"San Diego airport advisory group weeds out sites"

Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Airport advisory group weeds out sites
4 military bases, Tijuana, desert options still on list
By Jeff Ristine
THE SAN DIEGO (CA) UNION-TRIBUNE


When an advisory group assigned to help eliminate unworkable options for a
new regional airport completed its review last week, its criteria seemed
indisputable.

The 32-member panel representing those with an interest in the airport, such
as citizen groups, business and the military, discarded proposals that
appeared to require mass residential relocations, irrecoverable losses to
the environment or literally moving mountains.

Ramona, National City and Oceanside, among other locations, vanished from a
list of 16 proposed sites.

"I don't think anybody's surprised about what's off the list," said Lynne
Baker of the Endangered Habitats League, who participated in Tuesday's
4½-hour meeting.

But even with the choices more narrowly focused, group members agree the
task of finding a future airport site remains as formidable as ever.

As the chore continues, some panel members say, decision-makers will need to
reconsider factors that led to some locations being dismissed.

They will need to confront implications of a list in which at least half the
sites that appear to remain are military bases with a major national defense
role.

And since the issue ultimately is headed for a countywide vote, some say
proponents of replacing small but convenient Lindbergh Field will need a
more compelling argument than just economic "opportunity costs" that may not
be seen for two decades or more.

The recommendations of the Public Working Group will be forwarded to the San
Diego County Regional Airport Authority, which will be responsible for
framing any airport ballot measure. The advisory panel was formed to ensure
that key parties in the airport location issue – business and environmental
groups, airlines, cargo carriers and the military, among others – had a
voice in the beginning of the process.

By the nature of its site selection criteria for minimizing impacts on
people and the environment, the group narrowed its list primarily to
sparsely populated areas: military bases, the Imperial County desert and a
floating airport three miles off Ocean Beach.

An additional option, expanding Tijuana's Rodriguez International Airport,
survived the cut at least partly because the residential and environmental
impacts there are undetermined.

Three military representatives on the panel questioned a process in which
Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, North Island Naval Air Station, Camp
Pendleton and March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County all remained on the
list for further consideration.

In Tuesday's meeting, Marine Corps Col. Gregory Goodman said the bases are
inextricably linked as "part of a megacomplex in the southwest region" of
the United States.

Similarly, Navy Capt. Chris Schanze noted that while the panel received
facts on noise, endangered species and earth-moving associated with each
proposal, there was no consideration of the impact of any proposal on
national defense, including nonmilitary sites where a major civilian
operation might interfere with base flight patterns.

Mike Hix, a senior project manager for the San Diego Association of
Governments, said the proposed sites that survived the Public Working
Group's analysis of "fatal flaws" leaves the selection process "where we
were awhile back – the military sites are still the ones that . . . seem to
be the most viable options."

But Hix said the airport authority needs to make sure at least one
nonmilitary and one out-of-county site receive thoughtful analysis in Phase
II of the selection process.

An exclusively military or in-county list, given "political realities,"
could "make it very difficult to obtain a site or actually develop an
airport," he said.

Long before considering specific site criteria, the Public Working Group
decided to treat military sites as if they might someday be converted to
civilian use. But Steven P. Erie, director of the urban studies program at
the University of California San Diego and a member of the group, noted that
the availability of the bases is "driven by a process that we have no
influence over."

The next round of military base closings under the Department of Defense's
Base Realignment and Closure process has been delayed until 2005.

"Maybe we will revisit (the fate of) Miramar in a couple of years, but it'll
be on the basis of the military's needs, not our needs," Erie said.

John Chalker, who heads a coalition called the Alliance in Support of
Airport Progress, said no one should view the military options as out of
reach.

"The military base situation is just one that we have to watch very closely
in terms of what may come available, so perhaps a win-win solution can be
created for all," Chalker said.

Chalker said he hopes the group will trim the list further and be more
specific about the sites it wants analyzed when it reconvenes Monday.

If nothing else, group members agreed that they had eliminated several
options widely seen as outlandish, such as an airport in Ramona or one that
bisected the Silver Strand between Coronado and Imperial Beach.

But some say at least two options still on the list carry similarly
insurmountable drawbacks, even though they weren't affected by the selection
criteria the group set.

At least two group members said they doubt the economics of a desert airport
could ever pencil out, given the choice between building a prohibitively
expensive high-speed rail system or forcing everyone to drive up and down a
4,000-foot mountain range.

Airport authority staff members, meanwhile, are cool toward the floating
airport concept, never before tried even on a small scale.

On the other hand, others say the list of viable options for a new airport
could be expanded if some of the fundamental assumptions being used for site
selection – such as the need for two 12,000-foot departure runways – are
reconsidered.

A single-runway airport might look more reasonable in several locations,
they said.

All such considerations aside, Baker of the Endangered Habitats League said
airport planners would do well to consider whether they can sell the public
on any site anywhere.

An economic analysis being touted as the fundamental rationale for a new
airport – one that says the region could lose out on more than 34,000 jobs,
$1.4 billion in income and $51.5 million in tax revenues by 2030 if it fails
to meet the full demand for passenger and cargo air service – may not be
enough to win public support, she said.

"You have a tremendous number of people who don't equate growth with
increased quality of life," she said.

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