Camp Pendleton
Voice of San Diego, May 17, 2006 (excerpt)

The Camp Pendleton concept is also dubbed "feasible," [by the San Diego Regional Airport Authority consultants] though at 40 miles from downtown San Diego, it would be the nation's farthest airport from its related city center. A marketing study says moving the airport there would entice more people to drive to Los Angeles International Airport rather than fly from San Diego.

A dual-runway airport built along the southwestern edge of the sprawling 125,000-acre base would require $120 million in improvements to nearby Interstate 5 and Highways 78 and 76. An elevated roadway connecting the airport to the interstate would cost approximately $1.1 billion.

The airport would not be a joint-use airport in the same sense as Miramar. Commercial airlines would primarily use it, though the military could use the runways if they wanted, said Angela Shafer-Payne, the airport authority's vice president of strategic planning.

As with Miramar, the analysis projects that little growth would be spurred by the airport's location. Airport-related businesses would occur primarily through redevelopment of existing commercial and industrial areas, the study says.

Noise would be less of an issue than at Miramar or North Island/Lindbergh. About 4,000 people in 1,400 homes would be affected, the analysis concludes.

The price tag at Camp Pendleton: $7.1 billion to $8 billion. That includes potential environmental mitigation costs between $800 million and $1.7 billion.

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Airport would shut down Pendleton, Marines say

North County Times, September 27, 2003
By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer

CAMP PENDLETON ---- Placing San Diego County's new airport on Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base could halt the myriad coordinated training operations at one of the West Coast's most strategic military installations, military officials said last week.

"It would close us down," said Larry Rannals, Camp Pendleton community plans and liaison officer in an interview last week on the eve of a crucial milestone in the county's site search.

The region can have an international airport at that location if it wants, or it can have a major military base where beach landings are practiced and explosive artillery is launched thousands of feet into the air, Rannals said.

"But you can't have both," he said.

Rugged terrain, sweeping environmental restrictions, a huge impact on base communities and direct conflict with military operations would prevent any airport plan from taking off, Rannals said.

Thursday is key

The comments came in advance of a Thursday meeting at which the nine-member San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board will consider which of 16 potential sites to carry forward for detailed analysis in a second round of study, after spending $1.9 million to get the ball rolling.

Regional planners are operating under the assumption that a local base might become available through 2005 "BRAC" ---- the federal base realignment and closure process ---- which could see the Pentagon decide to shutter dozens of military installations across the nation.

Relying in part on the working group's criteria for narrowing the field of candidate sites, the agency staff recommended Friday that the board carry forward seven sites ---- including the 3,000 acres on the coastal southwest corner of 125,000-acre Pendleton, just north of Oceanside.

Other recommended finalists are: Miramar Marine Corps Air Station (two sites), Naval Air Station North Island, western Imperial County along Interstate 8, March Air Reserve Base near Riverside and Tijuana Rodriguez International Airport.

Airport officials anticipate spending about $1 million on each site to be studied, and are hoping to cover most of the cost with a Federal Aviation Administration grant.

A waste of money?

Rannals said it is foolish to continue looking at Pendleton.

"Why waste a million dollars of the FAA's grant money to study a site that's not realistic?" Rannals asked.

Airport authority officials counter that if it becomes clear soon after the study starts that any particular site won't work, the full $1 million won't be spent on that site.

However, Camp Pendleton is attractive to regional planners because a North County airport would be convenient to residents in Orange County and southwestern Riverside County.

"Camp Pendleton would provide a solution not only for San Diego, but for Orange County and to some extent for Los Angeles as well," said Byron Wear of San Diego, a former interim airport board member who believes the base is one of the region's top two or three choices.

Where it can't go

Planned expansion of Ontario International Airport is expected to capture most Riverside County air travel business. But Orange County's John Wayne Airport is near capacity and cannot accept more traffic, and residents there rejected building a bigger airport at the former El Toro Marine base.

Los Angeles International also is near capacity and is not expected to expand significantly, regional aviation planners say. Ontario is expanding, but it is a long, grueling ride from the fast-growing southern tip of Orange County.

For most San Diego County residents, Wear said, a Pendleton airport would be convenient for long cross-country flights. "It certainly would beat LAX," he said. But he suggested that under that scenario, Lindbergh Field in San Diego would remain open to provide short-haul service to places such as Phoenix, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Miramar is a more central location for San Diego County, and for that reason is considered the odds-on favorite to become the No. 1 choice.

North County advantage

But Wear said the North County base offers a potential political advantage: Miramar is ringed by single-family neighborhoods, some of them very influential, such as La Jolla, while the Pendleton site is bordered only on the south by neighborhoods, in Oceanside and Vista. And noisy takeoffs would be to the northwest over the ocean, rather than to the southeast, he said.

The airport authority is analyzing Pendleton and other bases only under the premise that one might become available, said Angela Shafer-Payne, vice president of strategic planning for the airport authority.

"We're clear on that," she said. "We aren't going into this with some kind of feeling that we own those lands."

The Pendleton site may be attractive, but that does not mean a marriage with the military would work. The Marines, who are not used to submitting to anyone save for the commander in chief, would have to bow to the numerous demands of a major passenger airport. As a result, virtually every major operation would have to be scaled back, if not eliminated, Rannals said. Operations would be so restricted as to severely compromise the base's mission, he said.

Pendleton's importance

Home to the 35,000 Marines and sailors of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, he said, Camp Pendleton is one of the busiest bases in the country. More than 45,000 individual training events are conducted there every year.

Pendleton's enormous size and its location on the coast offers a unique opportunity to train in realistic "three-dimensional" combat scenarios that coordinate activities on land, in the air and in the sea, Rannals said.

Pendleton has the West Coast's only amphibious landing craft unit (Assault Craft Unit 5), and it happens to be where the international airport would go, he said.

Besides having to relocate that unit, an airport would shut down amphibious exercises at Red Beach a mile and a half up the coast, near the Las Pulgas exit. With two parallel 12,000-foot runways oriented northwest to southeast along Interstate 5, jets would take off into prevailing winds right over the beach.

"That's the heart and soul of our amphibious training operations here on Camp Pendleton," Rannals said. "If we can't do amphibious training operations we might as well close up and go home. That's our bread and butter."

A rich depository

And it's not as if the Marines can just march a few miles up the beach and practice there, Rannals said. Several miles of sand are state parkland, and the few that aren't are saddled with environmental restrictions.

The one remaining open space buffer between San Diego County and metropolitan Los Angeles, Camp Pendleton is one of the richest depositories of nature in Southern California. Driven out elsewhere by the relentless urban march, Southwestern arroyo toads, California gnatcatchers and least Bell's vireo birds thrive on the base. Their homes are protected by federal law.

An airport also could shut down the base's air field in the flood-prone Santa Margarita River Valley, where 180 helicopters are stationed and F-18 fighters drop in for coordinated air-land-sea exercises.

And it would force the relocation of the Edson Range weapons training area, where 17,000 recruits from the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot learn how to shoot.

Moving families

One of the working group's criteria for eliminating sites was family relocation: sites requiring the moving of 5,000 homes were scrapped. The airport consultant's analysis says only 740 base residents would need to be moved if an airport was built at Pendleton.

But Rannals challenges those numbers, arguing that the entire community of Stuart Mesa, population 5,000, would have to be relocated, not to mention a new community center, child-care center and elementary school.

Then there are barracks that house 2,500 Marines at Edson Range and 1,200 at Camp Las Flores. That's close to 9,000 people in all who would have to be moved, Rannals said.

"Realistically, we should have been eliminated on that criterion alone," he said. "We believe we were vastly underestimated, as far as the residents who would be impacted."

Shafer-Payne said the consultant's numbers, which came from the San Diego Association of Governments a couple of years ago, may be outdated. But she stressed they did not ignore the base residents.

"There is no distinction between people living on and off base," Shafer-Payne said. "Military families are being treated exactly the same way as civilian residents."

Air conflicts

Choosing another site on Pendleton would be nearly impossible, military officials and airport consultants agree. Eighty percent of the 125,000 acres is mountainous and the flat coastal strip is rather narrow.

And even if planners could shoehorn an airport somewhere else, commercial-jet flying patterns would clash directly with military air space. Civilian planes are restricted below 15,000 feet over much of the base, and for good reason: The Marines practice for wars by launching live bombs in paths that arc several miles across the sky and reach several thousand feet above sea level.

"We have no air space left to support a commercial airport," Rannals said. "We're blanketed."

Coexistence

There is no doubt military operations would be affected in a big way, but Wear of San Diego contends that does not mean Pendleton and an airport could not coexist. He suggested that, if Pendleton were pursued, military and aviation experts would figure out a way to plan an airport in a way that does not compromise the base's mission.

"With 125,000 acres you would think they could accommodate those activities on the base in some other form," Wear said.

As for the Stuart Mesa housing, Edson Range and other facilities potentially in the path of the bulldozer, "all of that would have to be relocated and paid for," he said.

An airport that served greater Southern California would be particularly strong economically because of its large market, Wear said, and it would generate plenty of money to cover the costs.

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