Limitations on Airport to Be Asked of Officials

Orange County supervisors will be asked next week to begin pursuing a 20-year extension of a federal court agreement that limits the size of John Wayne Airport through 2005.

Supervisor Tom Wilson said Tuesday he wants the county to work with Newport Beach to maintain the restrictions to 2025--a move seen as more symbolic than sure because the federal government, a federal judge and airlines serving the airport would have to agree to keep the court-approved limits in place.

Despite the odds, Wilson said he wants his colleagues on record supporting the existing size of John Wayne Airport, which is limited to no more than 8.4 million passengers a year using its terminal.

Last month, the Newport Beach City Council passed a resolution asking for the county’s help to keep the lid on the airport. Besides the passenger cap, the airport has a curfew on night flights and restricts the amount of noise made by departing planes.

“A lot of work has to be done,” Wilson said. “This gets the ball rolling.”

Airport supporters hoped the effort wouldn’t be needed. In 1994, Orange County voters approved a new airport at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. But public support for the new airfield has dwindled since then, culminating in the March passage of a ballot measure requiring another public vote before the airport could be built.

The county’s plans for El Toro include contingencies to expand John Wayne if it remains the county’s only airport. The plans examined either adding flights and passengers to bring the airport to about 12 million passengers a year, or condemning 700 acres around the 500-acre airport to construct a new terminal that would serve about 25 million passengers a year.

Now, Dec. 31, 2005, seems right around the corner to anxious city officials and airport-area residents.

Representatives of a coalition of nine anti-airport cities said that although they’re opposed to El Toro being built, they don’t want John Wayne Airport expanded either.

The county’s airport attorneys, meanwhile, have said they will argue the county has a right to continue regulating John Wayne Airport even after the settlement agreement ends. Longtime county airport attorney Michael Gatzke said they will argue the county’s restrictions are contained in separate ordinances and resolutions passed in 1985 that predate a 1990 change in federal law eliminating local control over airport operations.

The attorneys acknowledged that if a majority of supervisors decides to expand John Wayne Airport, it could do so after 2005.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the Air Transport Assn., a trade group representing the nation’s major airlines, declined comment.