Safe and Healthy Communities

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities

May 4, 1999

Contact: Leonard Kranser, CSHC Communications Director, 949-499-5567 or Jim Davy, CSHC Petition Drive Chairman, 949-498-0833

Initiative Could Have Cut $20 Million from Airport Spending

Santa Ana: County planners reported that they have spent $23 million to date on planning for an El Toro airport, with much more to come. Proponents of the Safe and Healthy Communities Initiative said that if their measure had been in effect, spending could have been halted at around $3 million.

Leonard Kranser, spokesman for Citizens for Safe and Healthy Communities said, "There are few details and almost no controls on how much money the supervisors and staff are wasting on this project. Our voters' rights initiative limits spending to the preparation of an environmental impact report. They can't spend more until the voters look at the project and give their approval. For El Toro, an environmental report was prepared almost 20 million dollars ago."

Initiative supporters point to public opinion polls conducted annually by the University of California, Irvine and by leading newspapers, as evidence that a vote of the people, at that point in time, would have stopped further spending. Following disclosure of the airport's environmental impacts, costs, and alternatives, the UCI polls showed that 48 percent of voters opposed the El Toro Airport, and favored a non-aviation reuse, while only 41 percent favored an airport.

The Safe and Healthy Communities initiative, when passed, will require that voters give final approval to new or expanded airports, large jails in residential areas, or hazardous landfills. It will correct the planning process in Orange County by requiring that the necessary studies be done before a project is ever brought to the voters for approval.