The Simple Answer
The county can do both. The county could easily have placed impermeable landfill liners in the airport canyons before filling the canyons with trash. Landfill dumpers may have had to pay an extra dollar dumping fee. But the groundwater would be safe. The slopes could be planted. “Either/or” is not a planning strategy.
The Jobs/Safety/Environmental Tradeoff
The county can – and is on a policy path to - sacrifice Palomar and community safety and the environment for the comfort of a few corporate jet owners. That approach is as shortsighted as the Palomar runway safety and approach areas are.
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Take last week’s fires. Many workers hurried home or to their child’s school. Fortunately, alerts went out mainly between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Did you need to go from the Carlsbad area to Discovery Hills in San Marcos where a major fire occurred? You could have made it in 20 minutes.
Now fast forward to 2024. The alert is at 8 am or 5 p.m. According to the 2014 updated draft Carlsbad General Plan, the traffic level of service (LOS) on Palomar Airport Blvd - which becomes San Marcos Blvd and leads to Discovery Hills – may well be “D” at rush hour. The fastest LOS is A. “D” limps along.
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Even worse, the predicted Palomar Airport Road and El Camino Real traffic LOS declines ignore any big airport activity surge. Such as a new Palomar service that could up annual travelers from 100,000 per year to 800,000.
Are you now going to spend an hour, not 20 minutes to make the same trip in the next fire or earthquake? At what cost?
More Jobs/More Money?
As the ongoing, delayed GM car recall highlights, sacrificing safety for money is too common. Businesses pay for short-term gains in long-term liability and declining sales. Businesses and politicians never learn this lesson. Think Ford-exploding-Pinto gas tanks in the 1960s. At a cost of $11 per car, Ford could have avoided the problem and saved lives. [Search The Top Automotive Engineering Failures: The Ford Pinto Fuel Tanks in Popular Mechanics.]
So the county continues to serve faster, larger, fuel-laden C-III and D-III jets at a B-II airport next to a landfill that the county’s own October 2013 report says could lead to crisis. Who needs a 1000-foot long safe runway safety area (RSA) when the current 300 foot RSA has worked – till now. Just as San Marcos seldom has major fires – till now.
In short, the problem with “either/or” thinking (“I’ll take the jobs over pretty”) is that you may not even get the “either," let alone both.
