El Toro, Cont’d
As someone who has lived in Orange County for 42 years and has watched it grow from rural to urban, and as one who has devoted many years to protecting the environment as a former member of the California Coastal Commission, I feel the anti-El Toro airport campaign is one of the most dishonest I have ever experienced.
It is clearly possible to have an airport and a park on the large El Toro land mass. It is clearly important to provide transportation to people in the industries that are being romanced to move into South County.
It is clearly unfair to have OC people drive to Los Angeles to get transcontinental flights. It is clearly dishonest to suggest that John Wayne can handle future air traffic when it is sandwiched between two freeways into an area that is tiny when compared to El Toro. It is clearly naive to assume a park will generate revenue without intensive development, and that the costs involved, should it not be used for an airport, are minimal, or that the development it will necessitate will not generate lots of traffic.
Finally, it is clearly unethical to tell people that planes will ruin their real estate values. Planes fly over our house on Lido Isle, whose value has climbed 310,000% since the time when John Wayne Airport was non-existent.
Talk about selfishness. Transportation is a regional issue and South County, try as it will, cannot expect to be an elite enclave with no responsibility to the rest of those in the county.
Judy B. Rosener
(Rosener is a professor in the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine.)
An open letter to ETRPA:
You are wrong, and your actions threaten the best interest of this county.
My mother lives in Leisure World. She has no problem with the airport, it is better than the fighter jets that used to land regularly. I live by John Wayne airport and yes, I hear the airplanes, sometimes. And you know what? It isn’t an issue with me. (I work in Irvine, by the way.)
Expansion of John Wayne is ludicrous, of course. I don’t believe even you think it could be done or that it would make the airport anything other than even more dangerous.
You all lived through the fighter jets, don’t pretend you didn’t. This would be more flights, granted, but safer flights, cheaper flights and considerably more income for the county, while that ridiculous park would only be an economic drag.
In other words, please remove me from your e-mail list. With all the money you have used to fight the airport you could have totally noise-insulated every house that is affected and still have enough left for all of you to go see Balboa Park, which you seem to be in love with.
As for the statement that the airport would lower the quality of life, I have been associated with Orange County since 1950 and if the quality of life has gone down, it is because of the arrival of newcomers who have no idea what the county was like before they showed up, and have treated it much in the same way as the asthmatics who moved to Phoenix to get pollen-free air and then planted grass, trees and flowers.
As for the way it was in the “old days,” if somebody flew an airplane down the center of Newport Harbor the residents would have come out to wave at the pilot, not shoot him down.
Ed St. Amour
Mesa Verde
Pulido Endorsement
Kudos to Mayor James K. Hahn of Los Angeles for refusing to endorse our ethically challenged governor, Gray Davis.
If only Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido had the same fortitude. Pulido has greatly benefited over the years from his non-partisan approach to his office; how sad it is that he would now sacrifice that stellar reputation in order to back a governor who has squandered our budget surplus without solving the energy crisis.
Pulido would have been better served to have stayed on the sidelines and let the voters decide whom to vote for. Davis deserves to be scorned, not endorsed.
Art Pedroza Jr.
Santa Ana
