Never say never.
Just ask the people around the former El Toro Marine base, or even Tustin’s now closed helicopter base. A decade ago, few around those bases thought they’d be closed.
Now the Pentagon is gearing up for another round of base closures. All of the state’s bases,including those in Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and at Camp Pendleton,start out on the list. Which ones stay there,and end up being closed,is up for grabs.
Talk about whether a local base could be axed turns more to the sleepy Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach than the busy Joint Forces Training Base at Los Alamitos.
Seal Beach officials contend their base is an important spot for servicing the Pacific Fleet. But one skeptic said he wonders whether the base has outlived its usefulness.
“That’s their mission, but I don’t think the fleet’s shown up in a while,” said David Ellis, president of Irvine-based government consultancy Delta Partners LLC who worked on the effort to turn El Toro into an airport in the 1990s.
The Navy does most of its weapons loading and unloading at sites in San Diego and San Francisco as well as in Washington state, according to Ellis.
The stakes are high at Seal Beach: The base is on 5,256 acres of prime coastal land, nestled between upscale Huntington Harbor and Seal Beach. About 900 acres of the station are set aside as the Seal Beach National Wildlife Refuge.
Redevelopment of the base could raise environmental issues and California Coastal Commission scrutiny. But there’s no denying it could be a boon to developers, according to Ellis.
“It’s flat, it’s sweet, and you have infrastructure right up to the base line,” he said.
Contamination could be an issue, as it has been at El Toro, Ellis said.
The adjacent Los Alamitos base has two things going for it, according to Ellis: an airfield that could be an important means of flying in supplies during a natural disaster, and a training center used by the California National Guard.
If Los Alamitos were shuttered, it could immerse the county in another airport debate. During the fight over El Toro, some opponents of an airport there touted Los Alamitos as an alternative.
An airport at Los Alamitos surely would face the same kind of resistance from cities around the base. But what makes an airport there unlikely is that the site has been studied and rejected at least twice as a commercial airport site, by the Southern California Association of Governments in 1984 and by the county’s Airport Site Coalition in 1989.
The main issue is congested airspace with Los Angeles International Airport 20 miles away and Long Beach Airport five miles away.
Another area military facility, Camp Pendleton, has airport implications. The massive San Diego County Marine base abutting the county line also has been raised as an alternative airport site.
But the Marines long have fought any civilian use or closure talk for Camp Pendleton. And a case can be made for its military importance as the base hosts training in urban, nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.
The base closure process is a familiar one for many in Orange County. By May, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to release a list of bases targeted for possible closure.
From there, the list goes into the hands of federal Base Realignment and Closure Commission, which gets input from local communities and has final say, expected some time around September.
Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has formed the Council on Base Support and Retention to lobby on behalf of areas with military facilities.
Officials with Seal Beach and Los Alamitos are taking the threat of closures seriously.
They’ve prepared sales pitches for federal officials, which they practiced earlier this month before Schwarzenegger’s council.
“There is always a concern” the Seal Beach weapons station could be marked for closure, said Lee Whittenberg, the city’s director of development services.
Still, he said the city is confident the facility will survive: “As long as the Navy maintains a fleet presence in San Diego, we are probably going to be here.”
Seal Beach Councilman Mike Levitt recently took part in a dress rehearsal defense of the facility before Schwarzenegger’s council, according to Whittenberg.
The city’s take stresses the benefits of the station to Defense Department: It’s home to skilled workers who service Pacific Fleet ships; it can provide security for commercial ports in Long Beach and Los Angeles, and the base can host training exercises for all military branches.
If the Seal Beach base is closed, weapons and whatever else is stored there would shift to another base, perhaps in San Diego, sources said.
