My ‘take’ on the Airport Authority (AA) meeting. Monday: Lemon Grove Mayor Mary Teresa Sessom noted that the present grading of a substantial number of hillsides at East Miramar for “1600-1800 units of Military Housing” (Col.Goodman), places the Airport Authority’s adjusted site study location for an airport just south and slightly east of the military’s runways straddling I-15, placing noise contours for the military homes directly in the 70-85 decibel area of the proposed regional airport at Miramar. Much of Tierra Santa is also affected. Isn’t this all, then, a waste of time and tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding? Are we doomed to an increasingly unsafe expansion of Lindbergh Field?
Doesn’t this really mean that after all of San Diego stood up and said, “We Support the Military” during the last BRAC that the military is not supporting its long term “host” city, San Diego? After all, remember that the City of San Diego gave the military, not only Miramar, but all the now “prime lands” on North Island, NTC, the Sub Base and the end of the Peninsula at Cabrillo, Harbor Drive, Admiral Baker’s land, Pendleton, etc., for FREE! You’d think they’d be appreciative and be interested (since it benefits them) in a request for “sharing” just a small portion of the hundreds of thousands of acres they “own” in San Diego. Or is it now that it’s supposedly theirs, it’s too valuable to share?
Where is the local (or top) military’s sense of “fiduciary duty” in responding to an obvious need for a solution for ALL of the San Diego region? Why choose the only place in 13,000 of 23,000 unused acres that can stop a real international airport with an annual economic regional benefit of over $50 billion from being built? And where no residences would be impacted? Where a new regional work center and the income stream to compliment a transit system that would serve all of San Diego could be placed?
Where will the 1600-1800 households shop or go to school? How will that impact our freeways? Won’t that fill the roads to the commercial areas making more congested traffic? Wasn’t Santee Mayor Voelpel worried about those issues? Oh, I see, they dumped those poorly planned “requirements” onto the Tierra Santa community, who will bear the brunt of the many military children, commercial needs and traffic congestion from 1800 new residences! And with no airport, will the developers, who have been eyeing Miramar for decades be planning how to develop another “City within the City” of another 80,000 to 300,000-plus residences when Miramar does close? How will the traffic congestion then be on I-15, I-163 or I-805? How about Highway 52 or I-8? Think about 80,000 to 600,000 more cars on the road! A car dealer’s dream!
Even as San Diego City Schools plans to sell/trade their lands near this location, this member of Excess School Properties Committee didn’t have a clue as to the development there until a satellite photo revealed the grading! Can’t the military get it through their reactionary minds that as San Diego’s air and ground transportation systems fail, so does its economy? Its ability to preserve and maintain its beautiful beaches, its canyons, bays and parks, water, sewers, storm sewers, roads, highways, police, fire, etc., also fails? As we see with other cities, the transportation hubs, the airport and its revenue streams, are a stabilization factor for the cities receiving many federal, state and local taxes. And couldn’t a new airport stave off San Diego’s bankruptcy or stabilize us through the pending recession, as it did for Denver? Why can’t we look at the mistakes of other areas, like Los Angeles, and learn from them?
Is the military just saying, as in the past, “Well, we’ve got ours, that’s all that matters!” It’s similar to so many of our “leaders,” both politically and in business. True, respectful leadership looks at the benefits to be gained and the losses to be avoided for all parties, searching for consensus, before slyly taking a move that will impact the future and stability of this region forever! The military doesn’t look like a “player” in any sense, for San Diego, to all of our detriment.
Be real. “A significant construction project?” If we can turn the hills of Tierra Santa and Sorrento Highlands into dense housing, how much simpler a couple of runways on a couple of mesas? “Cut and fill” is normal for development and is being done even now, grading away thousands of acres of hillsides for housing in San Diego county! The FAA says a “new airport can be built in 7-10 years.” If safety at Miramar is so important, than as one flight school owner said, “Why doesn’t San Diego ask for the removal of any training flights” out of Miramar by the military? It is certainly unsafe for the thousands of residents who will be hit, either in the air or on the ground, with the next major crash. Believe me, my father managed the cleanup of the PSA crash.
So, though the military should owe a debt of gratitude to San Diego’s region, their only response is to quash, with little planning, any hope for the only real solution to San Diego’s transportation and financial stability, again leaving our region at the beck and call of every other municipality or special interest who has an investment in San Diego. Have the “NIMBYs,” who have hardly examined the plans, or the developers salivating over a closed Miramar, “gotten to” the military on this, to “forever preclude” a real international airport from ever being built for the seventh largest city in the United States? Even as our city increases its population, ‘densifying it,’ more cargo and transportation needs are created, but because of the constraints here, we continue to lose all our international flight revenues to Phoenix and Denver.
The NIMBYs and the developers, as well as representatives of the general public, who have no special interest except as residents, tax-paying residents, must come to the table to explore all the benefits for San Diego and its surrounding region as we continue to truck 90 percent of our cargo to LAX or Ontario airport. By 2015, all Southern California airports will be “at capacity,” save Ontario, which also is absorbing Riverside’s population boom and air transportation needs.
Can we make a plan that benefits both the military and the region, or will the military and/or NIMBYs be allowed to remove from consideration the best location for a transportation link to stability and revenue stream that could revitalize San Diego, turning it forever, not into the beautiful city we have loved, but into a dead end? What will it be? Are there none who care? The time is very short.
Cynthia Conger,
Government Affairs Committee (10 yrs.); Founding Member, SD Airport Task Force