COUNTY ADMITS EL TORO IS NOT NEEDED TO MEET DEMAND YET THOUSANDS WILL BE HARMED BY AIR POLLUTION IF AN AIRPORT IS BUILT

County report still leaves many unanswered questions

IRVINE, CA - For the first time, the County of Orange has admitted that an airport at El Toro is unnecessary, and that there will be significant health risks from air pollution generated if it is built. In addition, the project will violate federal and state standards for air quality, it will not conform to the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) Air Quality Management Plan, and it will result in a significant unavoidable increase in cancer and non-cancer health risk.

According to Paul D Eckles, Executive Director of the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA) “The bottom line is the county has systematically lied about the environmental impacts of El Toro.  It took a court order to begin to get these revelations about the air quality impacts.  We know there is much more yet to be revealed, but it’s a start.”

In stark contrast to what the county had previously revealed, the supplemental analysis admits huge increases in pollution such as:

· 1,017,505 daily pounds of Carbon Monoxide (CO) will be added to the air basin.
· 280,158 daily pounds of Nitrogen Oxide (Nox) will be released
· 52,584 daily pounds of Reactive Organic Carbons (ROC)
· 101,117 daily pounds of Sulfur Oxide · 5,402 daily pounds of Particulate Matter (PM10)

However, despite these and other admonitions of risk, the county still grossly understated the health risks from airport operations - perhaps underestimating by 10,000 times the actual risk.  For example, the county reports that virtually all of the cancer and health risks from the airport will come from diesel engine emissions.  It has calculated the risks of cancer around John Wayne Airport now and in the future, by comparison with diesel engine emissions now and in the future.  Those comparisons resulted in reports of new cancers caused in residents around John Wayne in a ratio that parallels the diesel engine emissions.

But, when it reported the risks of cancer around a new El Toro airport, it did not report in the same way. Instead, it calculated a ratio of new cancers to diesel emissions for military operations in 1998, but then incredibly reported the number of new cancer cases for the new airport at a ratio that is almost 10,000 times smaller! By manipulating numbers in this way, the county reports that lifetime cancer cases will actually drop for residents around the new airport, even though it would serve 28.9 million passengers annually and ship two million tons of air cargo.  “If you believed the county, you would think that we can end cancer in the county by adding tens of thousands of diesel trucks to our roads.”

Contrary to earlier county claims that El Toro will not pose a significant health risk, court-ordered revisions of the air quality analysis show that the airport will cause a significant and unavoidable health risk - not only to people living close to the airport, but throughout Orange County.

According to the county’s document, South Coast Air Quality Board has said the maximum permissible cancer risk from an airport at El Toro is only 10 cancer deaths in one million.  But, the County’s EIR reports that the project will cause a risk of cancer to 8,320 residents in every one million. To put the impacts of the project in context, currently in the South Coast Air Basin the average cancer risk has been estimated to be 1,414 cases per one million residents from air pollution.  For Orange County’s 2.8 million citizens, this means that an estimated 4,000 people will suffer from cancer, just because they are breathing polluted air.

The county’s report, however, states that the El Toro airport project will increase that risk by 8,320 cancer risks per one million residents - or more than 21,000 new cancer cases for Orange County residents.  Even that figure, as noted above, appears to be grossly understated and in fact it may be thousands of times greater.

Most interesting is the statement, made several times in the document, that “…Model runs show that there is sufficient capacity at airports in the region to absorb the projected unconstrained regional existing and foreseeable demand without expansion of airport capacity in Orange County.” The document goes on to claim that not building El Toro will mean more vehicle trips, longer lines for taxis and other relatively modest inconveniences, compared to the devastating environmental impact of building the project.

Furthermore, SCAG’s regional forecast of 158 million passengers per year by 2020 assumes an average three percent increase in passengers per year.  Despite Southern California’s booming economy, passenger demand at all regional airports is not increasing anywhere near three percent per year.  Looking at it another way, the county’s environmental impact report assumes that Orange County currently generates about 12 million passengers per year.

Given that Orange County’s population is expected to grow by about 10 percent, that would amount to about 13.2 MAP demand in 20 years.  In order for the Orange County proposed two airport system to reach 33 MAP, and thus obtain the claimed economic benefits of the airport, 19.8 million people per year would have to travel from Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego counties to use one of our two airports.

If the regional objective is to locate airports where the population centers are, then Orange County has plenty of capacity to serve its current and future needs, and new airports should be built where population will increase significantly, namely the Inland Empire and Northern Los Angeles County.

In addition to the significant health risks admitted by the county, ETRPA also questions the county’s methodology, which could seriously underestimate the impacts of the project.

· The county used an outdated computer model for assessing Chemical Exposure, rather than the current Health Risk Assessment Computer Program.
· The county failed to consider the impact of heavy diesel trucks impacting the health of people living near all freeways leading to and from El Toro. This would include significant impacts for residents from Los Angeles to San Diego living along the 405, 5, 55, 91 and 57 Freeways
· The county report shows data, but does not provide methodology, assumptions or emission factors used to support its conclusions.
· The county report cautions that it has “overstated” the health risks, yet it is clear from the report that it has not fully included all potential risk, disclosed important data on how the data was compiled, and still it shows that the pollution is significantly higher than the SCAQMD regulations would permit.  There is no certain, funded and responsible mechanism for either mitigating these severe impacts, or stopping the project if, in fact, the impacts are as bad, or worse than projected.
· The report concludes that with El Toro, people will travel shorter distances to the airport thereby reducing emissions from auto exhaust.  However, the report does not explain how a population of just over 3 million people will generate 33 million annual passengers, or 10 trips per year, per person. A more likely scenario is that in order for El Toro to reach its size and provide the commensurate economic benefits promised by county planners, it would have to attract passengers who will travel longer distances from the Inland Empire, Los Angeles and San Diego counties. No analysis of the air quality impacts of this more likely scenario is provided.
· The report does not co nsider the impacts of trucking at El Toro, including the air pollution effects from thousands of commercial truck-tankers bringing jet fuel to the airport, as well as pollution from the trucks supporting the cargo operations.

Following ETRPA’s successful legal challenge to the environmental documents for the proposed El Toro Airport, the County of Orange has been forced to admit that the project will cause severe, harmful unmitigated impacts to thousands of Orange County residents from air pollution.  However, ETRPA still questions the county’s very narrow analysis that fails to consider many significant impacts and does not provide the assumptions, methodology or analysis to support its conclusions.

ETRPA submitted nearly 300 questions and concerns to the county regarding the report. The county must respond and/or answer these questions before the report is completed.