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Irvine, August 24, 2000: Today the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA) formally requested that the County of Orange recirculate Draft EIR 573 which is the second environmental study regarding the proposed El Toro Airport. Documents received by ETRPA after filing litigation under the California Public Records Act reveal that the County illegally withheld important information regarding noise and other significant impacts from the proposed airport.

Recirculation of the EIR will delay the County’s planning process even further by requiring a minimum 45-day comment period. The county will then have to respond in writing to the comments and incorporate them into the final EIR. If the county ultimately accepts the conclusions of its noise consultant and finds that there are significant adverse impacts, the County will have to mitigate those impacts to a level of insignificance. This could mean retrofitting sound insulation on least 4,600 homes, plus schools and other buildings within the noise contours for arrivals on Runway 34. Based on a conservative cost of $33,000 per house for sound insulation, the housing insulation alone would add more than $150 million to the cost of the airport. Much more would be required to insulate homes, schools and commercial buildings affected by departures on Runway 16.

Alternatively, the county could mitigate the impact by securing Federal approval to obtain nighttime curfews and limitations on the types of aircraft that could fly into El Toro. However, aviation experts agree that this is nearly impossible for a new airport as it would require all airlines to agree to the restrictions, something that no airport has achieved since the 1990 passage of the Federal Airport Noise and Capacity Act.

In a letter to Brian Speegle, asking for recirculation of the Draft EIR 573, ETRPA stated: " Had these documents been released when requested, rather than illegally withheld by the County, they would have been available for public use in preparing comments on the Draft EIR 573. Moreover, the attempt by the County to preclude public review of these documents by the artifice of simply readdressing them from Ms Wiercioch (then ET/MDP Project Manager) to Mr. Gatzke (the County’s outside legal counsel) is yet another in a series of steps by the County to minimize the environmental impacts of the proposed airport, rather than addressing them forthrightly."

• The county’s conclusion that risk from sleep disturbance during nighttime hours would be low, directly contradicts the findings of their noise consultant, Mestre Greves & Associates.
• The noise consultant’s memoranda paint a dramatically different and more adverse picture of the expected noise impacts than does the Draft EIR. The County claims that no homes or schools will be adversely affected by the proposed airport, while the noise consultant estimates that at least 4,604 homes would be severely impacted by 747 arrivals over Laguna Woods.
• The County’s Draft EIR rejects a nighttime curfew to mitigate noise impacts, while the consultant concludes that departures on Runway 16 over Laguna Woods without a curfew would result in sleep disturbance in a "very, very large number" of homes. (Far more than 4600)

The County is already obligated to recirculate the air quality portion of EIR 573. Earlier this year, Superior Court Judge Judith McConnell ruled that an analysis included in EIR 573 was inadequate and failed to disclose significant, harmful impacts from air pollution generated by the proposed airport.

According to ETRPA Chairman Susan Withrow, "We can’t trust a process that is fraught with deception. It’s time for the county to come clean with the people about the impacts, and admit, once and for all, that it is impossible to put a commercial airport in the heart of a highly urbanized area."