| Author |
Message |
Newshound (Newshound)
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 1:47 pm: | |
Sept. 22-Airport plan could put El Toro in play,LA Times
L.A. councilwoman proposes airport authority that would include O.C.
By JEFF ROWE
The Orange County Register
A Los Angeles city councilwoman is proposing creation of a regional airport authority that would have broad powers on the location and levels of commercial air service.
As envisioned, representatives from Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties would be included in the authority, which conceivably could seek to resurrect El Toro as a commercial airport.
Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said she will bring up the regional airport authority issue at meetings beginning next week to address Los Angeles County concerns in the Los Angeles International Airport master plan about air quality, traffic and dispersal of future air traffic growth. LAX lies in Miscikowski's district.
Regional airport authorities such as those in San Diego, New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., typically hold the power to override local decisions on airports and so, for example, could determine that an airport ought to be built at El Toro.
But even backers of such an airport authority concede that recapturing El Toro as a commercial airport would take federal intervention.
Nonetheless, the mere possibility of an El Toro airport rising from its supposed grave causes tremors in south Orange County.
"We're not ready to say it's over until it's over," said Gary Thompson, a Rancho Santa Margarita council member and vice chairman of the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, which represented many south county cities in the decade-long fight to defeat plans for an El Toro airport.
Meantime, backers of an El Toro airport cheer at any whiff of jet contrails.
"This time next year, John Wayne Airport will be at capacity - 10.3 million annual passengers. What are we going to do then?" says Tom Naughton, president of the Airport Working Group, which has worked to open El Toro as a commercial airport.
Miscikowski's constituents are concerned about growth at LAX, which expects 60 million passengers this year, up 9 percent from last year.
About 15 percent of LAX passengers are from Orange County, a figure that backers of an El Toro airport use to underscore what they see as an unfair concentration of air traffic at LAX.
Council hearings on the LAX master plan are scheduled to begin Sept. 29.
|
|