Following a discussion of NTC-specific issues, Point Loma People for Progress hosted a Miramar airport referendum at their meeting Saturday, Sept. 30, at Liberty Station. The forum addressed arguments for and against Proposition A, the November ballot initiative regarding a new airport site that will ask voters, “Should airport authority and government officials work toward obtaining 3,000 acres at MCAS Miramar by 2020 for a commercial airport, providing certain conditions are met?”
District 2 Councilman Kevin Faulconer led the discussion between San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board member William Lynch and Garry Nifontoff, an opponent of moving the airport to Miramar.
“I didn’t expect to see this many people on an early Saturday morning,” Lynch said of the large crowd.
Most community meetings that he has attended haven’t had this type of turnout, he explained, adding that the attendance speaks volumes about the community’s involvement.
According to Lynch, who supports Prop A, the decision to look closer at the Miramar site is based on three facts: San Diego Lindbergh International Airport will not meet the needs of San Diego in the future; there is no other feasible nonmilitary site; and there is no military planning for the near future.
Lynch said that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) forecasts that aircraft operations (arrivals and departures) will grow at Lindbergh Field by more than 63 percent between 2005 and 2025. The FAA also forecasts that the number of passengers per operation will increase in that time by 12 percent, from 76 to 85 passengers for each flight.
Lynch also said there is not enough room for two parallel individual runways at Lindbergh Field and there is no conceivable expansion that would allow for another runway.
According to Lynch, Miramar is the only location close enough to downtown San Diego that would work for an international airport.
“It’s 35 times larger than the postage-stamp Lindbergh,” Lynch said.
Nifontoff disputed all of Lynch’s claims, stating that there are not 3,000 continuous acres available at Miramar. He noted that while there may be 3,000 acres available, they are dispersed across the entire Marine Corps Air Station. The only way an airport at Miramar would work would be to kick out the Marines, Nifontoff said.
He also said that the number of operations has been flat for more than a decade, despite passenger increases. However, the FAA reported that annual operations ” or landings and takeoffs ” increased from 212,000 in 2004 to 225,000 in 2005.
According to airport projections, Lindbergh’s single runway cannot realistically accommodate more than 260,000 annual operations, a limit that many fear will be reached within a decade, well before a new airport is completed.
While the $500 million master plan to extend Lindbergh’s life should ease passenger travel to and from the airport as it reaches capacity as well as increase airplane parking, it does not increase the number of flights that Lindbergh can accommodate.
Community members submitted questions for the two-person panel during the discussion. One citizen asked if the region could afford to ignore the economic benefits of Prop A by stopping the discussion of an airport at Miramar.
Lynch responded that if the discussion stopped, the San Diego region would have to live with Lindbergh Field and be labeled a “second-class city that cannot meet air demands.”
But Nifontoff argued that the majority of economic impacts proposed by the airport authority are “bogus assumptions.”
In a moment of heated debate, Lynch called the military’s position that Miramar is critical to defending the nation “ridiculous.”
When asked about traffic concerns, Lynch claimed that a model of traffic for the year 2030 at peak a.m. and p.m. hours with the Miramar airport would only add more traffic to California highways 163 and 52. Traffic up and down Interstate 5 would improve, he said, while Interstate 8 and Interstate 805 would remain the same.
Nifontoff found the prediction unlikely. With an extra 40,000 to 50,000 daily trips, traffic would increase greatly, he said.
In their closing statements, Nifontoff encouraged community members to look at the airport authority Web site and carefully read through the Marine Corps statements on the issue.
“Proposition A is not feasible and a yes vote would be detrimental for the United States,” Nifontoff concluded.
Lynch insisted that there is no way the ballot language kicks the Marines out of Miramar and encouraged a continuation of the discussion, saying, “Let’s see if we can make our case and keep making our case.” More on the proposition is available at www.san.org/Airport_Authority/index.asp.