By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun
     SAN DIEGO — Area residents who are concerned about a possible airport in the Boulevard/Campo area will soon have a chance to take part in countywide discussions on the subject. The San Diego County regional airport authority will launch a web dialogue beginning June 6 where residents can openly discuss the future site for the international airport. 
     "Our goal is to facilitate an open, transparent Airport Site Selection Program that fosters community involvement, encourages ongoing discussion and allows San Diegans to have a say in the process," said Thella F. Bowens, Airport Authority President and CEO.
     Dialogue participants will be assigned to a small group of fellow citizens who will review information on the Airport Site Selection Program and share their perspective on the process.
     The bulletin board format is intended to allow participants to log on at any time that is convenient for them, as often as they want, where they can read what others have written, post their thoughts and voice their opinions.
     "Small group dialogues allow citizens to learn about the program and voice their opinions, on their own time," Bowens said.
     These dialogues have been successfully used to encourage discussion in online communities for public projects and for controversial issues, according to airport authority officials. 
     New York City used this same approach to engage New Yorkers about the redevelopment of Ground Zero, where citizen feedback led to the rejection of all the original redevelopment plans and resulted in a new design competition with direct community input.
     The aim of the program — touted by the airport authority as the first public conversation of this kind in Southern California — is to turn the longstanding debate over the future of the airport into open dialogues among stakeholders and the community.
     The first series of dialogues will run from June 6 though June 20. Those who are interested in becoming involved may register HERE.
     "The board and myself continue to have a very open mind on what would be the best solution," said Joe Craver, chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board.

Base closure process
     After the recent preliminary announcement of base closures through the Base Realignment and Closure process, only public sites now remain. Until the announcement, the decades old U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot adjacent to Lindbergh Field, was the greatest hope for people who are fighting against an international airport in the Back Country.
     Craver said the depot property would only give the authority about 18 percent of the room it has determined it needs to serve the region over the next 50 years or so.
     "Although this was a missed opportunity, to have the Marine Corps Recruit Depot would not solve the issue," Craver said. "We would still have to relocate about 11,000 people and move several thousand homes."
     The authority has been conducting an airport site selection program since it was created by the state legislature and assumed control of the airport from the Port of San Diego in 2003. It has whittled its original list of nearly three dozen potential new airport sites to nine, five of which are located on military bases.
     All the base sites were seemingly eliminated when the Pentagon announced its recommended base closures and no local installations were on it. On the civilian side, the authority still has Borrego Springs, Campo and Imperial County on its list, as well an expansion of Lindbergh.
     Those are the only sites that will get authority attention for the next several months. Its nine board members agreed earlier this year to refrain from any discussion or study of military sites until the base closure commission wraps up its work.
     The authority will conduct airspace, access, impact, noise, air quality and cost studies of the civilian sites between now and October with an analysis of military sites scheduled to begin in November and end in March.
     Whether the military sites — two at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, along with Camp Pendleton, North Island Naval Air Station and March Air Reserve Base in Riverside County — will get studied at all is unclear in light of the Pentagon's base recommendations.
     The authority has set an April deadline to come up with a recommendation to leave time for a campaign effort in advance of a countywide ballot issue on the airport question. When it created the authority, state lawmakers required it to put the issue to voters by November 2006.
     A new airport is projected to cost up to $10 billion. It would be paid for through federal grants and airport revenues, which are derived through leases with airlines, a surcharge on airline tickets and money generated by airport operations.
     More information on the Airport Site Selection Program can be found here.

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