L.A. to hear 2 sides of El Toro

Alicia Robinson

Although the closed El Toro Marine Corps Air Station has been on the

auction block since Jan. 5, local pro-El Toro airport activists were

set to face off with airport opponents this morning in yet another

arena -- Los Angeles City Council chambers.

The L.A. City Council planned to vote today on a resolution asking

federal authorities to lease the El Toro property to Los Angeles

World Airports, a city agency that operates the Los Angeles

International Airport and three other airports in the region. Los

Angeles officials have seized upon El Toro as a possible way to ease

the burden their city bears from increasing passenger loads.

“We’re going to be supportive of the L.A. City Council,” said

Richard Taylor, vice president of the Newport Beach-based Airport

Working Group. “You’ve got to meet the entire region’s transportation

needs.”

The Airport Working Group originally formed to prevent future

expansion at John Wayne Airport, which borders Newport Beach and is

owned by Orange County.

Some Airport Working Group members plan to attend this morning’s

meeting to counter any arguments made by El Toro airport opponents

such as the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a group Taylor says

just doesn’t want flight paths over its area’s high-priced homes.

“We have jets [fly] over us; people in L.A. County have jets over

them,” Taylor said. “This is called economic elitism.”

But the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority says it opposes an

airport on the former base because it would affect hundreds of

thousands of residents and cost billions of dollars.

The group has little hope of persuading Los Angeles council

members to vote down the El Toro resolution but still wants to be at

the meeting to state its position, spokeswoman Meg Waters said.

“We’re not going en masse, because we figure that [the decision

is] pretty much set for the council already, but we just want to put

them on notice that this is not going to be easy,” she said.

Waters will be armed with letters from Assemblyman Todd Spitzer

(R-Orange), whose district includes the former marine base, and

Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell stating their vehement

opposition to any attempt at a “hostile takeover of El Toro,” as

Spitzer called it.

Campbell said his letter is only on his own behalf, not from the

whole board of supervisors, but the majority of the board is against

an El Toro airport. It wasn’t always that way -- before Campbell and

Supervisor Chris Norby joined the board in 2003, the 3-2 vote splits

were in favor of the airport.

“I think the people of Orange County have spoken, the Navy

department has spoken, and so it’s a waste of [L.A. City Council’s]

time to do this,” Campbell said. “Until the property’s sold, though,

people can still mess around with it, and I just hope they don’t.”

Taylor isn’t surprised either by Campbell’s position or by the

fact that the auction of four El Toro parcels has been slow to take

off.

“Nobody’s bidding on it,” he said. “It’s contaminated. It’s a

liability case waiting to happen.”

Even if the L.A. City Council passes the resolution to pursue an

El Toro airport, other hurdles remain.

Officials with the U.S. Navy and federal Department of

Transportation would have to agree to the plan, and they shot the

idea down the day before the auction opened, citing opposition to an

airport by Orange County voters.

* ALICIA ROBINSON covers government and politics. She

may be reached at (714) 966-4626

or by e-mail at alicia.robinson @latimes.com.