Report Finds Pluses in LAX Plan

If nothing is done to modernize Los Angeles International Airport, traffic on roads surrounding the facility would get worse, belching more pollutants into the air and increasing the cancer risk for area residents, a new report shows.

Without construction to widen intersections and to add lanes and offramps, traffic flow within about three miles of the airport would slow to a crawl in the next 12 years, resulting in gridlock at 40 intersections in Westchester, Inglewood and El Segundo, according to findings in a 5,323-page report released Wednesday by Mayor James K. Hahn.

As Hahn begins what is expected to be a difficult campaign to persuade city officials, airlines and residents to endorse his $9-billion LAX modernization plan, one of his key selling points is that his proposal would reduce noise, traffic and air pollution in nearby neighborhoods.

The 10-volume environmental report compares four alternatives for updating the world’s fifth-busiest airport -- Hahn’s proposal, which the mayor says emphasizes security and safety, and three expansion alternatives devised under former Mayor Richard Riordan -- along with the option of doing nothing.

Hahn’s plan would dramatically rework LAX by demolishing Terminals 1, 2 and 3, knocking down parking garages in the current central terminal area, building a passenger check-in center about a mile east of the airport and moving sets of parallel runways on either side of the airfield farther apart.

The environmental report found that because Hahn’s proposal would discourage growth at the airport -- aiming for no more than the present “theoretical capacity” of 78 million annual passengers -- it is more environmentally friendly than the Riordan options, which would allow the airport to serve as many as 98 million travelers a year.

What was more surprising in the report was the assessment that in many areas Hahn’s plan would be better for the environment than doing nothing at all.

Part of the reason, officials said, is that the city cannot normally use airport revenue to make improvements such as traffic upgrades in surrounding neighborhoods. But such improvements would be allowed as mitigation measures in a large airport renovation like Hahn proposes.

“It comes up all the time that Inglewood and Westchester ask us to do something to address an issue and we can’t because we can’t take money off the airport,” said Jim Ritchie, a deputy executive director for the city agency that operates LAX. “But with the master plan we can do these projects.”

In some cases, existing problems would get worse if not addressed. If the airfield were not improved by moving runways farther apart and adding and expanding taxiways, for example, aircraft would experience longer taxi times to get to a gate, adding noise and pollution, the report found.

More aircraft and vehicle emissions would markedly increase the amount of dangerous chemicals like carbon monoxide and volatile organic compounds in the air -- both of which would be about 22% higher in areas around LAX if the city left the airport as is, consultants wrote.

The report says that during the 11-year construction phase, however, Hahn’s plan would buffet area residents with significantly more noise, pollution and heavy equipment traffic.

Although airlines, business groups and local members of Congress and the Los Angeles City Council have greeted Hahn’s plan with skepticism, the mayor said he hoped that the promise of alleviating traffic and other problems would help the proposal win approval from neighboring residents and businesses.

“We have removed much of the community opposition [from people] who were unhappy with previous plans that didn’t do anything to address traffic, didn’t do anything to address environmental concerns,” Hahn said.

That’s not to say that all of the airport’s neighbors are welcoming the mayor’s proposal. Some community groups, including the Westchester-Playa del Rey Neighborhood Council, have lobbied his office to consider a scaled-down modernization plan.

Although Hahn’s plan would be better in some areas than doing nothing, the report said, it would increase noise for some residents and schools, particularly to the south.

The proposal would move the outer runway on the airport’s south side 50 feet closer to El Segundo, exposing 4,300 more residents to high noise levels from aircraft, the analysis found.

At the same time, nearly one out of four people who live in the loudest areas around the airport today -- about 11,620 residents -- would experience less noise if the mayor’s plan were carried out, the report found.

Under the plan, noise would increase in parts of Inglewood, eastern Westchester, South Los Angeles and the unincorporated Lennox area, while it would decrease in Athens and parts of El Segundo and Westchester, city officials said.

Geoff Maleman, past president of the Westchester/LAX-Marina del Rey Chamber of Commerce, said his community would both benefit and suffer.

“From a noise perspective, at least for our community, it’s a positive,” Maleman said, noting that more residents in his area would see their noise decrease than increase.

El Segundo Mayor Mike Gordon said he had “great concern” about the plan’s proposal to move a southern runway closer to his city.

He asked environmental experts to conduct an independent analysis of the environmental studies to see whether there were other feasible alternatives, but he added that he may support Hahn’s plan if his experts find it makes his constituents safer.

“It’s not just simply an issue of the southern runway creating more noise,” Gordon said. “It is: Does this create greater safety for all of us?”

If moving the runway and adding a center taxiway on the airport’s south side decrease near misses between aircraft and the number of times planes need to fly around over his community, the increased safety could outweigh a minimal jump in noise, he said.

Hahn’s plan would place more schools under the path of arriving aircraft, although fewer campuses would be affected than under Riordan’s expansion alternatives, the environmental analysis found.

Additional noise created by moving a runway closer to El Segundo would affect several schools in Lennox. The Lennox School District serves about 7,100 children, and aircraft noise interrupts them each day on the playground or while doing homework at night, school officials said.

“We are definitely going to be interested in talking about mitigation,” said Bruce McDaniel, superintendent of the district. “We think there are continuing negative impacts that we’ve experienced historically. Whatever plan were to be adopted, there will be additional impacts.”

McDaniel added that his district started building “windowless schools” several decades ago to cope with the noise generated by both landing and departing jets.

Under Hahn’s plan, the city would try to minimize the impact of traffic on surface streets in the area by providing direct access to the airport from freeways, as well as better access from the Green Line rail system.

But although some surface streets might see less traffic, the city report found that there would be more congestion on Century and San Diego freeway onramps and offramps.

Maleman of the Westchester chamber said Hahn’s traffic plan concerns hotel owners on Century Boulevard who fear that potential customers, riding the elevated train planned between the new check-in facility and the terminals, would bypass their facilities.

Despite its environmental benefits, some officials are concerned that Hahn’s modernization plan would disproportionately affect minority and low-income residents who live near the airport.

Under the plan, minority and low-income communities would constitute 74% of the area subjected to high noise by the year 2015, when construction is completed. Of those newly exposed to high noise levels, 87% would be minorities or low-income people.

For comparison, the report said 70% of the high-noise area in 2000 was made up of minority and low-income neighborhoods.

City officials contend that Hahn’s plan would harm fewer disadvantaged residents than Riordan’s alternatives.

Wildlife experts expressed concern about the plan’s effect on grasslands and vernal pools north of the airport, where Hahn calls for a hotel and other construction.

Several endangered species, including spade-footed toads and fairy shrimp, and other animals, such as jack rabbits, live on this site, said Travis Longcore, science director for the Urban Wildlands Group, a Los Angeles-based conservation organization.

He disagreed with the plan’s contention that it can “make up for [lost] habitat units by enhancing areas that are already protected.”

To compensate for development on the northern grasslands, the environmental document suggests that officials restore the El Segundo dunes, which lie directly under the path of departing aircraft, by ripping up streets there that are the only remnants of an old subdivision.

Meanwhile, some residents and civic leaders are complaining that Los Angeles is not giving them enough time to fully read the massive environmental study.

The technical data are so complicated and voluminous that the Inglewood City Council called this week for Los Angeles to extend the public comment period to 180 days from 45.