A Plan of Action to Protect and
Improve Our Community
A Note from Larry Agran Chair of Project
99
A Return to the Ballot Box
1999-2000: The Decisive Period
Ahead
By Larry Agran
Volunteer Chair, Project 99
We've come a long way together in our fight to determine the future of the Marine Corps Base at El Toro. Will we, at last, defeat the County's proposed El Toro International Airport? The answer, we believe, is an emphatic YES!
As our Project 99 support base has grown during the past three years - we now number 10,000 citizens! - we have made substantial progress in turning public opinion against a commercial airport at El Toro and in favor of a sensible non-aviation alternative for Orange County. Now, in 1999, it's time to implement the all-important Phase Three of our Victory Strategy - getting ready to return to the ballot box in 1999-2000 with a carefully drafted initiative measure to defeat El Toro Airport and then replace it with the economically and environmentally superior non-aviation Millennium Plan.
PHASE ONE
When Project 99 was first organized in 1995, we focused our efforts on Phase One of our Victory Strategy - Revealing the Flaws in the County's Airport Plan. We analyzed likely takeoff and landing patterns. We consulted with expert commercial airline pilots. We researched and reported the dangers, health hazards, and multi-billion dollar costs of the proposed international airport. As a result of our research and our educational outreach to hundreds of thousands of Orange County citizens, a recent Los Angeles Times survey revealed that for the first time a majority of South County and North County residents oppose a commercial airport at El Toro. It's safe to say that Phase One of Project 99's Victory Strategy has been a major success - we are helping to prove that the County's proposed El Toro International Airport plan is dangerous, deeply flawed, unaf-fordable and unpopular.
PHASE TWO
In 1996 we initiated Phase Two of our Victory Strategy - Creating a Choice. Project 99 took the lead in investigating alternatives to the airport plan. Our work culminated in the publication of A Real Choice for a Better Future - a citizens' report on non-aviation reuse for El Toro that included many productive attractions: a great metropolitan park surrounded by hi-tech research and industry, libraries, universities, arts and entertainment centers, sports and recreation facilities, and a 1,000-acre wildlife preserve. Much of Project 99's work was used by the seven-city El Toro Reuse Planning Authority (ETRPA) to help create The Millennium Plan - which is now the official seven-city non-aviation reuse plan. Phase Two of our Victory Strategy was a success. A real choice - in the form of a non-aviation alternative to the County's airport plan - has been created.
PHASE THREE
Now as we approach 1999, we are about to enter Phase Three of the Victory Strategy - Making a Choice. Phase Three permits us all to soon return to the ballot box and vote on a countywide initiative that, if adopted, will defeat El Toro Airport once and for all and replace it with The Millennium Plan.
Nearly five years ago, proponents of the El Toro Airport hijacked the federal base closure and reuse process by qualify-ing an initiative for the County ballot. The initiative, known as Measure A, was a developer-driven power play. It pro-posed to have the County take over the entire El Toro reuse process to begin plan-ning a commercial airport at the base. In November of 1994 - forced to decide between building an airport or doing nothing - voters rushed to judgment and approved Measure A by the narrowest of margins, 51% to 49%.
Today, Measure A remains the law of the County - a law mandating the Board of Supervisors to build a massive international airport at El Toro. That's why it's so important to go back to the ballot box again - to allow voters to say "No" to Measure A and to say "Yes" to the non-aviation Millennium Plan.
Years ago we chose our name - Project 99 - based on the scheduled departure of the Marines from El Toro in 1999. We began our non-profit research and educational project believing that 1999 would likely be a crucial year in deciding the future of El Toro. And we were right! The Marines are leaving on schedule. The County is expected to adopt a final airport plan before the end of 1999. And, in response, citizens will be organizing a countywide initiative for a showdown vote in 2000.
In the decisive period ahead, Project 99 is committed to continue our work with ETRPA to promote The Millennium Plan. We will also extend our "Go North" public education campaign, informing Central and North County residents about the harmful effects this airport would have on all of Orange County. We will continue to produce and distribute research and educational materials to our supporters, as well as to tens of thousands of additional households throughout Orange County.
And, most important, Project 99 will be in the lead organizing the ways and the means for Orange County citizens to return to the ballot box to defeat El Toro Airport and replace it with the superior non-aviation Millennium Plan.
Pipeline Dream
This article first appeared in the OC Weekly on November 20, 1998 and is No. 85 in a series entitled El Toro Airport Watch. Written by Anthony Pignataro, the "Airport Watch" has won praise throughout Orange County as the most comprehensive investigative reporting on the negative effects of a commercial airport at El Toro. A booklet of the complete collection of the 1997 El Toro Airport Watch (1- 44) is still available and can be ordered by calling (714) 544-5410 or e-mailing Project 99 at Project99@aol.com. [the El Toro Airport Watch is also available via the El Toro Airport Info Site]
We know the proposed El Toro International Airport will be a big headache to the County. The El Toro Y will jam with Book of Revelation traffic. The sky will darken with jet fumes from San Clemente to Orange. The evening air that has been still for decades will echo with the scream of periodic overflights.
This much is well-known. What isn't so well-known is the disruption and damage El Toro could do to North County streets-damage that would occur long before the skies over Irvine and Lake Forest fill with fat airliners.
The problem concerns an 8-inch pipeline that runs the 30 miles between El Toro and Norwalk. Built in 1956, the pipeline carried El Toro's jet fuel from the Defense Fuel Supply Point in Norwalk to the old tank farm in the northern quadrant of the base. Once capable of pouring 638,000 gallons per day into El Toro's 408 fuel tanks, the pipeline now sits idle underground, awaiting potential reuse when the County's commercial airport opens.
The trouble is that County officials can't reuse the pipeline because it isn't nearly big enough. One Boeing 747 alone needs 53,000 gallons to fill its tanks. Boeing 757s and 737s are far more efficient, but they each need 11,000 gallons. In addition, the Marines plan to cap or tear out all of their old fuel tanks, leaving nothing for the County to reuse. Even assuming all the proposed 500 flights in and out of El Toro per day are 757s and only half need fuel each day, the airport would still require more than 2.7 million gallons of jet fuel daily.
County officials have three options. They can dispense with the pipeline and rely on trucking in the fuel (ooohhh, that sounds safe). Or they can lay other pipelines to other fuel sources. Or they can take over the current Marine pipeline and enlarge it. Easily the most destructive option available, enlarging the pipeline will require digging up five major intersections in Anaheim, each perilously close to Disneyland. The rail line that runs along the 5 freeway between Lincoln and Valley View avenues will also have to be dug up, as will the Santiago channel in Santa Ana and Irvine Boulevard as it runs through Irvine's brand-new gated Northwood communities. But since the pipeline is already hooked up to the base and a fuel source, it's the most attractive option.
Cost numbers don't exist for any of the three options. But County planners need to fashion some fuel system quickly. Airport boosters like El Toro Citizens Advisory Commission member George Argyros have been lobbying hard for years to start cargo flights as soon as the last Marine steps off El Toro's tarmac in June.
The County's 1996 Community Reuse Plan makes reference to the pipeline and a proposed tank farm in the base's southwestern quadrant, but it says nothing more concrete than "further engineering study will be required to verify" whether the County can use the pipeline. County officials still maintain they will address the pipeline issue in their Airport Master Plan, which is due next year. A spokesperson for the El Toro Marine Corps closure office said the Marines still haven't figured out what to do with the pipeline.