House OKs Berman’s Jet Noise Proposal

The House, voting heavily along partisan lines, moved Thursday to shift a thunderous quantity of jet noise from the congressional district of Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) to that of Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale).

The Berman-inspired proposal calls for withholding up to $40 million in federal improvement grants from Burbank Airport until it adopts a plan that would expose Moorhead’s constituents to about 40% of the flights now routed over Berman’s constituents.

The parochial feud took on national overtones when lawmakers warned in spirited debate that the legislation would set off a rash of demands for special relief from jet noise.

‘A Can of Worms’

“I have a noise problem too. Is this a can of worms we want to open?” Rep. Rod Chandler (R-Wash.) asked.

Currently, almost all commercial flights from the Burbank Airport take off to the southwest and circle to the west and north over parts of Burbank, North Hollywood, Studio City, Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys--areas largely represented by Berman.

Berman wants about 40% of the planes to head east over Burbank and Glendale, where many of Moorhead’s constituents reside. Though airline pilots and federal traffic controllers first would have to deem the takeoffs “safe and feasible,” Moorhead protested that controllers would be under congressional pressure to bend safety standards.

House Rejects Bid

By a vote of 211 to 198, the House rejected a bid by Moorhead to delete the proposal from a massive airport improvement bill. The provision, inserted by aviation subcommittee chairman Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose) at Berman’s request, is expected to hit turbulence in the Senate.

All but 30 House Democrats backed Berman on the issue and all but one Republican supported Moorhead.

“Common sense would say this is the dumbest thing in the world,” Moorhead said in an interview, “but California politics is such that (opposition) is a difficult load to bear.” He said he was referring to the considerable clout wielded among Democrats by the “Waxman-Berman machine,” led by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Berman.

The opponents charged that eastbound takeoffs generally are less safe because of crosswinds and barriers posed by the Verdugo Mountains to the east of the airport. Also, the east-west runway is shorter than the north-south runway that pilots favor. Opponents also contended that the bill would set a bad precedent of congressional intervention in air traffic routing.

But Berman argued that federal legislation was the only way to bring fairness to constituents who long have been victimized by a politically motivated Airport Commission unwilling to shift takeoff patterns. The commissioners, he said, are “hell-bent on protecting their own constituents from any noise.”