El Toro Airport From A to Z

How the Marine Corps' site faces the debate, pro and con.

By Kedric Francis

Printed with the permission of the OC Metro
Orange County's Business Lifestyle Magazine. March 13, 1997

An El Toro airport, to build or not to build. Not since a section of southern Los Angeles County split off to become Orange County last century has one issue seemed so crucial to the future of this part of California.

Indeed, while that issue resulted in the birth of the county some 100 years ago, this one may result in its end, at least as we now know it. The debate hinges on whether the vast El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, when closed in 1999, be turned into an international airport. And a line was drawn in the sand a moment after the Marines announced in 1993 that they would leave the 4,700-acre site and take their streaking, air-shattering FA-18s with them. South split with North county, with residents in the South disturbed about noise from a new airbird ñ DC-10s and the like ñ pollution and housing prices, and the North seeing this is an economic boon and a complement to the John Wayne Airport.

No side has budged; no agreed-upon solution near. Here is a survey, A to Z, of some of the key players and issues in what is sure to be the final great debate of this century, and a decisive one in the new millennium.

A - Agran vs. Argyros
Larry Agran, perhaps the most effective liberal in Orange County this quarter-century, is an outspoken opponent of the airport. The former mayor of Irvine and presidential candidate sums his views up as follows: "Basically, the airport proposal at El Toro is unneeded, unwanted, unworkable and unaffordable. Other than that, it's a pretty good proposal."

Businessman George Argyros is one of the richest men in Orange County, and a dedicated airport booster. The former owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team and AirCal airline has previously stated his pro-airport position as follows: "John Wayne is woefully inadequate. It will not meet our long-term needs. El Toro is the only feasible alternative in Orange County. Taken together, John Wayne and El Toro will meet our air transportation needs for the long term."

For many, the battle over the airport is personified by these two men, one a progressive politician who overcame the odds to lead in a conservative county, the other a wealthy businessman and philanthropist.

Not surprisingly, the pro and anti airport forces dispute most every premise of the other side, starting with whether a new airport is even needed.

Agran argues that John Wayne Airport can satisfy the needs of the county well into the next century. "The truth of the matter is the physical capacity (with the present physical plant) of John Wayne Airport is 15 million annual passengers, and we have fewer than 8 million passengers out there today. The only reason it is up against its so-called limit is that it is an artificial legally imposed cap which will expire in the year 2005, at which time the airport can be used to its fullest. That would be enough capacity by any estimate to take care of the county's needs until the year 2020, or, as many of us believe, well beyond that. Once the artificial cap expires we can get a realistic appraisal of what our commercial air capacity needs are, and what we'll find is that John Wayne Airport is more than ample to meet those needs."

Bruce Nestande, an Argyros consultant and pro-airport advocate, disagrees. "It's simply not true that John Wayne alone can meet our commercial aviation needs. I'm not sure El Toro can even serve the entire demand. John Wayne is only 500 acres, with one runway, so where is the space? You certainly don't have the space. Right now the cap is 8.5 million; let's say you can push it to 15 million. The demand by 2005 is 20 million, so you just can't get there with John Wayne alone.

"Here we have a free gift from the military, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and it's been an airport since the '40s," says Nestande. "Any community in America would love to have it."

"I'm not unsympathetic to the people of Newport Beach," Agran says. "Airports are nasty neighbors, no matter how you cut it. I can understand why they would want to limit the operations at John Wayne, or indeed shut them down and move the operati ons over to El Toro, but by the same token, those of us who live in communities built upon general plans that always assumed El Toro would never be a commercial airport, people ought to understand why we want to defend those general plans and defend our communities."

Every city in central and southern Orange County in its post World War II planning took into account a continuing military operation out of El Toro, Agran says. "So the assumption was the noise intrusion, air pollution, traffic, safety hazards, all of those were based on El Toro as a military base. That was no easy matter, getting these cities to work with a military base right there in the middle of Orange County. The question of commercial use of El Toro arose only in the context of ruling it out as a possibility."

The big issue Agran and the anti-airport people ignore, according to Nestande, is the 14,000-acre no-home zone surrounding the base. "If it's not an airport, you know as well as I do, that the no-home zone certainly isn't going to remain no homes. You're going to have a whole new community the size of Anaheim or Santa Ana built there."

So who's on who's side?

"This is less a battle between North Orange County and South Orange County then it is a battle between certain vested interests in Newport Beach and the rest of the county," contends Agran. "Truth be known, the proponents of the airport would like to see John Wayne Airport shut down as a commercial passenger airport, and those operations moved over to El Toro. "If the people of Huntington Beach and Fountain Valley and other Northern Orange County communities knew that the real plan was to shut down John Wayne, they would be outraged," Agran continues. "Why, because it is the perfect facility for most people. It's near enough to be of value, and far enough away to be unobtrusive."

While Nestande contends that an El Toro airport would cost neighboring communities nothing to build roads and infrastructure to deal with increased traffic, Agran disagrees.

"The fact of the matter is they project $1.6 billion to build a whole new international airport at El Toro,' says Agran. "That's one-third of the cost to build Denver International Airport. LAX is expanding the airport from 55 million to over 90 million annual passengers. They're proposing to do that at a cost of $12 billion. If it costs $12 billion to expand an existing airport, doesn't it stand to reason that it will cost in the same ballpark to build one from scratch?"

B - Board of Supervisors
The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Dec. 11, 1996, to recommend a cargo and international passenger airport at El Toro .

The Federal Base Clo sure and Realignment Act of 1990 required that planning for the local reuse of a base be performed by a federally recognized Local Redevelopment Agency. That agency, or LRA, was originally the nine-member El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA), which was formed by the county, as well as the cities of Lake Forest and Irvine.

When Measure A passed in November 1994 (51 percent to 49 percent), the authority to plan for the voter-mandated airport passed to the Board of Supervisors, which subsequently withdrew from the ETRPA. The board is now recognized by the Feds as the sole legitimate authority for planning the bases future.

C - Consensus
With the entrenched forces on both sides, consensus is not likely. Secession of the South is a better bet.

D - Department of Defense El Toro will close July 3, 1999. The Pentagon recommended the base for closure, and Congress and President Clinton put the base on the closure list in 1993.

The move to Miramar, much of which has already occurred, quieting the skies over South County, is more expensive than originally thought. Some in the DOD question why federal taxpayers should foot the bill so that Orange County can reap the benefits of a once-in-a-century windfall. In other words, why not put the property up for sale? If the people of Orange County want to buy it from the taxpayers of the U.S., so be it, some argue. If the planning process bogs down, and the DOD is holding the bag for expensive environmental cleanup and long-term liability, this view may gain momentum.

E - Environmental cleanup
The El Toro Marine Corps Air Station is polluted by a variety of chemicals, as one might expect given 40 years of aircraft maintenance at the site. Currently, investigations (estimated to have already cost more than $10 million) are ongoing to determine the extent of pollution both on the base and off, and to determine options for the remediation of it.

As an example of the extent of the problem, the industrial solvent TCE is present in groundwater beneath the city of Irvine, extending all the way from the base past the intersection of Culver and Irvine Center Drive, with the highest concentration being between Sand Canyon and Yale avenues on the east and west and Irvine Center Drive and Alton on the north and south.

Reports issued by base cleanup officials emphasize that the plume of pollution poses no threat to people living in the area due to the low levels of chemicals in the aquifer and the fact the water is not used for domestic purposes. That may be the case, but the cleanup of the groundwater, aquifer and soil both on the base and off, and the shifting of liability from t he military to the future users of the base, present costly and time consuming issues further complicating the future of the base.

F - FAA
The Federal Aviation Administration hasn't formally established a position on the safety of an airport at El Toro, though the pro-airport forces claim that problems with the slope of the runways (discussed further below) have been "reviewed verbally with the FAA and major U.S. airlines, and based upon those discussions, the runway gradient is not expected to prohibit the use of Runway 7."

Not exactly a ringing endorsement written in stone. Especially given the reservations of airline pilots (see "Q"). Put another way, would you buy a house if an agency told you inherent problems in the site "aren't expected to prohibit its use," or would you ask for some clarification, and maybe something in writing first?

G - Gaddi Vasquez
A former county supervisor who was on board when this issue first arose. Three of the present five supervisors have been elected since El Toro became a buzz word. Critics wonder if any mix of county board members could show enough leadership to solve the El Toro riddle.

H - Hurley, Greg
An Irvine lawyer and chairman of the Restoration Advisory Board, Hurley is a key player on the county team looking at environmental and construction issues concerning the future of the base. With his law partner Ernest Brown, he defended the county in lawsuits over the delayed completion of John Wayne Airport, and came away with an excellent mediated settlement many times lower than what was demanded by the contractors.

I - The Irvine Co.
Don Bren and The Irvine Co. have publicly stayed neutral regarding the airport issue, and that neutrality may be symbolic of the mixed bag an El Toro airport represents for the county. While the economic growth fueled by the airport could greatly benefit certain aspects of the company, the quality of life effects might hurt othe rs. So it may make sense that some supposed insiders claim the company is 100 percent behind the airport, while others argue the company dreads the flight of businesses away from the noise of planes landing and taking off throughout the work day.

Anyone who has worked in the company's Irvine Spectrum during the annual air show can attest to the noise level and how it affects office workers. And what about the Newport Coast? How will tourists and owners of expensive homes feel about being near the flight path of the airport, which shows Pacific-bound international flights banking right over the Pelican Hill golf course?

On the other hand, The Irvine Co. would greatly benefit if the airport fuels a high-tech and international trade boom in the area, as proponents predict. But might they benefit as well if an airport isn't built and the acres of company-owned land near the base which is now barred from residential development is suddenly freed up?

You can bet company strategic planners have all the contingencies mapped out, airport or no. J - Joseph Joyce The Base Realignment and Closure Environmental coordinator has a lot of clout in the remediation of pollution on the base, which in turn may affect uses at the base.

K - Kogerman, Bill
Co-chairman of Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, he led early anti-airport efforts, including anti- Measure A and pro-Measure S election efforts. Pro-airport forces won both ballot initiatives.

L - Lawyers, guns and money
While no gunplay is involved, the battle over the future of El Toro already involves a lot of money, with lawsuits filed and more certain to follow. The current batch attacks the Draft Environmental Impact Report, required both by the state law (CEQA) and the federal base closure law. Future suits are certain to keep the area's land use, environmental and construction lawyers' billable hours up well into the next century.

"As an attorney and somebody familiar with public policy matters I could easily see 10 to 15 years of litigation in this matter," says Larry Agran. "And plenty of it will be won by the anti-airport forces. We'll see suits under the Clean Air and Clean Water Act, Superfund, questions of unconstitutional taking of property associated with diminished property values from the airport; there's going to be a tremendous proliferation of litigation, all of which is going to have the effect of grinding this thing to a halt over the course of the next five or six years."

M - McGuire, Jerry
All the airport scenes were filmed in the John Wayne terminal, no matter what airport Tom Cruises's character w as supposed to be flying into or out of. Some Newport Beach residents wouldn't mind seeing the airport used as a film studio on a more permanent and exclusive basis.

N - Nestande, Bruce
A consultant to George Argyros and the pro-airport forces, the former county supervisor (1981-1987) is president of Citizens for Jobs and the Economy.

O - Obsolescence
Pro-El Toro airport forces argue that John Wayne will reach its capacity shortly, while foes maintain it has plenty of good years left in it. The divisiveness of the debate and the calls for secession raise the question once again of whether the current system of county government isn't the thing that is obsolete.

P - Property values
There's a commercial for a rental car company that's been running for several years. In it, a family rents a car, choosing a company that's "not exactly" as good as the one being advertised. The family ends up lost, wandering in a deserted-looking neighborhood of empty cul-de-sacs leading to vacant, weed-strewn lots.

The next time you fly out of LAX, look down, and you'll see where the commercial was filmed: directly under the flight path of the airport. It is just such a ghost town that airport opponents fear in South County.

Losing 15 to 20 percent of a home's value would devastate most homeowners, and would hit especially hard those who bought in the late '80s when the market was high and have already seen the value of their investments plummet. Property value is one high on El Toro's list of concerns. Whether the airport would have such an effect is still uncertain.

However, Larry Agran, whose work as Irvine mayor helped boost property values in that planned community, is certain an airport will devastate property values. He says that once citizens of the north and south realize it, an airport at El Toro will die a quick death. "Sit down and do the math. Assume, for example, in the city of Irvine, a 5 percent loss of value averaged over the whole city, which wouldn't be that huge a percentage. Let's say homes in Irvine cost $200,0 00, though they're higher than that, so you're talking about a $10,000 loss per home times roughly 40,000 dwelling units. You're talking about $400 million dollars, almost half a billion dollars, in decreased residential property values in the city of Irvine."

"It's hard for me to imagine you wouldn't have 100,000 homes affected in the local communities, depending on the flight paths. Do the math on 100,000 homes, and maybe 10 percent instead of 5 percent (decrease in value) and your talking about billions of dollars of residential property values down the drain. That's a hell of a hit on private property, and of course it translates into reduced assessments, reduced property tax revenues, with the effects on neighborhoods that translates into a spiraling down of quality of life."

Q - Quilter, Col. Charles
A captain for a major airline, Quilter flew from El Toro as a Marine aviator from 1966 to 1986. While claiming to have no opinion on the desirability of converting El Toro into a commercial airport, Quilter has doubts about the safety of takeoffs to the east at El Toro, where 70 percent of the takeoffs are projected.

"I don't think any of the takeoffs will be to the east," says Quilter. There are fundamental rules of flying, so fundamental that "you just don't fool with them," according to Quilter. Three of these are violated with takeoffs to the east.

The first is you don't take off uphill. The runway to the east goes uphill, with a grade of 1.6 percent. The FAA standard calls for slope of less than 1.5 percent. "An extreme gradient is anything above 8 percent, and the detriment to performance is exponential with each tenth increase," says Quilter.

The second is that you take off into the wind. This helps provide lift, which is good when your flying, because it makes you go up. That's why the planes at John Wayne take off toward the ocean and into the sea breeze, except when there are Santa Ana winds, and then takeoffs go the other way.

At El Toro, as John Wayne, the prevailing winds are from the west, making takeoffs to the east problematic.

The third fundamental, according to Quilter, is you don't take off into obstacles. What he means, of course, is that you don't take off aiming at things like mountains.

"Pilots, when faced with two alternatives, one of which is routine and the other which puts his aircraft in an absolute maximum performance situation, it's kind of morally obligated to take the more conservative of the two options."

The north runway has similar problems though not as severe, according to Quilter. "You'll get some taking off to the north, but the heavy aircraft, the ones going the long distance, they're going to be taking off to the south. It's downhill, it's into the wind, and it's the least terrain obstacles.

"Military pilots can be ordered to take off from that east runway, but an airline pilot you can't order to take risks, we won't do it. Our job is to get passengers there safely. This is unduly risking an airplane, and a pilot is going to say, Screw it, I'm not going to do this, I'm going to fly it the safe way."

R - Runways
The issue of which runways are used affects more than the safety issues described by Col. Quilter. It also impacts which communities will be most affected by noise, according to Agran.

"If you look at the projected takeoff and landing patterns, the takeoff to the east affects southern Orange County communities, Lake Forest, and Rancho Santa Margarita and Mission Viejo and so forth. But the takeoff to the north goes over Northwood in Irvine, over Tustin, and beyond that to Orange, Anaheim and Fullerton. The people in the northern part of the county are going to be surprised and alarmed indeed to learn of those northerly takeoffs. Those are the biggest, heaviest aircraft, because those ones are going to be the projected international flights, and they'll be not only a noise intrusion, but spewing air pollution and being just generally a nuisance."

Nestande disputes that these takeoffs will increase noise. "There will not be any takeoffs to the west, over Irvine, because that conflicts with John Wayne. That's off the table. So the takeoffs will be to the north and to the east. And those takeoffs won't increase the high-noise envelope that exists with the military jets, according to all the studies."

He notes that increasing landings at John Wayne would have a greater noise impact than planes taking off from El Toro.

S - Southwest Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command
The division controls the purse strings for closure of the base. The San Diego based command, whose interests often are not the same as the county's, is responsible for decisions regarding environmental remediation of the base, one of the key factors often overlooked when the future of the base is discussed. A separate federal Environmental Impact Report will be prepared, which will likely result in separate federal lawsuits over the adequacy of the report.

T - Taxpayers for Responsible Planning
A South County-based organization opposed to an airport at El Toro, the 7,500-member group pushed for passage of Measure S in 1996, which lost 60 percent to 40 percent.

U - United Airlines
United, along with American, Continental, Southwest, Delta, and all the other airlines, haven't been consulted regarding whether they want an airport at El Toro. Since competition is keen at John Wayne for gates, the pro-airport folks assume demand will be high. Once again, Denver's experience may be instructive. At the old airport, Continental was a major tenant using Denver as a key regional hu b. Continental decided not to move, giving a monopoly to a few airlines, which resulted in outrageous prices to fly to Denver, which led a small airline based in Colorado Springs to undercut fares and draw off a healthy percentage of the new airport's business.

The Air Transport Association, a trade group for the major airlines, says it has "significant concerns about operational conflicts with our present activities at John Wayne Airport," and "major reservations regarding integration of commercial aircraft from El Toro into the existing traffic flow in and around the Los Angeles Basin."

Whether the skies above Orange County will be safe with the addition of El Toro is a matter of dispute, but if the pilots and the airlines have concerns, perhaps it bears a bit more study.

V - Victory
At some point one side or the other will win out. When, who knows.

W - World Wide Web
The anti-airport Web site address is www.eltoroairport.org.

X - Runways
The shape of the runway layout at El Toro, both now and as currently planned for a commercial airport. The crossing paths limit the efficiency of takeoff patterns, both sides agree, though the impact on the viability of a commercial airport is disputed.

Y- Why so long?
Anti-airport critics, in particular, have said that a decision should not be rushed into. One could argue that, absent any opposition, an international airport would take 10, even 20 years to pass muster. Add an exponent because the opposition is fierce.

Z - Zoo
Along with sports stadia, parks, colleges, hi-tech centers, transportation hubs, and every other idea under the sun, a zoo is one of the possible uses mentioned if an airport isn't built at El Toro, and a zoo is what the debate will likely remain in the months and years to come.