Project '99 Newsletter, January 1999

A Plan of Action to Protect and Improve Our Community
A Note from Larry Agran Chair of Project 99

Dear Neighbor,

Headlines leading up to the January 12th Irvine City Council meeting got things right. According to the Orange County Register of January 8th, “Anti-airport war chest might get huge boost — The city of Irvine is expected to kick in $2 million.” This followed the Register/ Irvine Citizen article headlined “$2 million on table to fight airport.”

In public life, as in private life, money matters. It can make a real difference. The County has so far spent over $30 million in planning and pro-moting El Toro International Airport. The anti-airport effort has spent a tiny fraction of that amount — with much of the funding coming from Project 99 and other citizen organizations.

As our Page 1 story points out, the funding picture is about to change. Key South County Cities — on their own and in concert with others — will be putting up millions of new dollars in 1999 and 2000 to defeat El Toro Airport and replace it with the superior non-aviation Millennium Plan.

If the Register had it right in its coverage of the funding story, the Times/Orange County had it wrong — very wrong — in its coverage of the County’s claim that El Toro Airport wouldn’t pose much of a noise problem. Our Page 2 story attempts to set the record straight — and to encourage the Times to do a better job.

Thanks for your continuing support. And best wishes for our shared success in 1999 and beyond.

Funding Against the Airport
Cities Doing More in El Toro Fight

On Tuesday evening, January 12, the Irvine City Council approved an historic resolution — one that marks the beginning of a new approach to defeat El Toro International Airport. The city’s first resolution of the new year — No. 99-01 — calls for the “adoption of a comprehensive policy to defeat the proposed commercial airport at El Toro and replace it with the non- aviation Millennium Plan.”

Irvine’s resolution s a model for other cities in the growing county-wide effort against the airport. It instructs the Councilmembers and city staff to “prepare a comprehensive legal and environmental defense strategy intended to assert the rights of Irvine residents and defeat the proposed El Toro Airport in federal and state courts.”

It also calls for the Council to “formulate a preferred strategy for promoting the environmentally and economically superior non-aviation Millennium Plan, beginning with the mailing of Millennium Plan infor-mational materials to every household in Irvine and to households in neighboring communities.”

And, most important, the resolution includes authorization for a special El Toro Reuse Fund — with $2 million in new funds to implement the comprehensive strategy to defeat the airport and promote the Millennium Plan.

Irvine’s strategic plan will be pursued in cooperation with the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA) — a multi-city joint powers authority organized to develop a non-aviation reuse alternative. The ETRPA board includes members representing seven South Orange County cities — Dana Point, Irvine, Laguna Beach, Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo.

Since the establishment of ETRPA in 1994, hundreds of thousands of residents in North County and South County alike have come to realize that an international airport at El Toro would be an environmental and economic disaster.

The adoption of Irvine Resolution No. 99-01 was hailed by Irvine City Councilman Dave Christensen, who is also an ETRPA Board member. “I’m proud that Irvine is taking the lead in this fight to defend our community and defeat El Toro Airport,” Christensen said. He added: “I’m confident that other cities will also step up their efforts and vote the funds we need to wage — and win — this all-important fight.”

Noise-Level Deceptions

What’s going on at the Los Angeles Times? On Thursday, December 10, 1998, the Times published an article with the remarkable headline “El Toro Airport Noise Won’t Be a Problem.”

In case the Times hasn’t noticed, airport noise is always a problem. That’s why those guys directing planes on runways wear ear protectors. That’s also why a recent study by Gary Evans published in the January 1998 issue of Psychological Science found that children’s health ? and their ability to learn — is damaged by aircraft noise.

In that study researchers looked at third and fourth grade children near Munich, Germany before and after the opening of the new international airport. The children in areas impacted by airport noise were found to experience significant increases in blood pressure and the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol. Children in those areas also reported poorer quality of life after the airport opened.

Of course we’ll concede that the Times may have been using broad strokes when writing their headline. “The average noise from a smaller airport at El Toro will be less of a problem” could be what the Times intended to say when it summarized a new noise-level impact report from County officials.

This brings us to the nub of the matter. People don’t experience loud noise as 24-hour averages, but as a succession of painful events.

When describing noise averages the Times concluded that “the county’s scaled-back airport plan for El Toro would concentrate the greatest noise from commercial flights over undeveloped land, rather than existing homes and schools.”

That may be true, but what about the “unconcentrated” and “not-so-great” noise events — from successive overflights — that will be occurring around the clock? That’s the kind of noise that affected the children in Munich and that will affect most of us who live in Orange County if the airport is built.

California State law restricts what can be built within areas where average noise levels exceed 65 decibels. A quiet neighborhood is perhaps 45 decibels; conversation usually is 60 decibels; a vacuum cleaner operates at 70 decibels. But “average” is a tricky concept.

Let’s say your home is quiet. You’ve rented your favorite movie. You’ve curled up in your easy chair. You’re ready for an enjoyable evening. But there’s one problem: Every five minutes a vacuum cleaner goes on. It stays on for two minutes. Then it shuts off. Five minutes later, the vacuum is on again. On and off and on and off and on and off — indefinitely. You can’t stop it. You’re stressed. You have trouble concentrating. You can’t sleep.

The average noise level for your home — including the maddening vacuum cleaner — would be around 60 decibels. That’s well within our State law’s acceptable quiet zone. No noise problem there, if you believe the Los Angeles Times.

Now let’s substitute that vacuum’s noise with the sound of a jet transport landing — one every five minutes. Would you want to live in a community with constant 70 decibel noise events, even if it was considered — on average — a quiet zone? Of course not.

This brings us to our final question: What would happen if a vacuum were turned on and off every five minutes during the evening in the homes of Los Angeles Times’s reporters? Chances are those reporters might describe a perpetually interrupting vacuum as noisy. That noise might even raise their blood pressure enough to investigate the stories they publish. They might discover that County official’s are prepared to deceive the public in order to build an international airport at El Toro. Maybe the Times reporters would even stop reprinting the County’s happy-talk press releases, and start doing some honest, hard-hitting investigative journalism.

Project ’99 is a special project of the Tides Center, a duly registered public charity. Donations to Project ’99/Tides Center are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.