Might as well do away with the JWA

Geoff West

For years now, the residents of Orange County have wrestled with the

issue of the former El Toro Marine Coprs Air Station. What to do?

What to do? First, the obvious and most logical choice was made, and

the people decided that a commercial airport was the best use.

Then, after a couple more ballot measures and a mountain of

propaganda dollars, the South County whiners convinced enough voters

that an airport was a bad idea and that Emperor Agran’s “Great Park”

was the solution.

That’s where we stand today, with the economic viability of Orange

County put into slow motion by a few greedy, shortsighted people with

the money and power to persuade. I’ve been giving this a good deal of

thought lately. If an airport at El Toro was such a bad idea, what

makes John Wayne Airport such a good one?

Are the concerns expressed by those in the South County about air

safety, traffic, noise and pollution any less valid about John Wayne

Airport? Of course not. If the idea of sharing Orange County’s air

transportation burden was distasteful to them, why should it be any

less so for those of us who live around John Wayne Airport?

So, here’s my thought. Let’s just shut John Wayne Airport down,

plow it under and put a nice park in it’s place. All the arguments

for a park in South County apply equally in our little part of the

world. The cities that border on the airport could divide up the

land, expand their borders and enjoy the ambience. We could call it

the John Wayne Park.

But we need more housing, you say? OK, let’s build a smaller park,

maybe with a nice, affordable public golf course and some lovely

homes to surround it. That seems to me to be a pretty good idea. That

should satisfy our South County neighbors, too, since it resembles

their plan for El Toro. Certainly, the county could reap a financial

windfall when the site is sold as surplus land to those self-same

developers who are salivating over El Toro.

But what about the air travelers and cargo presently served by

John Wayne Airport, you ask? What about them? What do we care about

having easy access to emerging markets around the world for our goods

and services? What do we care about making it easier for tourists and

business people to reach our area? Who cares about having a launch

pad for world travel located in Orange County?

We could just shift all that turmoil (and business) to LAX, Long

Beach, Burbank, Ontario and the planned March Inland Port. The latter

would be reached via that most recent boondoggle, the Tri-Tunnel

Express -- the triple tunnel being planned through Saddleback Peak

across four active earthquake faults -- to the Inland Empire.

After all, those ideas were just fine with the South County

contingent , so they should be good enough for the rest of us, too.

But what about the economic viability of Orange County with John

Wayne Airport gone, you ask? Does that mean you think an airport is

good for the economy -- an engine of commerce and jobs? Well, your

neighbors in South County apparently don’t; otherwise, they would

have supported one for El Toro. If they didn’t think they needed an

airport, why should we?

If the economy of the region withers because of the closure of one

little airport, then that must have been it’s destiny, right? The

economic models and careful consideration used by the farsighted

planners who encouraged the expansion of John Wayne Airport obviously

were wrong, because the same rationale was used for the creation of

an international airport at El Toro -- which would have secured the

economic future of this region for the next century -- but it was

rejected.

So, if they were wrong on that one, they must have also been wrong

about John Wayne Airport. It’s all too logical. Here’s my plan. I

think those stalwarts at the Airport Working Group, who have worked

so diligently on our behalf to constrain the expansion of John Wayne

Airport, should shift their focus. They should now work toward the

total closure of the airport. Instead of being known as AWG, maybe

they could call themselves “No Orange County Regional Airport,

Period!”

Sounds like a good idea to me.

* GEOFF WEST is a resident of Costa Mesa.