THE BELL CURVE:

As I write this, I’ve just returned from the annual meeting and dinner of the Airport Working Group, where the featured speaker was Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach. In my column last week, I urged local citizens to attend the meeting, which was public, and suggested that Moorlach — who has consistently supported our efforts to check the expansion of John Wayne airport — would give us “marching orders” to that end.

Well, that isn’t exactly what happened. In a speech that touched down periodically on airport issues amid funny and often insightful insider stories, Moorlach seemed to feel singled out unnecessarily for pressure, once asking: “Why are we whipping up issues when there aren’t any?” He then took this question directly to me and my column last Thursday, saying “What is Joe Bell thinking of?”

I’m grateful to him for the five minutes of fame this provided me and am happy — even if it is redundant — to supply an answer. Joe Bell is thinking that he lucked out in finding the best place in the world to live and that he doesn’t want to be forced to leave it. He is thinking that any more expansion might well push the allowable limit of noise and pollution from John Wayne air traffic to an intolerable level for those of us beneath it. And he is thinking that a growing army of local citizens who also don’t want to be forced to leave this paradise or live here in an increasingly polluted environment are ready to supply the same energy that made it possible for the citizens of south county to kill an El Toro airport. We’re scared.

We’re willing to man the trenches, but we want to be told how and where to harness this energy. That’s what Joe Bell and many of his neighbors are thinking. And why we were looking to Supervisor Moorlach to point the way.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Have you been tuned-in to The Further Adventures of the Great Park? If not you should pay attention. It’s a hoot. I keep thinking they can’t top themselves, and then they do. Twice in the last two weeks. First, the Demolition Caper. Then the Helium Hassle.

If you recall, we last visited the Great Parkers several months ago selling trips in the basket of a balloon that hovers over a maze of mostly empty concrete runways. It turns out that the balloon not only requires helium but also a pilot, just like a regular airplane. And last week, according to a lengthy story in the Los Angeles Times, a balloon pilot in training named Jonathan Bradford left the program, firing a fusillade of warnings of unsafe flight back over his shoulder.

As an old — very old — former military pilot, I find it remarkable that a balloon, tethered to the ground and limited to 500 feet in altitude can be deemed unsafe.

Nevertheless, Bradford was concerned that chief balloon pilot Gary Stevens fudged on the 500-foot ceiling, flirted with forbidden clouds, and didn’t pay proper respect to high winds and low visibility, thereby putting his passengers at risk. Stevens calls these charges “ridiculous and unprovable,” The Great Park’s operations manager, Rod Cooper, also denied them and described Bradford as a sorehead seeking revenge after he was dropped from the program.

The balloon ride is the first and only operative attraction at the Great Park. It cost $5 million to build. And its alleged safety problems are all the more painful because they surfaced just a week after another major Great Park headache I like to call the Demolition Caper. This one hit the news when a Colorado company called Recycled Materials that had been hanging around for three years preparing to break up the El Toro airport runways peremptorily packed up and went home, frustrated beyond endurance by repeated delays.

A senior Great Park project manager told a Los Angeles Times reporter that only about 2% of the runway demolition was accomplished before Recycled Materials cut out. This translated into breaking up a few feet of runway in order to deliver commemorative chunks of concrete to park officials to illustrate progress for TV cameras. The Great Parkers clearly know where to focus public attention.

It has occurred to me that these runways are being preserved by an act of God — or whatever force passes for God in dealings with the Great Parkers. We should be alert to the messages implicit in the retreat of Recycled Materials. It took four elections to convert El Toro from a desperately needed commercial airport into a mythical Great Park. So why not hire the mercenaries who put Measure B on the ballot in Newport Beach to perform the same service for a fifth vote on an El Toro airport? We won the first two. The runways are still there. Maybe we could win the fifth one.

If all this gloating over the problems of the Great Park hits you as sour grapes, of course it is. But it keeps me occupied when I’m sitting on my patio with a beer trying to listen to a ball game on my radio over the roar of airplane engines overhead. I guess that’s what I’m thinking, too.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.