Angry El Toro Neighbors Give Supervisors an Earful

Neil Harkleroad used to be able to stand in his backyard overlooking Peters Canyon Regional Park and hear coyotes howling. Now all he hears is the drone of traffic on the Santa Ana Freeway.

He puts up with freeway noise as a fact of life in increasingly urban Orange County. But he says he is not ready to accept the decibel level at his North Tustin home if an international airport is built at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Harkleroad’s neighborhood is right under what would be the northern departure route for the airport.

“I shudder to think what will happen if they start operating El Toro in the fashion the county is describing,” Harkleroad said Tuesday, referring to plans for a jetport that could handle as many as 38 million passengers annually. “I will be getting out of here. It will be terrible.”

County officials face the challenge of convincing residents such as Harkleroad otherwise, arguing that homes under the projected flight paths or near the proposed airport would be exposed to noise levels far lower than existing county rules allow.

A noise expert hired by the county gave the Board of Supervisors some details of what residents can expect if an airport is built after the base closes next year.

“It goes without saying that noise is one of the most important and controversial issues on the reuse of El Toro,” said Vince Mestre of Mestre Greve Associates, a noise and air-quality engineering consultant firm based in Newport Beach.

But any impact would be in only a narrow zone, he said. It would not affect “all of south Orange County but . . . some relatively small areas.”

The engineering firm’s preliminary conclusion is that noise from a civilian airport would be considerably less than that from the military flights at El Toro now.

Mestre explained that airplane noise is generally measured in two ways. The Community Noise Equivalency Level, or CNEL, measures the amount of noise over a 24-hour period and is considered by experts to be more accurate in determining how sound will affect a community, he said. The Single Event Noise Equivalency Level, or SENEL, measures one noise incident, such as a jet flying directly overhead.

County regulations prohibit new residential construction in areas at or above a CNEL noise level of 65 decibels. Federal guidelines also recommend that homes not be built in areas at or above that noise level. A person speaking in conversational tones generates about 60 decibels, Mestre said.

If noise from a new airport raised the sound level in a neighborhood above the acceptable level, he said, people living there could be entitled to noise easements such as home soundproofing, which could be paid for by airport revenue and federal funding.

The current airport proposal calls for 70% of takeoffs to go east. That would affect mainly Rancho Santa Margarita, which is directly under the projected flight path, county planners say. The remaining 30% of takeoffs would go north, then turn west over central Orange County--a proposal that has drawn strong objections from some Central County residents and leaders.

Arriving flights under the current plan would approach from the south over Leisure World, parts of Aliso Viejo and Laguna Hills.

Residents say that for the most part the Marines have been respectful of the surrounding communities by not flying on the weekends or at night.

“We have zero noise out there at night,” said Sherry Meddick, a Silverado Canyon resident whose home could be under one of the new airport’s flight paths. “This isn’t about how much people can tolerate,” she told the county Board of Supervisors Tuesday. “It’s about how much change this will bring.”

County planners say that the plan might be modified to route more takeoffs to the north, with planes going directly over the Loma Ridge Mountains rather than turning west toward populated areas such as Tustin, Orange and Cowan Heights. A county report determining whether that would be possible is scheduled for release May 5.

Under the current plan, one of the noisiest areas would be in Mission Viejo adjacent to El Toro Road, which could experience 42 minutes a day of 65 decibels of sound from airplanes, Mestre said.

In Aliso Viejo, Oak Grove Elementary School could expect 60 decibels through the day, with occasional bursts as high as 77 decibels--the equivalent of having a lawn mower operating in a living room.

The county’s environmental report indicates that planes could be flying in and out of El Toro every three minutes.

Mestre said he expects to release a final noise report in the fall. In the meanwhile, county officials are considering changes in the airport reuse plan that would reduce the projected number of passengers to a range of 10 million to 25 million a year. That would decrease the noise impact, Mestre said.

But those living in communities that would be affected fear that the situation would be intolerable. That is one of the reasons why Saddleback, Irvine and Capistrano Unified school districts are opposed to a commercial airport at El Toro, said Crystal Kochendorfer, president of the Capistrano Unified board.

“It’s irresponsible of the county to dismiss the ever-increasing body of evidence that shows aircraft noise impairs children’s learning and can adversely affect children’s health,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Sam Surace of Leisure World said it is misleading to say a civilian airport would be quieter than the current military operations.

“The noise produced by the military planes was bothersome, but they were not all day and all night, so we tolerated it,” he said. “But what is coming now is enormous.”

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Sounding Off

Decibels are units used to measure the intensity of sound. How the decibel levels associated with the proposed El Toro airport compare to other noises:

60: Normal indoor conversation within three feet

65: Activity in a busy, noisy office

70: Vacuum cleaner in another room

75: Lawn mower running in the living room

Source: Times reports, Mestre Greve Associates