We get the sense that most Park Ridge residents have accepted the fact that O’Hare International Airport will continue to grow, adding more flights over our community.  Most candidates for the Park Ridge City Council in the April 5th election (a week from this coming Tuesday, folks!) have expressed similar acceptance, even as they have voiced support for continuing efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of that growth.

One candidate for Park Ridge alderman, however, appears to have successfully courted some of our more radical O’Hare Airport activists with some obtuse or ambiguous comments about the fly-quiet program for Orange County, California’s John Wayne Airport.  This candidate, 7th Ward hopeful Franklin Ramirez, has suggested that if John Wayne can do it, so can O’Hare.

Although we sincerely wish that were so, there are a number of signficant differences between JWA and ORD that virtually foreordain different results; and that make ORD a “red herring” aldermanic campaign issue.

First, JWA is owned and operated by Orange County, whose government is accountable to both those residents benefited by airport operations and those assailed by it.  ORD, on the other hand, is owned and operated by the City of Chicago, whose concerns rarely extend beyond its own borders to the beleaguered suburbs that surround ORD and bear the brunt of its noise and pollution.

Second, JWA is only 500 acres and has only 2 runways: a 5,700-foot main, and a 2,887-foot “general aviation” one.  ORD covers over 7,000 acres with 6 runways (the longest exceeding 13,000 feet), and more on the way.

Third, JWA serves 10 commercial, 2 commuter and 2 all-cargo airlines.  It handles less than 9 million passengers and approx. 15,000 tons of cargo each year.  ORD serves approx. 48 commercial airlines and 32 cargo airlines, transporting over 67 million passengers and 1.5 million tons of cargo in 2010.

But when it comes to noise, the most important difference between JWA and ORD is that JWA’s owner (Orange County) voluntarily adopted its stringent noise standards: the “General Aviation Noise Ordinance.”  Those standards weren’t imposed on that airport by the FAA, the EPA, the State of California, or some judge.   

The owner of ORD, on the other hand, doesn’t give a rat’s derriere about noise over the suburbs.  To the contrary: we suspect, if anything, that Chicago’s departing King Richard II especially enjoys sticking it to Park Ridge as pay-back for all those years of former mayor Ron Wietecha’s incessant but unproductive yapping about ORD, even if Daley blithely ignored it while devising and launching his O’Hare Modernization Program (“OMP”).

Despite what that certain aldermanic candidate and his O’Hare activist supporters might have us believe, it really does look like that OMP ship has sailed.  Heck, even our “fellow” neighboring suburbs aren’t interested in joining our fight, perhaps because of our smug spurning of them and their ONCC for all those years. 

And our state and federal officials – Democrats and Republicans alike! – have shown no interest whatsoever in carrying any water for Park Ridge on this issue.  Simply put, they know on what side their bread is buttered, and it’s not the Park Ridge side.

But the City Council has authorized $2,400 for California’s Taber Law Group to ask the FAA to authorize a supplemental Environmental Impact Study; and it has budgeted $16,500 for the Park Ridge O’Hare Airport Commission during fiscal year 2011-12.  While we doubt that will produce a positive return on investment, we think that’s reasonable under the circumstances.

We also know, however, that it’s not even close to satisfactory for those ORD activists in town.  And we highly doubt that anything but a blank check would be.

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