AN AIRPORT RUNS THROUGH IT
As you may have read in the LA TIMES this week, people who live near Los Angeles Airport are trying to keep that airport from growing again.
They'll lose the battle, also again. I guarantee it.
The reason they'll lose is that air safety requires that LAX grow. "Air safety," trumps all. Bake sales and whining may make some feel all warm and cozy, but LAX is about to expand. You can take that to the bank.
The reason the folks near LAX can't win is because there is no alternative site to replace LAX.
Jump now to our own ever expanding John Wayne Airport.
There's a letter in the Daily Pilot today from a Nancy Alston of Newport Beach who says she's a member of AirFair, a group that is trying to keep JWA from expanding.
Now, we at the CM PRESS have not been pleased with AirFair, but we're always hesitant to criticize those who are doing something, even if we think it's just busy work, because the obvious retort is "Well, what are you doing?"
Our answer to the question about what we're doing relative to JWA is that we have other fish to fry and it should be those who live closest to the airport who take the lead.
Notwithstanding this, however, we will do this: we'll prod those who are most affected by the growth of JWA to start becoming more effective. We'll write about JWA and we'll give our opinions on what we think should be done. In fact, that's what we're doing here.
We've listened to representatives of AirFair addressing the Costa Mesa City Council and we've read their literature and visited their website.
We see "let's wish really hard to keep JWA from expanding" all over their efforts.
In fact, we think the group is just creating the illusion that something meaningful is being done to stop the expansion of JWA when it isn't. It seems to us that AirFair is just giving us a new version of the old duck and cover advice when facing a nuclear attack.
Instead of finding meaningful approaches to stopping JWA from growing, we've only found constant whining from the group as they cite statistics about how the number of commercial jets increased 5.7% this year over 2006 etc. and how we have to cap the number of flights.
Look folks, we already know the flights have increased. We already know that JWA in our backyard is not a good thing. We also know that JWA is an accident waiting to happen. Now we need real solutions.
While those fighting the expansion of LAX will lose, this does not have to be the case for those fighting the expansion of JWA--if, they'll stop the bake sales and knitting bee level of activity and focus on what will really work.
THERE IS HOPE
The only way JWA can be tamed is by finding a new location to replace it with a truly modern and large international airport.
Those living near LAX are out of luck in finding such a location to replace their beast, but here in Orange County we have massive Camp Pendleton just down the road over the border with San Diego County. It has "large international airport" written all over it.
Camp Pendleton is about as perfect a location for a new airport as we could hope for. The place is huge and a new airport many times the size of LAX could be put on a portion of that base and the Marines wouldn't even miss the land.
Want to stop JWA from expanding and maybe even shrink it? Focus on building an airport at Camp Pendleton. Start getting the politicians on board.
Now, while you're working to get an airport built on Camp Pendleton, continue trying to cap flights at JWA, but understand that the latter activity is just a stopgap and is not the real battle.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
