups--is another matter. Cities can handle appeal after appeal, tying up the courts for years.
In any case, the Board’s vote makes clear the county isn’t much interested in a fallback position should the airport fail to meet expectations. After all, airport planners and proponents seriously believe that the proposed El Toro International Airport will operate safely and make money, despite the fact that airline pilots have said repeatedly it can’t do both.
Needless to say, both Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson voted against the county extortion plot. This sparked outrage from Newport Beach, that little community by the sea so used to getting their own way. In fact, Wilson’s vote outraged Newport Councilman Tom Edwards so much that he lost his mind. In a classic bit of oxymoronic speechmaking, Edwards told the Daily Pilot in Newport “I’m disappointed that Supervisor Wilson did not lead the way and go along with the majority.”
El Toro Airport Watch No. 27-- August 15, 1997
Supe for Sale
by Anthony Pignataro
Chuck Smith is quite a guy. Silent for so long on so many issues, 1st District Supervisor Smith found his voice last week by declaring war on two privately-funded citizens groups opposed to the airport. His reason, in his own words: “They have been criticizing us.”
Smith had the county send a letter demanding that the groups Taxpayers for Responsible Planning (TRP) and Project ’99 open their financial books to county officials by August 18. The county asked for similar information from the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority--the seven South County cities currently developing a non-aviation reuse plan for the base.
The July 28 letter, written by Courtney Wiercioch, El Toro Master Development Program manager, “requests” that the groups give her “information on expenditures for legal fees and public information programs.” Ironically, Wiercioch cited no legal precedent in her letter. She also failed to mention what would happen should (gasp!) TRP and Project ’99 tell the county to go to hell. In Smith’s twisted logic, this is fairness.
Since Smith is such a fan of disclosure, we’re going to disclose where he gets his marching orders. It turns out that during his 1996 campaign Smith took over $20,000 from groups and organizations dedicated to building an international airport at El Toro. Here’s just a small sampling: Smith took $1,000 from the Building Industry Association of Southern California, $1,700 from the Center Stone Development Co. in Santa Ana and $750 from Shea Homes Limited Partnership in Walnut. The Republican Smith even took $250 from South County developer--and O.C. Democratic Party boss--Dick O’Neill.
But Smith was just warming up. The future-supervisor had no trouble taking $1,000 from the Mission Viejo Co. and $2,000 from the Irvine Co., even though they’re 30 miles from his district. Smith had no problem accepting $1,000 from Ellis/Hart Associates, a pro-airport consulting firm. Incredibly, Smith took $250 from P&D Associates, the firm that wrote the El Toro Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR).
And, of course, Smith took $4,000 from George Argyros (Argyros also hedged his electoral bet by giving $3,000 to Mark Leyes, Smith’s opponent). With that kind of money bankrolling his campaign, Smith knows whose interests he has to guard.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 26- August 8, 1997
Death by Noise
by Anthony Pignataro
El Toro International Airport opponents hate the proposed airport largely because it will be very noisy. Many South County residents fear that so much loud noise will damage their hearing. But last month’s Project ’99 briefing showed residents they have much more to fear. That’s when two noise pollution experts said the future airport noise in the South County will--in addition to damaging residents’ health--kill approximately 30 residents every year.
“Elderly people will die in greater numbers if the airport is built,” said Dr. Eric Walther, an atmospheric scientist and Lake Forest resident. “I’ve extrapolated perhaps 30 additional deaths per year due to accidents due to the airport,” Walther explained that the periodic blasts of 90+ decibel noise from low-flying aircraft makes even getting to sleep a nightmare.
“It will be like turning on a blender in your bedroom at night,” said Walther. “Potentially 100,000 people will suffer sleep deprivation because of the noise, leading to accidents,” he added. Walther then cited a 1993 LAX noise study which concluded that airport noise was responsible for 60 additional deaths in surrounding neighborhoods. “That’s irresponsible government in the extreme,” he said. `
Dr. Dan Stokols--a UC Irvine social-ecology professor--was less dramatic but just as compelling. Focusing on a 1980 LAX noise study he helped conduct, Stokols said school children in the El Segundo/Inglewood neighborhoods directly under the airport’s arrival corridor experienced higher stress than school children in quieter neighborhoods.
“Blood pressure in children went up after initial exposure to the noise,” said Stokols. “but then stabilized after prolonged exposure. Adrenaline secretions went up, too, but didn’t stabilize.” Stokols added that the children he tested scored poorly on motivational and proofreading tests, showing a marked decrease in patience.
Some proponents have argued that Newport Beach school children do fine in school even though they live under the John Wayne flight path and that people around El Toro have nothing to worry about. But Newport Beach residents only listen to departing aircraft. South County has to face airliners on arrival, which is when they’re the loudest.
Others have suggested that the county should merely “mitigate” residents’ concerns by abating the noise in the homes and schools near El Toro. But Stokols and Walther each emphasized that doing so requires residents to flee into sealed buildings to escape the airport’s pounding roar. Only in Orange County would abatement mean imprisonment.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 25-- August 1, 1997
Spun Out of Control
by Anthony Pignataro
Last week the Weekly received some devastating news. The county’s plan to get Nelson Communications Group to build a ministry of truth around the proposed El Toro international airport has crashed back to Earth in flames.
In a rare opposition victory, the county board of supervisors actually voted 3-2 last week to scrap the $467,230 Nelson contract for a lavish pro-airport spin-fest. For the South Countians who feel that filling their skies with lumbering, thundering airliners will be bad for their health, this is uplifting news.
For Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Tom Wilson--who scored their first significant victory against the airport--this is back-slapping news.. For Hugh Hewitt, whose recent piece in the O.C. Metro slamming the contract shows he’s still smarting over firm-founder and Republican dissident Bob Nelson’s decision last year to back Clinton for president, this is head-swelling news.
For Supervisor Jim Silva, who cast the killing vote with the words “a professional public information can be done for less money,” this is head-scratching news. After all, Silva voted for the airport back in December knowing construction costs would run at least $1.6 billion--$1.3 billion more than the county’s own non-aviation alternative. Silva also voted for the $6.9 million Airport Master Plan the same day he killed the PR campaign.
We at the Weekly feel no joy over Nelson’s loss. Because of the supes’ vote, there will be no onslaught of glossy brochures, focus groups, slick mailers and event kiosks foretelling the golden age the airport will bring. We won’t be able to see the airport sold at fairs and festivals like sno-cones and cheap hot dogs. There will be no improvements to the county El Toro website--this alone justified the half-million dollar cost. Nelson’s vision of “One County...One Future...El Toro” will never be.
The real tragic loss is Nelson’s novel perspective--that all those opposed to the airport are irrational and misinformed. In Nelson’s world, all the county has to do is “educate” everyone on the “facts” and everyone will click their heels and bow their heads as the planes start landing. Who wouldn’t want their taxes paying for that?
El Toro Airport Watch No. 24--July 25, 1997
Runway Models: The long and short of it
by Anthony Pignataro
When the El Toro base was first kicked around as a potential international airport, opponents insisted El Toro’s already-massive runways would require hideously expensive reworking. Airport supporters countered that El Toro already handled big planes and needed little, if any, reconstruction.
But according to an airline transport pilot with more than 3100 hours of flight time, the impending expansion of San Jose International Airport provides clues about how much work El Toro might need. “El Toro’s runways are 3000 feet short at least,” said Steven Myers, who is also president and CEO of Newport-based SM&A, a systems engineering firm that specializes in defense contract proposals. “The county has just not thought this through.”
San Jose’s decision to lengthen its 4,400 foot and 10,200 foot runways to 11,050 feet springs from the fact that airliners bound for destinations like Japan can’t take off with a full load from the 10,200 foot runway. Anything less than a full load cuts into the airlines’ profits.
In addition to being even further from Asia than San Jose, El Toro has the twin problems of an uphill takeoff and the requirement that planes take off with the wind--both of which siphon precious fuel from a plane’s engines. Neither condition exists at San Jose. “These are very real, but very technical issues,” said Myers.
“As it stands now, El Toro is basically the same airport as John Wayne, but a little longer. As it stands now, the county will never get the traffic volume they want.” In other words, without huge and expensive reconstruction, El Toro will never make any money. For its part, the county has only begun designing its master plan for the El Toro airport, but says the plan will include any improvements that need to be made.
Skeptics will be watching for a budget line called “runway reconstruction.”
El Toro Airport Watch No. 23-- July 18, 1997
The Bad News About the Good News
By Anthony Pignataro
There’s good news and bad news for opponents of the proposed international airport at El Toro.
The good news is that they netted $85,000 at a Dana Point fund-raiser last week. The bad news is that the money will go to the anti-airport group Taxpayers for Responsible Planning (TRP) and its chair Bill Kogerman.
Now $85,000 is a lot of money, but it’s nothing compared to the cash county officials are prepared to spend. In the past two months the county agreed to PR firm Nelson Communications $476,000 to run propaganda for the airport, $165,000 for a year’s services from former George Argyros employee Bruce Wetsel and $6.9 million for the “Airport Master Plan.” The county can float revenue bonds and levy taxes, which ought to provide Kogerman and his organization with a clue they won’t win a money race.
Which doesn’t explain why Kogerman and other airport opponents intend to pursue a capital-intensive legal fight against the county. That strategy is already springing leaks. “We ran out of money to pay our legal retainer fee this week,” said Bill Kogerman, one of TRP’s co-chairs at the fundraiser. “The timing of this event is just great.” That fee helped pay for TRP’s lawsuit against the pro-airport Measure A (which lost), as well as the appeal of that ruling (which also lost). TRP has other lawsuits in the works, which is where the $85,000 will end up, poured out like water on hot sand.
In his seminal 1971 work Rules for Radicals, Saul Olinsky said successful political activism is more a matter of muscle than money. A winning, long-term strategy in fighting the airport involves walking the streets of every neighborhood destined to hear and breathe the El Toro International Airport and talking to every resident. The point is not to ask for money for more quixotic legal battles but to get the Orange Countians to think independently on the issue and then go out and vote. Failing that, the airport is a done deal.
Web Site Editors note: We don't revise submissions
from the OC Weekly, but have advised them, and our readers that TRP
did not bring lawsuits against Measure A as stated. That was done by the
ETRPA cities. TRP's lawsuit, for which the money was raised, is against
the county environmental impact report. Many knowing people on both
sides of the debate think they have a winning case -which should slow down
the pro-airport drive and influence thinking in Washington. Overturning
the EIR in court will also increase the odds for success of any future
vote against the airport, if people turn out as Tony urges.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 22 -- July 11
Buying Power
By Anthony PignataroGeorge Leon Argyros--real estate baron and granddaddy of all El Toro airport boosters--has struck again. Last month the county selected Bruce B. Wetsel to fill the last managerial vacancy in its El Toro Master Development Program (ETMDP). An international consultant with 25 years experience in transportation issues, Wetsel is now the county's aviation team manager, and his hiring shows the extent of Argyros' influence in the county's damn-the-torpedoes efforts to build an airport at El Toro.
"Mr. Wetsel has a very strong background in aviation planning, a thorough understanding of the airline industry and will be an excellent addition to the Program," wrote Courtney Wiercioch, ETMDP manager, in a memo to the Board of Supervisors. Perhaps that's why the county will pay Wetsel approximately $165,000 a year. And he'll be responsible for the aviation portion of the county's airport master plan.
The story got little attention from the local papers, which isn't surprising, considering the release's tired Fortune-style catch phrases and tin-can prose. But the final paragraph, listing Wetsel's qualifications, contained the following: "Mr. Wetsel served as vice president for two airlines."
As it turns out, those two airlines were American and AirCal. The later was a small carrier, flying short-hops in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. American bought the airline in 1987 from its owners--George Argyros and William Lyon--for $225 million. Until that time, Wetsel served as vice president of AirCal; he then worked as vice president for American.
Which means, of course, that Wetsel used to work for Argyros--the man who spent $1 million of his own money in 1994 to pass the Measure A, the ballot initiative specifying the El Toro base become a commercial airport. The same man who, two years later, spent another $775,000 to help defeat the anti-airport Measure S. Clearly, the county knows where to get its airport planners.
El Toro Airport Watch No.21-- July 4, 1997
What About the Big Picture?
By Anthony Pignataro
Airport Officials enjoy portraying the pollution and traffic caused by the proposed El Toro International Airport as merely regional-not South County-concerns. Curiously, the county rarely adds other airports to their regional arguments.
We all Know that John Wayne Airport is just seven miles from El Toro and has capacity for 15 million annual passengers (MAP) and that Los Angeles International Airport is currently expanding to support more than 90 MAP. Factoring in Long Beach and Ontario Airports, 116 million passengers can use the Southland's airports in the next decade-without El Toro.
Incredibly, three additional airports in Southern California are coming online. These airports-all built on the bones of former Air Force bases in Riverside and San Bernardino counties-lie within range of Orange County. A web of light rail lines connecting the airports to the county could offset a great deal of whatever aviation demand exists. In addition, they're all a good distance from any major metropolitan area, virtually negating noise and pollution concerns.
The city of San Bernardino boasts old Norton Air Force Base, which closed three years ago. Soon to be San Bernardino International Airport, Norton offers a single 10,000-foot runway (compared to, say, John Wayne, which has 5,700- and 2,887-foot runways), and the Norton reuse authority is currently renovating the base's roads and facilities. Norton is 45 miles from El Toro.
What was once March Air Force Base is becoming a "joint-use" civilian airport and Air National Guard base. Located in Riverside County, which is just 25 miles from El Toro and sports the longest runway in California-13,300 feet- the March Inland Port will operate cargo and passenger service as well as Air National Guard operations, according to Steve Albright, executive director of the March Joint Planning Authority. Albright added that, although the facility is open, it's still in the process of attracting carriers.
In late 1994, George Air Force Base in Victorville reopened as Southern California International Airport (SCIA). A civilian airport with two runways-9,116- and 10,050-feet long- SCIA is 60 miles from El Toro. It's available for flights today, as opposed to El Toro, which won't be operational until 2005 at the earliest.
El Toro Airport Watch No.20-- June 27, 1997
E-Ticket
By Anthony Pignataro
With Disneyland tearing up its parking lot to build the $1.4 billion California Adventure, city and state officials are falling over each other as they genuflect before their mouse god, offering more than $1.5 billion to widen nearby streets and the 5 freeway. In addition, the company's public relations people are scrambling to downplay the dust and misery brought by the construction. In fact, the spin doctors actually envision the massive construction effort as one more attraction for Disneyland.
"We are really excited about trying to turn all this construction into an attraction," said Douglas Moreland, vice president for Disney's development. "In the 1950s, when Walt Disney built Disneyland, the public never got to be part of history. We think they will come to be part of what's going on."
We see great potential for this strategy at El Toro--one of the greatest corporate-welfare projects ever. It also helps that Orange County and Disney share the same PR firm--Nelson Communications Group. Here's what Nelson has to work with: noise so loud and chronic it causes learning disabilities in kids; plummeting home values from Mission Viejo clear to Villa Park and parts of Orange; nauseating air pollution; and the destruction of the high-tech community in and around the base.
Now, we know that masking the airport's blight with the thin veneer of a tourist attraction is a tough prospect even for PR giant Nelson, but they could come up with a few catchy slogans to soften the blow. May we suggest that Nelson reply to resident complaints of deafening noise with "That's the sound of O.C. making money!" Or when jet fumes begin strangling South County, Nelson could retort, "It's not dirt from jets that's falling on you; it's pennies from heaven!"
El Toro Airport Watch No. 19-- June 20, 1997
Omission Control
Last week's Watch contained a glaring error which we must correct. The statement "See the complete El Toro Airport Watch series online" is wrong--all but one of the columns appear at the El Toro website. Number 14 isn't in the site's archives.
Written by R. Scott Moxley, the piece profiled attorney William R. Hart--who represents Leisure World in a lawsuit against airport bankroller George Argyros, as well as ex-congressman Bob Dornan, who's close to Argyros. All Moxley did was expose a potential conflict-of-interest between the lawsuit attorney and extremely partisan airport proponents.
"We had that one up for a while," said Leonard Kranser, the El Toro website editor. "But I spoke to Leisure World and they felt it might interfere with their lawsuit." So Kranser removed the piece. "I also thought the style was long on inferences and short on conclusions," he added.
Kranser's website recently grabbed a bit of notoriety from--of all organizations--Nelson Communications Group, which the county hired two weeks ago to conduct a large-scale public relations effort on behalf of the airport. Nelson's proposal holds the site as an example for the county to follow, but describes it as "carefully edited to present a very powerful and presuasive case against the airport."
The Weekly has disagreed with Kranser before over that very point. Kranser expressed interest in putting the feature "Larry vs the Airport" (OC Weekly, December 20- December 26, 1996) on his site. But Kranser added one requirement--that he purge the story of any negative statements concerning Taxpayers for Responsible Planning chair and El Toro opponent Bill Kogerman. We said no, explaining that surpressing negative information about airport opponents was counter-productive and that opponents ought to understand what the opposition leadership does in their name. But Kranser has a different view, saying that "our primary objective is winning."
Whether Kranser adds this Watch to the rest at his site remains to be seen.
Web Site Editors note: The OC Weekly has their editorial style and we have ours. The important point is that we are on the same side, providing information to the public about the proposed El Toro Airport.
The web site is an all-volunteer effort. We collect more good content than we can handle. We select the material that we use and leave some out. We offered to publish Anthony Pignataro's articles because they contain a lot of excellent investigative reporting, that we wanted to share with our viewers, and we have told him so.
From the start, our web site team has promoted teamwork amongst the anti-airport citizenry. We know that wars are frequently won by coalitions of uneasy allies, employing forces led by generals with clashing egos. In our view, little is gained by stirring trouble on one's own side of the field. Everyone is busy fighting misinformation from the highly organized pro-airport lobby. As Anthony notes, "our primary objective is winning" ... a campaign to secure a healthy and sensible future for the people of Orange County. The residents and taxpayers will win, with his help, and that of Bill Kogerman, Larry Agran and all the other individuals who have taken up the fight... each in his own style.
Leonard Kranser
El Toro Airport Watch No. 18-- June 13, 1997
Whitewash Dream Team
Last week El Toro opponents scored a small but significant victory over their county foes. That's when the county board of supervisors admitted the public is cold to their airport plans and hired the public relations firm Nelson Communications Group to get the people in line.
Apparently, a recent county-sponsored poll showed just 45 percent of the public likes the county's plans for El Toro with 33 percent in opposition. But the county must be quaking over the question of who supplied the most reliable information on the airport--only two percent of those polled thought county planners' data was the best. But 58 percent thought the media was providing the most accurate information.
County planners blame "misinformation" for making the airport look bad. They hope Nelson will save them by covering the El Toro reuse plan with appropriate amounts of glitz and whitewash. Nelson--who represents Disney Development, the Koll Real Estate Group (who are trying to cover the Bolsa Chica wetlands with 3,000 homes), San Diego Gas & Electric (co-operator of the San Onofre nuclear power plant) and, of course, the Irvine Co.--is obviously the perfect firm for that job. One lobbyist has called the firm "very good at developing strategies and what-have-you."
Some of that "what-have-you" for the airport includes focus groups, newsletters to websites. But whichever options Nelson exercises will only be as effective as the minds that conceive them. And Nelson has collected some greats over the years.
Take Donna Lucas, who manages Nelson's Sacramento office and specializes in politics and government relations, for instance. County CEO Jan Mittermeier hired her and her firm two years ago to help the county by attempting to put the positive spin on the first anniversary of the bankruptcy. Lucas was a spokesperson for both former Governor George Deukmejian and former State Treasurer Thomas Hayes. Coincidentally, at the time of the bankrutpcy contract Hayes sat on Nelson's board of directors and worked for the county as a "litigation czar."
Then there's Thomas Wilck, who once had his own PR firm but sold it to Nelson in 1995 and became Nelson's executive vice president. Wilck, who worked as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1972, eventually became chairman of the O.C. Chamber of Commerce in 1993. And who could forget Jim Knapp, vice president of Nelson's Irvine office. Once OCN's assistant manager, Knapp also served as former supervisor Gaddi Vasquez's chief policy aide. Vasquez left the board of supervisors shortly after the bankruptcy for a lucrative post at Southern California Edison, which probably taught Knapp a thing or two about the imporance of timing.
As close to the county as these folks certainly are, you can be sure
they'll make El Toro, with all its dangers and noise and pollution, seem
like Shangri-la.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 17-- OC Weekly, June
6, 1997
Conversion: Park It
Why county planners ever bothered to put a non-aviation reuse plan in its Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) is a mystery. Nothing more than a half-hearted basket of polygons labeled "residential", "open space" and the ever-popular "visitor-oriented attractions", the county's reuse plan C was a sham from the start.
That's why last weeks' Project '99 briefing on their survey of non-aviation reuse ideas was so refreshing. The survey was modest and admittedly unscientific but produced surprising and interesting results.
After mailing 4500 surveys to its supporters, Project '99 got back 800 responses. Surprisingly, out of the survey's 20 possible ideas for the 4700-acre base, the clear winner was a "central park and library"--a suggestion for an urban park similar to London's Hyde Park or San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Other favorites included and education center, museums, a wildlife preserve and high-tech research facilities.
Farmland was moderately popular, as were a pedestrian-friendly downtown and movie studio. Suggestions like a shopping and retail centers, industry, cemetary and prison bottomed out the list.
Project '99 briefers made clear the survey was merely a ranking of ideas from their supporters, but there was argument over the results. Most attendees believed any alternative must be as economically-attractive as the airport, or else it would never get past the county board of supervisors. "Some of these are great ideas, I think we have to be realistic," said Doyle Seldon of Leisure World. "There's over a thousand acres of concrete runways on the base, and whatever we come up with should take them into account."
But one of the briefers, Hanna Hill, took a different view. "People come to Orange County from all over for a better quality of life," said Hill. "Do we always have to measure everything with money?" Eventually, Larry Agran--Project '99 chair--hopes to develop a viable alternative to the airport and its inherent pollution, noise and safety concerns. "We may mix three or four good ideas," said Agran. "Then we'll put it next to the airport and have the voters decide which is best."
El Toro Airport Watch No. 16-- May 30, 1997
Choke on This, O.C.!
Norm Ewers flattered us a couple of weeks ago with a letter blasting El Toro Airport Watch No. 13, which dealt with the National Resources Defense Council's report on airports and the environment. Ewers--a former Marine Corps pilot and county airport employee who likes to write letters critical of El Toro opponents--choked on our portrayal of airliners as smog generators, spewing out more toxics than most factories. He also asserted that none of Orange County's air pollution stays in the county anyway, but instead drifts into Riverside.
While the idea that Riverside gets to breathe our emissions tickles us immensely, Ewers is clearly wrong, and even the county wouldn't agree with his logic. Deep in the county's Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) planners admit that the El Toro airport alternative is the dirtiest of the three.
"[T]he proposed project directly generates the most emissions, compared to the other reuse alternatives," states the DEIR on page 4-299. On the same page, the DEIR states that "these emissions would occur at the MCAS El Toro site"--clearly not Riverside.
DEIR page 4-301 then compares those emissions to the non-aviation alternative: 47,569 pounds of carbon monoxide per day for the airport versus 19,187 pounds per day for no airport; 21,712 pounds of nitrogen dioxide per day versus 5,733 pounds per day; 7,824 pounds of hydrocarbons per day versus 2,428 pounds per day. The non-aviation alternative doesn't even come close to the airport's emissions for any pollutant.
The county sidesteps these facts with a subtle manipulation--planners insist that all of the 447,000 planes bound for El Toro every year will fly into Southern California regardless of El Toro's existence. Even if El Toro turns into a giant basketball court, it is our region's destiny to deal with an additional 447,000 air operations per year by 2020. Putting them all into El Toro thus saves the region from having to put up with all those planes and building something constructive at the airstation.
In all, it's masterful propaganda, since it's impossible to say conclusively that even one plane is destined to land in Southern California. That individuals like Ewers fall for it shows that county spinners deserve every penny they get.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 15-- May 23, 1997
Welcome to El Obsoleto International
One of the key selling points behind the proposed El Toro International Airport is that high-tech companies will benefit from being just yards from a major air-freight hub.
But Irvine Spectrum executives in the Orange County Business Coalition that opposes the airport recently told a Project '99 gathering that industry trends point in an entirely different direction--towards no shipping at all. "We feel our need for any air freight at all will be gone by 2000," said Don Field, technical services director for Kofax Image Products.
Kofax, which manufactures circuit boards and software, seems the ideal beneficiary of an El Toro airport, with 40 percent of its sales to customers in over 50 nations. But Field says high-tech industry trends are heading for pure software companies, where instead of shipping hardware, firms merely "e-mail" their software products direct to customers. Field used Silicon Valley--home to semiconductor industry--as evidence, saying the region employs many more high-tech jobs than the Irvine Spectrum, but is near just three airports serving 59 million annual passengers (MAP). By comparison, Field said Southern California is already airport-saturated, with four airports handling 74 MAP, and another 40 MAP capacity on the way when LAX expands.
"We see no compelling advantage to an El Toro airport," said Peter Craig, vice chairman of Rainbow Technologies, a security software and hardware maker. Craig, who said Rainbow plans to continue shipping hardware assemblies, still disputes El Toro's value. "We see no likely freight cost benefit from having an airport even as close as El Toro." Craig added that Rainbow calculated operating costs for international flights from the far east to both Los Angeles International and El Toro and found no difference.
In addition, Rainbow found no "substantive" difference between LAX and El Toro in cycle time, the time it takes the company to build and ship products. He added that El Toro wouldn't affect staff travels, either, explaining that companies select flights based on cost and timeliness.
"Besides," Field said, "never once have we heard someone say they were disappointed they couldn't fly direct from an international destination to Orange County."
El Toro Airport Watch No. 13-- May 9, 1997
The county claims the proposed El Toro International Airport will sit peaceably in the South County. The county claims El Toro--slated to be America's fifth-largest airport--will be clean and quiet. The county claims the airport will please South County.
An October 1996 report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) demolishs those claims. Titled Flying Off Course: Environmental Impacts of America's Airports, the report exposes how airports poison local environments and endanger residents' health.
Take air pollution, for instance. The county's Draft Environmental Impact Report insists that airport will have no regional impact on air pollution. It all but ignores potential damage done to local communities. But the NRDC doesn't hide behind such a manipulation. "If the relationship between airplanes, airports, and air pollution is not thoroughly reexamined," states the NRDC report, "[the predicted] increase in flights will undoubtedly lead to a continued increase in uncontrolled, local air pollution" [my emphasis].
According to the NRDC report, even though airports typically vomit more nitrogen oxides and volatile organics (smog) than most power plants and industrial centers, they aren't regulated by the Clean Air Act. The report then cites Environmental Protection Agency data describing how Midway Airport (the nation's 45th largest airport) dumps more benzene and formaldehyde on Southwest Chicago than most of the city's factories.
The NRDC report also details the connection between noise and air travel growth. It's well known that the county's big claim on why the El Toro airport will not decimate the South County with its infernal racket is that future aircraft will be quieter than what we have now. This the NRDC skewers mercilessly, stating that "while advances in engine technology have resulted in quieter aircraft...the projected continued growth in air travel threatens to cancel out these gains." In other words, it's the county's paramount argument for an El Toro airport--the growth in air travel--that makes county faith in quieter aircraft a moot point.
The report even cites a FAA study forecasting a stunning 18.5 million flights by 2007, up from the current 14 million annual flights. Those numbers might justify building more airports, but they certainly don't indicate peaceful skies in the future.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 12-- May 2, 1997
Escape Clause
Irvine Spectrum mega-tenant Western Digital dropped a bomb last Friday on the accepted view that all developers vigorously embrace the proposed El Toro International Airport. At a press briefing sponsored by Project '99, a Western Digital executive admitted that his company had developed an "exit strategy" in its recent deal with Don Brenís Irvine Co. for a $75 million, 32-acre campus.
Western Digital, currently located in a drab office building in the Irvine Spectrum, plans to move to a new site at the corner of Sand Canyon and Irvine Center Drive. "That campus will allow our engineers to interact with each other far more easily," said Michael Cornelius, vice president for law and administration, explaining that its park-like surroundings will be very important in allowing Western Digitalís employees precious relaxation. But 447,000 air operations every year don't bode well for such plans. "That site is right at the end of the west-facing runway, and it's very close to northern takeoffs," said Cornelius. "If the airport goes in, that campus becomes completely useless."
That's why Cornelius told Project '99 his company needed assurances that they could extricate themselves from the deal with minimal trouble. "Our strategy is to construct the buildings so that we can remarket, should the need arise," Cornelius later told the Weekly. "The uncertainties concerning the airport make this necessary."
After the meeting, Project '99 chairperson Larry Agran admitted he was surprised by the revelation. "I've never heard of a developer, much less the Irvine Co., signing on to such a provision," said Agran. "Clearly, the Irvine Co. recognizes that the airport is harmful to business." But even if Western Digital had no deal for a giant campus, Cornelius explained his company would still oppose the airport. "The marginal gains from close proximity to an airport are overwhelmed by quality-of-life issues," he said. Cornelius explained that the airport would degrade the environment so much that it would be difficult--if not impossible--for his company to recruit high-quality employees.
Drain Bamaged Raround Lel Toro Rareport
Jet airliners make a lot of noise. That simple fact is critical to opponents of the proposed El Toro International Airport. Who wants to wake up at 3 a.m. to the roar of four screaming turbines just 1,500 feet above the sheets?
But new data suggests those living around El Toro should fear more than just lost sleep. According to a November 1996 article in the British magazine New Scientist, chronic exposure to jet noise may actually be dangerous: listening to airplanes day and night can raise blood pressure and cause psychiatric disorders. "Noise is stress, and eventually the body gives in some way," said Arline Bronzaft, a noise specialist at the City University of New York. In addition, the article cites a 1995 study by Barbara Luke at the University of Michigan that concluded sustained noise can stimulate stress hormones in pregnant women, leading to premature contractions.
But most alarming of all, the article references numerous studies of people living near airports that conclude children are at the greatest risk. "Chronic noise exposure may diminish working memory span," said Gary Evans of the College of Human Ecology at New York's Cornell University. "In young children, more complex, higher-order skills--such as reading, problem solving, and comprehension of difficult materials-appear vulnerable." Translation: children who grow up near airports could have trouble learning how to think. "For people who normally have difficulty concentrating, chronic exposure could have those effects," said Mark Dobkin, a Costa Mesa hearing specialist. "Remember, there's no way to turn off your ears."
The World Health Organization is currently overhauling its guidelines for nighttime noise exposure to reflect the new findings. The new recommended average exposure level is expected to be a mere 30 decibels, with a maximum allowable noise level of 45 decibels. The county's maximum average noise frontier around the El Toro Airport--beyond which developers can't build houses--is 65 decibels.
All This and Free Jet Noise
In a stunning display of mad greed, the Mission Viejo Co. is pressuring the county Board of Supervisors to allow them to build 1,841 housing and business units in Aliso Viejo. Yes, that would put the new homes directly under the flight path of the proposed El Toro International Airport. And, yes, that's just five miles south of runway 34.
But no one's mentioning El Toro International Airport. The Airport Land Use Commission (ALUC) declared the proposal "inconsistent" with land-use regulations-because the site lies within a zone the U.S. Marines say is subject to noise above 65 decibels-noisier than that, the feds figure, and you'll go nuts. But the Mission Viejo Co., neatly ignoring the prospect of a new commercial airport at El Toro, claims these regulations are archaic because Marine jets aren't nearly that loud in that area.
Even if the Mission Viejo Co. is correct now, it may not be after 1999. That's when the base closes, and the county plans to begin building an airport that will send hundreds of commercial airliners through the area each day. ALUC, which monitors the land surrounding airports, says that planes arriving at El Toro would fly just 1,640 to 2,040 feet over those new homes. Not to worry. "The Aliso Viejo master plan has taken everything into account," said Wendy Harder, vice president for marketing at the Mission Viejo Co. Harder points out that the proposed development lies just shy of the county's commercial-airport 65-decibel noise line.
But that'll be small comfort to the new homeowners, since the line is simply an estimate of potential noise. One critic of the company's plan is airport backer Tom Wall. "That [noise] line was drawn by the county consultants," said Wall, ALUC chairperson and El Toro Citizens' Advisory Commission member. "It has no official, legal or ethical standing." Wall and other airport supporters figure that, once built, the Mission Viejo Co.'s dream homes will become the spawning ground of ferocious anti-airport activity. Four of the county's five supervisors must vote to override the ALUC before the company can start construction.
Given the board's history of dealing with developers, things look good for the Mission Viejo Co. And that, ironically, could turn out to be bad news for airport supporters.
Railing on the Airport Monorail
It took 40 years, but the monorail made famous by Disneyland may finally pull into Reality Land--If Orange County can shake its airplane fetish. Proposed last week by Irvine Mayor Christina Shea and Council Member Dave Christensen, the trains would travel nearly 60 mph, link John Wayne Airport to Los Angeles International, and cost around $1 billion--$125 million of which is available to Irvine right now through existing rail bonds.
The monorail would also make an international airport at El Toro absolutely unnecessary, of course. For that reason, El Toro proponents are already lining up to block the train. One of them--occasional Orange County Register contributor John Jaeger--ridiculed the monorail's projected costs (real costs would be much higher, he said), called the proposal "utopia" (which he apparently meant as a slam), and said planners were using "pie-in-the-sky" numbers to satisfy public officials hungering for even a dishonest proposal.
If Jaeger wants to see really bogus planning, he should look through the county's sprawling Draft Environmental Impact Report on El Toro. Try matching numbers like 447,000 commercial flights per year and 38 million annual passengers with its projected cost of only $1.6 billion--a figure some say is likely to be 400 percent off.
Look at the ostensible quiet zone around the airport and the flight paths that supposedly take advantage of it-and then listen to the commercial pilots who say it'll never work.
Consider the county's argument that residential property values around the airport will be unaffected by half a million takeoffs and landings each year--and then compare that with Federal Aviation Administration studies that predict dramatic declines. Sigmund Freud observed that neurotics criticize in others precisely what's wrong with themselves. And, indeed, airport planning has been so limitlessly lazy (at a cost to taxpayers of millions) that it's almost comic to hear someone attack the monorail--a proposal in its barest infancy that has so far cost nothing--for its shortcomings.
Almost comic: behind Jaeger's sniping is more evidence that the small but powerful group of real-estate developers pushing for El Toro international have cranked up the propaganda machine to crush competing alternatives to their multibillion-dollar project.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 8-- Mar. 28, 1997
Going Down in Flames
One of the many political engines behind commercial-airport proponents, the grossly misnamed Citizens Advisory Commission (CAC), is breaking down.
First Irvine City Councilman Barry Hammond--the only airport opponent on the panel-quit the commission. Airport supporters used Hammond as evidence that not all South County officials oppose El Toro International. But a few weeks ago, Irvine activists threatened him with a recall if he didn't leave. This tickled the anti-airport crowd.
But then the panel's chairperson, the unabashedly pro-airport attorney Gary Proctor, infuriated opponents with his announcement that he would remain commission chairperson for the rest of the year despite his plans to move out of O.C. by early 1998.
Created in 1994 when O.C. voters ratified bazillionaire developer George Argyros' Measure A, the 13-member CAC is one of nine planning entities in the El Toro reuse game. It's hardly a surprise that Argyros is one of the 13-it's been said that CAC meetings don't start until he shows up.
According to the El Toro reuse plan, the CAC "was created to help ensure that the concerns of all Orange County residents are represented in the reuse-planning process." Hammond's participation on the panel made the rhetoric sound valid. The commission essentially makes recommendations to the Board of Supervisors-like approve the Draft Environmental Impact Review and approve the Community Reuse Plan for the soon-to-be fifth-largest airport in America.
In fact, the only real "planning process" is to decide minor issues like reconciling the Board of Supervisors' vote for a 25 million-annual passenger airport with the official 38 million-passenger reuse plan. After all, the CAC's founding charter, Measure A, terminated the planning issue when it passed; the measure mandated that an airport "is the highest and best use" for the El Toro air station. For this reason, airport opponents boycott the commission.
That Hammond thought he could, in his words, "engage the commission
in honest planning" is laughable. That the county sees the CAC as
representing all county residents is obscene. South County residents don't
want an airport poisoning their communities--be it a large, small, international,
regional, passenger or cargo airport. Eventually, North County residents
will come to see they aren't immune from the airport's effects, either.
The CAC has neither the power nor the desire to allay any of their concerns.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 7-- Mar. 14, 1997
That Ain't No Value Jet
The county has said a lot of dumb things over the years, but its insistence that the El Toro International Airport "may have certain positive effects on residential property values" is clearly the dumbest.
To their credit, airport proponents have one piece of evidence for their claim: a 1996 property-values report on Chicago O'Hare International Airport by Louis Masotti, a UC Irvine graduate school of management professor; the county, on the other hand, has yet to provide any market data.
But Randall Bell, a real-estate appraiser and head of the Laguna Niguel Bell & Associates, challenges both the county's assertion and Masotti's study, which proclaimed that property values are improved by their proximity to airports. "There's no question that both residential and commercial property near large airports suffer losses in value,"said Bell, who once studied under Masotti.
Bell, who looked at 190 single-family residences around LAX, found that property values there fell an average of 27.4 percent. Bell also found that office buildings along Century Boulevard (directly under the LAX flight path) have a vacancy rate of 38.1 percent-17 percent higher than comparable buildings just a couple of miles away in El Segundo. In addition, Bell discovered that the average rents in the Century Buildings are only 85 cents per square foot-a full 65 cents less than rents in the El Segundo buildings. Masotti did not return several calls for comment.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 6-- March 7, 1997
Poetic airport irony in
the battle over El Toro
It's
ironic that the county never mentions commercial-airline pilots when
it talks of how wonderful the El Toro International Airport will be. Ironic,
but understandable, according to two pilots who've studied the plans of
the place they'll have to fly into and out of. They've discovered the county
couldn't have picked a worse place to carry out 447,000 landings and takeoffs
a year.
As the pilots see it, there are two critical problems: terrain and airspace. On the first, Captain Charles Quilter--a Laguna Beach resident and pilot with a major airline--is a clear authority, having flown fighter jets out of El Toro in the 1960s. His concerns are considerable, revolving around the big mountains that lie at the ends of two of El Toro's runways.
Quilter, who insists that county plans to have 70 percent of planes take off to the east are "pure fiction," says that pilots will demand departing to the north--away from the steeply rising terrain that plagues the runways heading east. "But that will take planes over cities [in North County] that otherwise wouldn't be affected." Using a graph of airplane performance provided by Quilter, the Weekly calculated that planes taking off to the north from El Toro will fly just 1,700 feet over Tustin, 3,000 feet over Orange and 5,700 feet over Fullerton. According to Quilter, planes under 6,000 feet cause considerable noise and pollution.
But Todd Thornton, another airline pilot from Laguna, isn't so sure North County cities would see any fly-overs. Thornton spoke at length with air-traffic controllers at Miramar Naval Air Station, which monitors Southern Californiaís airspace. His conclusion: flights from El Toro over northern O.C. cities will conflict with so-called "approach corridors" into Los Angeles International Airport. In other words, planes taking off from El Toro would fly directly into planes trying to land at LAX.
"For that reason," said Thornton, "I see all planes departing [to the north] and turning left right after takeoff and heading out to sea." That would take the planes directly over--drum roll, please--Newport Beach and Corona del Mar. Residents there, who have consistently backed an airport at El Toro, would reap the whirlwind: 26 overflights an hour at roughly 3,000 feet. And that's in addition to planes from nearby John Wayne, also 3,000 feet above the Gold Coast.
El Toro International's First Crash?
Barry Hammond doesn't know when to quit. Ever since the Irvine city councilman and supposed El Toro airport opponent took a seat on the transparently pro-airport Citizens Advisory Commission (CAC) in January, anti-airport activists have considered sacking him from the council.
But last week, 46 Irvine members of the anti-airport group Taxpayers for Responsible Planning (TRP) finally sent Hammond an ultimatum: resign from the commission by Feb. 21 or face recall from the City Council. Hammond dismissed the TRP members as a "group of malcontents" and refused to resign. "My position has always been that we can accomplish things on the commission if it engages in honest planning," Hammond said. "Hammond has made a huge miscalculations on this issue," said George Gallagher, chair of TRP's Irvine branch. "He's doing a lot of damage to the South County and has absolutely no support to be on that commission. In the interest of solidarity, he needs to step down." Gallagher, who has no such illusions about Hammond or the commission, met with the Irvine city clerk on Feb. 21 to begin the recall effort. He hopes to gather 10,000 signatures over the next two months.
Formed in 1994 when the pro-airport Measure A passed, the CAC is ostensibly a 13-member advisory panel that provides recommendations to the county Board of Supervisors. But the commission's chair, George "Mr. International Airport" Argyros, has made sure the commission always recommends the largest airport it can.
Lacking Values
Try reading the El Toro environmental impact report. You'll be surprised at what you don't find.
If you want to kill a man, you might consider hitting him over the head with the county's voluminous Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the proposed El Toro International Airport.
Yet for all its tables, figures, illustrations and analyses, it's remarkably thin on one of the airport's most contentious issues: how much impact the nation's soon-to-be fifth-largest airport will have on nearby residential property values. But when Larry Agran-former Irvine mayor and current Project '99 head-asked the county why it ignored a Sept. 15, 1994, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) study on that issue, the Board of Supervisors' answer was simple: "Essentially, it is unlikely that [the airport] would cause any significant adverse impact on residential property values."
Agran, who called the response "insulting" at a Project '99 press conference last Wednesday, handed out copies of the FAA study, "The effect of airport noise on housing values: A summary report." While the study didn't find any universal depreciation values for homes near large commercial airports, it did conclude that "the noise impact is more pronounced in higher-priced areas" (read Irvine, Lake Forest, Laguna Niguel) than in poorer areas. For example, the study found that home values in well-to-do neighborhoods near LAX dropped 16 percent due to airport noise, whereas home values in poorer neighborhoods only dropped 1 percent. "Whether you agree with its findings, this study uses a sophisticated methodology," Agran said. "It's clearly a credibly study that should have been cited [in the DEIR]." But it wasn't, and county officials weren't apologetic.
Their response to Agran even contained a warning that the county wouldn't be liable for any property-value losses that might occur. "The county pretty much said, 'Go ahead, you bastards, and sue us because you'll lose.'"Agran said. "We're going to sue, but we're not going to lose."
El Toro Airport Watch No. 3-- Feb. 7, 1997
Exploring the myth that Orange County companies all hail the coming El Toro International Airport, more than 50 Irvine Spectrum companies recently formed the Orange County Business Coalition to express their solidarity.
For some reason, the firms believe the airport will destroy the Spectrum's business climate. "The members companies claim...the proposed airport will jeopardize the future economic growth of the Irvine Spectrum," said Valerie Christopherson, spokeswoman for the Coalition.
The Coalition includes such high-tech firms as Rainbow Technologies, Inc., Wet Seal, Inc., Advanced Logic Research, Inc. and Sabritec. Airport proponents like to point out that the Spectrum's firms produce more than $1.1 billion annually-made even as Marine Corps jets flew overhead-as proof that the airport will launch massive economic growth.
But Laurie Casey, Rainbow's vice-president for strategic marketing, sees the airport as a major threat to her company's ability to hire new personnel. "We feel engineers will find employment elsewhere, since having airliners fly over every 90 seconds and dump 80,000 extra pounds of air pollution is not appealing, "she said. All that's needed now is for Donald Bren at the Irvine Co. to end his silence and stand with his own tenants.
El Toro Airport Watch No. 2-- Jan 31, 1997
What Are We, Lepers?
Since Disneyland first opened the Monorail in June 1959, more than a few politicians and futurists have called for similar high-speed trains to run the length of California. According to a recent brochure put out by the California Intercity High Speed Rain Commission, that dream could become real within the next decade. Using either "very high speed" or "magnetic levitation" monorails capable of traveling between 200 and 300 miles per hour, train trips from L.A. to San Francisco could average just two and a half hours. Annual revenues from passenger and freight lines could run from $600 million to nearly $1 billion, although the projected costs exceed $20 billion.
Incredibly, the commission's proposed train station indicate that the only monorail Orange Countian will ride is Disney's. While the proposed high-speed trains stop at Redwood City, Newark/Fremont, Pleasanton, Tracy, Stockton, Merced, Palmdale, Santa Clarita and Ontario, as well as the expected San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, the trains never enter Orange County, much less stop at the future El Toro International airport, soon to be the fifth largest in the United States.
Perhaps airlines at El Toro will offer special fares for those who wish to fly to Ontario to catch a train to Pleasanton, wherever that is.
Kill an Airport, Save Some Cash
Residents of Yorba Linda, Orange, Santa Ana, Lemons Heights, Tustin, Irvine, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo fear the proposed El Toro International Airport with good reason: community property values around LAX crashed faster in the mid-1950s than Valujet. But falling property values mean lower property taxes, and O.C. residents concerned about the future mind-numbing roar and nauseating fumes should have their property taxes lowered accordingly.
According to county Assessor Bradley L. Jacobs, concerned property owners should write to his office with evidence that their house has decreased in value. "We're always happy to do this when people ask," said Jacobs. "But we need to see market data-actual transaction prices, not offers-that show their property has dropped in value."
Residents can get evidence-home-sales figures showing that nearby houses are selling for less than they're worth-from local real-estate agents. Jacobs warned residents to use transactions as close to Jan. 1, 1997, as possible to get their property re-assessed by July. He added that the assessor's office handles hundreds of thousands of re-assessments a year but still manages to respond to every request. Re-assessment requests should be sent to: Orange County Assessor, P.O. Box 149, Santa Ana, CA 92702.