‘War Against Airport Noise Could Backfire’

My response to the essay (Editorial Pages, Nov. 19), “War Against Airport Noise Could Backfire Noisily,” by Richard M. Vacar, manager of airport affairs, and Victor J. Gill, community relations manager at Burbank Airport is one of outrage.

How dare these public officials tell the affected community residents to be silent and if you’re not silent we will just beat you up even more.

Study after study reveals that it is not just the noise level but also, and more important, the number of incidents that occur, that have a bad psychological effect on people.

To tell the public to move in this day and age when a home that might have cost $30,000 twenty years ago is now $200,000 or more is just impractical.

What our public officials should be doing is analyzing the problems and come up with a regional Southern California solution . By destroying more residential areas around Burbank, Long Beach and Newport Beach, by adding flights is not going to solve the problem.

We have all heard the prediction for the population of this area by the turn of the century. Instead of spending billions of dollars on so-called allies and obsolete military weapons, why don’t we spend it on a large regional new airport built on the ocean.

It would create jobs, save neighborhoods and have a decent chance of solving the national air transportation problem in one sweep.

This would perhaps stop the constant threats and blackmail that we residents face every day from these arrogant airport officials. If we were to apply the laws of noise, nuisance and safety to the airplane as we do to the human who has his feet on the ground, we wouldn’t have this problem.

So let’s stop yelling at each other and start action on this long overdue action for an airport in the ocean!

BARBARA MITCHELL

Long Beach