Money, not noise, root of El Toro issue

The Daily Pilot on June 15 and 16 published 10 letters reacting to

the question of whether or not the El Toro battle should continue,

eight of which were in favor of reopening El Toro.

The South County cities taken as a whole comprise, in effect, one

city of 600,000 people, which by most standards in the United States

is a large enough group to warrant an international airport.

When added to the 2.5 million residents already in North County,

the total population of Orange County is well more than 3 million and

demands an international airport.

It’s unfortunate that the “way of life” of South County has been

couched in terms of noise. The real issue is money. The builders and

developers want to build on as many square inches of land not yet

turned into housing plots as quickly as possible. Once the build-out

has occurred, the developers and their investors will be long gone,

leaving both South County and North County to pay for the required

road systems and infrastructure.

It is also unfortunate that the developers have managed to raise

the specter of noise and “way of life” as the root of the airport

problem. This is not a battle of pro-airport versus anti-airport

groups. It is all about money. It seems to be forgotten that El Toro

has been paid for by all the taxpayers in the United States. Locally,

South County residents have paid their share in the same proportion

as North County. Since there are five times as many North County

residents as South County residents, North County should have a

correspondingly larger financial stake in El Toro than South County.

As for the noise issue, the majority of South County residents are

farther from the runways of El Toro than all of the residents of

Newport Beach, Tustin and Costa Mesa are from John Wayne runways.

Reopening El Toro will guarantee some welcome open space in South

County that will result in lowered auto- and truck-traffic noise and

smog.

WILLIAM J. KEARNS

Costa Mesa