Thursday, March 9, 2000

EDITORIAL It's time to regroup on El Toro airport plan
 

Now what?

Measure F, the clever initiative designed to derail plans for an airport at the shuttered El Toro Marine base, passed Tuesday in a landslide. If the measure withstands a court test, no airport can be built in Orange County without two-thirds voter approval -- an unlikely scenario at best.

El Toro backers -- perhaps a bit woozy from Measure F's 2-1 margin of victory -- don't seem to find the vote significant.

"This is not going to affect the airport issue at all," said Bruce Nestande, who chaired the anti-F group, Citizens for Jobs & the Economy. Nestande is a highly paid consultant, whose paycheck is funded largely by Newport Beach residents.

And that's not Nestande's most, ah, interesting quote. This is: "I wouldn't change anything."

That to the question, if he could do the campaign again, what would he do differently? So, according to Nestande, 33% was the best percentage El Toro backers could muster against Measure F.

There's no denying, the push for El Toro has been a tough fight. Newport Beach has been flanked in the south by passion, thousands of volunteers and a boogeyman to fight against and in the north by an equally deadly adversary: apathy.

Still, the day after the election, airport boosters are saying damn the torpedoes -- it's full speed ahead.

Measure F's victory may not be the end of the road in the long battle over El Toro. But we can see the end from here.

While the war goes on, we have just one question: Does anyone else hear that ticking sound? It's the clock winding down on the agreement that keeps John Wayne Airport reasonably small and a reasonably good neighbor. In five years, the pact -- forged 20 years ago amid lawsuit threats and intense lobbying -- will expire.

And the fear of unlimited flights and no curfews becomes very real. By the way, the landmark agreement was not reached by paid consultants but through passionate, intelligent citizen leaders -- such people as Tom Edwards, Barbara Lichman, Judy Rosener, Clarence Turner and Jean Watt.

It's time to begin another tack, which can and should run parallel to the current strategy. Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and the rest of North County should continue to push for the airport -- in court, at the county, at the ballot box.

But what Newport-Mesa wants, and what it wants much more than an airport at El Toro, is no expansion of John Wayne. And now's the time to make it a fact -- while Newport-Mesa still has some bargaining power.

Newport Beach leaders need to strike a deal with their South County enemies: If you help us freeze John Wayne in its current state, we'll stop our push for an airport at El Toro.

There's got to be enough political muscle on both sides to get Reps. Chris Cox, Ron Packard and Dana Rohrabacher to pass federal legislation that would forever limit the flights and hours of operation at John Wayne.

We need to face up to the truth. The current and expensive pro-El Toro airport strategy has been a failure.

Maybe the strategy can be tinkered with here and there, but we're staring down the barrel of 67% of the voters who say they don't want an airport at El Toro. That should sharpen everyone's focus.

It's time to send an envoy -- secret or otherwise -- to South County to see if there's some other way out of this mess. Otherwise, five years from now, our guess is that no one will be hearing planes flying out of El Toro, but Newport-Mesa residents will hear an increasing parade of jets flying out of John Wayne day and night. Tick, tick, tick.