LAGUNA COASTLINE NEWS

 

“Just One Letter”

by Catharine Cooper

 

“W.”  That’s it – the 23^rd letter of the alphabet.  The letter that shimmers with glitter and promise – open space – a park – a museum – the potential of a human center dedicated to that which makes us special and celebrates union, not division. Our choice on the ballot:  a ‘Great Park” or an international airport.

 

Just one letter stands between never-ending pollution and ourselves.  A regional transportation center means more than spent kerosene fuel poisoning our air and noise levels that render the birds songs mute.  It means the entire infrastructure that supports an international airport, and the insurmountable increase in vehicle traffic in and out of its boundaries. 

 

It isn’t just a park’s existence at stake; it is the quality of life that drew us all to this region.

 

Just why did we come?  And why do we stay?

 

The first and most obvious is the climate.  It’s perfect.  Cool in the winter; warm in the summer.  An occasional extreme forces us to leap either to heavy coats or tall iced drinks, but in the main, the weather suits our human frame.

 

Second is the neighborhood.  The parks, the schools, the bike trails and hills.  The ocean.

 

My parents moved here in 1956, drawn by the quaintness of Laguna Beach and it’s small town community.  My mother, Kay Wright, fondly remembers, “I knew everybody,” she says.  “You kids could wander downtown and I never had to worry about you.” 

 

My father, Crofton Cooper, says that he chose Laguna because it was “the most romantic place in the world.” He adds quickly, “It still is.”  Although he currently resides in Newport Beach, he stands staunchly opposed to the airport.  “It’s the whole region, it’s the best,” he says.  “We don’t deserve it.” 

 

Growing up, I tramped with my Brownie and then Girl Scout troops through the wilds of Santiago and Holy Jim Canyons.  It felt as if we were at the end of the world.  While the community has expanded and development has encroached, think about how lousy it would be to hike in the wilderness with the roar of 757’s overhead.

 

My colleague, Cherril Doty, reflects that she and her husband, Mike, moved here  in 1966 because of the “rusticity, village atmosphere, clean air and oceans.”  While she is the first to admit that there have been inroads in the ideal environment, the region remains an amazingly non-commercial space in which to live.   Her daughter, Jenna, quips that they moved here, “because there wasn’t an airport.”

 

Lynn Capouya, responded to my questions with, “Have you been outside?  Have you smelled the air tonight?”  Jasmine grows in her yard and sea breezes flow through the garden scented with salt and the pungent scent of the Pacific. 

 

“I don’t want jets flying over my  head,”  Lynn adds.  I think we all agree.  The recent re-directing of jet traffic from Newport over our fair city has been a serious wake-up call to the real threat of every four minutes or less take-offs and landings. 

 

Lynn’s husband, Overton Kuhn, laughingly asks, “Is Los Angeles the biggest city in Orange County?”  His reference is clear.  We don’t’ live in an urban environment.  We live in suburbia. And yes.  It is NIMBY.  But we’ve paid for it dearly.  Paid for it in our housing prices, our real estate taxes, and on those painful summer days, our traffic concerns. 

 

Each 757 that leaves the ground dumps 99 pounds of carbon into the air.  Multiply that by – what?  One every four minutes?  Turns out to be quite a lot of pollutants – and that’s only one of them. 

 

A person can live without food and water for a very long time.   How many minutes can you survive without oxygen?  And how much can you compromise the air that you breathe before you begin to experience serious degradation of health?   Think about the children on the playing fields in Santa Margarita, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo and Lake Forest. 

 

We don’t need an airport here.  Ontario is begging to expand.  Already in the midst of an industrial neighborhood, there are no residents to pollute or neighborhoods to destroy.  Spend the money on a high-speed rail system.  Think “outside the box.”  Develop solutions that consider the long-range implications instead of short-sighted fixes.

 

It’s on our shoulders - ours and the rest of the county.  Tuesday, March 5, you have again the opportunity to voice your choices.  Make yourself heard.  Drive a neighbor to the polls.  Make sure your friends vote.  It’s YES on W.  That one little letter.

 

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