U.S. Agency Faulted on El Toro Planning

IRVINE — A grass-roots organization seeking to block a proposed commercial airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station charged Friday that a federal agency is violating its own rules by giving Orange County government “total say” over base conversion plans.

Stephen Smith, deputy director of the group Project ‘99, said a recently discovered 1995 publication by the U.S. Office of Economic Adjustment casts doubt on whether the county should be allowed to lead the development of a new use for the 4,700-acre base.

Project ’99 officials passed out copies of the book, titled “Community Guide to Base Re-Use,” at a news conference at UC Irvine and noted that the text can also be found on the Internet site of the Office of Economic Adjustment, an arm of the Department of Defense.

The department oversees the base, which is scheduled to close in 1999.

Last December, the Orange County Board of Supervisors, asserting its authority as the designated “land reuse agency,” voted for a commercial airport as the best replacement for what has been a Marine Corps air station since 1943.

Proponents say a commercial airport would bring the county thousands of jobs. They consider John Wayne Airport too small to meet the county’s growing demand for passenger and air cargo service.

Opponents say the county, in pushing for an airport, has paid little heed to potential traffic, noise and pollution that would mar the quality of life in such nearby communities as Lake Forest and Irvine.

Now the leaders of Project ‘99, a coalition of community groups and South County leaders formed to oppose airport plans, say the federal government’s own guidelines outline a strategy for base conversion that they believe conflicts with what’s really taking place at El Toro.

“In each of the five case studies they cite” in the book, Smith said, “the cities adjacent to the bases [earmarked for closure] were the prime movers in deciding what the new use would be. Well, that certainly hasn’t been the case here. The county is now in the position of doing exactly what it wants, no matter what the consequences.”

Tony Gallegos, regional director for the Office of Economic Adjustment in Sacramento, said Friday that he was not familiar with the document cited by Project ’99. But he noted that the federal agency had gone through an exhaustive process in determining which agency was best qualified to assess a new use for the base.

Contrary to the contentions of Project ‘99, Gallegos said, the Board of Supervisors is by far the best agency to direct the planning, “since they’re the duly elected representatives for the county as a whole, looking out for the interests of the greater populace down there.”

Courtney Wiercioch, spokeswoman for the county, said the county had earned the right to be the chief planning agency after taking part in what she called a “thorough and deliberative” examination of the issue by the federal government.

“I would also like to note that the Board of Supervisors does represent the entire county,” she said. “Irvine and Lake Forest are very capably represented by people on the board, and the board as a whole is tasked with acting on behalf of the county as a whole.”

But Smith said the board, controlled by North County representatives, “certainly doesn’t speak for South County. The cities of Lake Forest and Irvine are having very little say in what goes on in their own backyards, while the county is having total say.”

In a letter the group made public Friday, Project ’99 urged Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) to take its case to the Department of Defense. The group asked the senator to point out the Office of Economic Adjustment’s rules and what it believes are discrepancies in how the agency is handling El Toro.

Larry Kaplan, a Boxer spokesman, said Friday that the senator intends to “draft a letter to the secretary of the Navy to convey her issues and concerns and ask him to respond.”

Kaplan noted, however, that Boxer “does not have a position either for or against the airport. Her primary concern is that the Navy and the Department of Defense do a good job in managing the environmental-review process” concerning the base.