The Times Poll : Poll Shows More Favor Burbank Airport Than Oppose Its Noise

By T.W. McGARRY

May 28, 1989 12 AM PT

<i> Times Staff Writer </i>

Despite years of bitter and costly controversy over Burbank Airport noise and an increase in the political power of anti-airport activists, only a comparative handful of San Fernando Valley residents are bothered by aircraft noise. Far more residents favor increasing airport traffic than restraining it.

Those were among the conclusions that emerged from a survey by the Los Angeles Times Poll last weekend.

The poll’s findings indicated that the noise-control movement--which has become increasingly influential with local, state and federal officeholders--is not the tip of an iceberg of voter resentment, but speaks for a relatively small percentage of residents.

A far larger group approves of plans to build a new airport terminal and favors an increase in the number and frequency of flights.

Vocal Minority

The poll’s results tend to support airport administrators and pro-flying enthusiasts, who have complained for years that the anti-noise crusaders were a vocal minority whose organizing abilities and zeal won them more political clout than they merit. Of those who said they would switch their vote because of a political candidate’s stand on airport issues, more voters would support a pro-airport candidate than a noise-control candidate.

Burbank Airport noise, along with the companion issue of Van Nuys Airport noise, has been the stuff of running Valley disputes for a generation. The core of the protest movement are Valley homeowner associations, along with Ban Airport Noise, or BAN, a Valley-based group that focuses on both airports.

Complaints to elected officials have increasingly led to public hearings, at which noise protesters have voiced complaints for hours, occasionally booing or groaning at statements by airport administrators or other defenders.

Elected officials have heard the complaints and responded, enmeshing the airport in a series of lengthy and costly administrative actions, studies and hearings in addition to lawsuits brought by annoyed neighbors.

The dispute grew more intense after the airport’s governing board announced in 1987 that a proposed new terminal, expected to be built in the mid-1990s, would be capable of handling more than 92,000 takeoffs and landings a year and 7.3 million passengers, about twice the present traffic level.

The Times’ poll takers interviewed 710 residents in Burbank, Glendale, other San Fernando Valley communities and Pasadena by telephone May 20. The results have a margin of error of 5%, plus or minus.

About 32% of the respondents live in the East Valley under the usual landing approaches to or takeoff paths from Burbank Airport. The responses from these residents did not differ significantly from the attitudes of those living in other neighborhoods.

Asked what they liked most about their neighborhoods--before airports or aircraft noise were mentioned--39% of the respondents cited “peace and quiet.” It was the most common response. The second most common answer, by 12%, was “I don’t like my neighborhood.” Third was a two-way tie between favorable transportation and good neighbors.

Asked what they most disliked about their neighborhoods, 22% said they had no dislikes. The biggest complaint, by 17%, was poor transportation--traffic congestion and lack of public transport. Eleven percent cited crime and drugs, and 9% disliked their neighbors.

Aircraft noise ranked seventh, mentioned by only 3% of respondents. It was just ahead of a four-way tie for eighth place, at 2%, between graffiti, traffic noise, dirt and “poor community feeling”--a general dislike of the neighborhood’s atmosphere.

Asked specifically about aircraft noise, 88% said it bothered them little or hardly at all. Eight percent said it bothered them “some,” and 4% said they were bothered “a lot.”

Sixty-six percent said they had a favorable impression of the airport, against 9% who regarded it unfavorably. The others were unsure.

Not Convenient

Just 22% said they use the airport often. But 38% said they do not use the airport more often because it is not convenient enough, saying it lacks parking and enough timely flights to desired destinations. The inconvenience of too few flights was cited by 28%.

Forty-eight percent favored the airport’s expansion, and 35% were opposed, with 17% undecided.

By 69% to 16%, the poll participants opposed trying to mandate changes in the airport’s usual takeoff routes, which carry most traffic over East Valley neighborhoods--the central issue of an emotional struggle between the airport and noise-control advocates.

Sixty-eight percent were satisfied with the airport’s present curfew on commercial flights from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Fourteen percent favored more restrictive hours, and 8% wanted flying hours increased.

Asked whether they agreed that the airport should be closed--an avowed goal of some leaders of the anti-noise movement--85% disagreed, 68% saying they disagreed “strongly.” Eight percent favored a shutdown, with 7% undecided.

Those who favor shutting down the airport have long argued that it could be replaced by the now-unused Los Angeles city airport at Palmdale, which would avoid adding to traffic problems on the San Diego Freeway and air-traffic congestion at Los Angeles International Airport.

Fourteen percent of those polled said they would go to Palmdale in such a case, but 74% would use LAX.

Asked whether they had taken any political action regarding airport issues, 10% said they had attended a meeting, worked for a candidate, tried to influence others or contributed money.

Switching Votes

Asked whether they would switch their vote in an election from one candidate to another over the airport issue, 71% said they would not. Twenty percent would. Based on the group’s answers to other questions, the poll indicated that if an election were fought on the basis of airport issues, a “pro-airport” candidate or issue would gain about 12% in votes from this group, at the cost of losing 2%.

The poll sample included 19% who said they never use the airport, 59% who said they seldom use it and 22% who said they use it often.

Use of the airport rose with the level of the respondent’s income. Only 9% of those making less than $20,000 annually were frequent users. The percentage climbed to a third of the respondents making more than $60,000, with indications that the figure rises to more than 40% above $100,000.

The 32% who live under the most common landing or takeoff routes were identified by ZIP codes. The survey found no statistically significant difference in this group from the rest of those polled in answers covering aircraft noise, attitude toward the airport, airport expansion or airport usage.

Five percent of those polled said their households include someone employed in the aviation industry.

No significant relationship was found between the airport-related answers and age, race, gender or political orientation.

Robert W. Garcin, president of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, said the poll “reflects what I and the other commissioners believe the true conditions to be.” But he said he does not believe that it provides grounds to ignore the noise protesters.

‘Fact of Life’

“Any person affected by the noise is entitled to be heard,” he said. “I don’t think too much attention has been paid to the complainers, regardless of their numbers. By the same token, we’re not able to satisfy everybody’s complaints. It’s unfortunate, but that’s a fact of life.”

Airport noise activists denounced the poll as biased, wrong or misleading.

“The results seem inherently conflicting and illogical,” said Richard Close, head of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. Close, who has been a leading critic of Burbank Airport noise for years, also represents five other homeowner associations on the issue--in Burbank, North Hollywood, Studio City, Van Nuys and Sun Valley.

“If your results indicate people in the flight path and outside the flight path have the same perception of airport noise, then the study is faulty. It’s very easy to manipulate polling results.”

He said that the poll was misleading because it was taken on a weekend, “the quietest part of the week,” and that many responses came from people who are ordinarily not home on workdays “when most people are affected” by airport noise.

Support for expansion of airport traffic must have been voiced by residents who do not live in areas affected by airport noise, he said. “That just verifies our fears, that the people who aren’t bothered by the airport want it expanded to a mini-LAX.”

Survey Criticized

Don Schultz, president of BAN, said he believed that the survey was flawed by the inclusion of Glendale and Pasadena residents “who of course want the airport expanded because they use it without getting the noise.”

“I don’t think the poll represents anything more than 710 people. It reeks of the kind of survey the airport did itself.”

“This ludicrous, biased so-called poll . . . was unfair, and its conclusions should be rejected,” said Heather Dalmont, deputy to City Councilman Joel Wachs, who has been a leader in the Los Angeles city government’s quarrel with the airport. Wachs is out of the country.

“The survey just doesn’t fit our knowledge of the people affected by the airport,” Dalmont said. “Our experience and our involvement with the homeowner associations indicate just the opposite.”

The unprompted response by 39% of the homeowners, that they liked their neighborhoods best for “peace and quiet,” is misleading because “the meaning of ‘quiet’ is ambiguous,” she said. “It can mean that ‘I don’t think I’m going to be knifed when I go to the grocery store.’ It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t hear airport noise.”

The poll’s question on the “share-the-noise” proposal inaccurately stated the dispute, she said, generating uninformed answers because “most people don’t know what’s going on.”

Wachs has been a leader in the effort to get the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which operates the airport, to adopt the “share-the-noise plan,” a key demand by the anti-noise protesters.

Plan’s Goal

The plan’s goal is to get half the departing jetliners to take off toward the east, in the direction of the three cities that own the airport. Now, almost all jetliners take off to the south and circle west and north over the East Valley areas of Studio City and North Hollywood.

Planes taking off toward the east would also circle back north over the same part of the Valley because the Verdugo Mountains and LAX traffic routes prevent them from continuing east or south. But they would be higher when they did so and harder to hear from the ground.

The airport authority, which has repeatedly refused to endorse such a plan, argues that it has no authority to mandate takeoff directions, which are the prerogative of each plane’s pilot and the Federal Aviation Administration. Airport administrators and pilots argue that the southbound takeoff is safer because the runway is longer, runs downhill and faces into the prevailing winds. They added that the eastbound runway aims departing planes straight at the nearby Verdugo Mountains.

Supporters of the plan argue that aviation authorities say eastbound takeoffs would be safe and that pilots could still make the final decision.

A small part of the airport is actually in Los Angeles, and the anti-noise movement consists primarily of Los Angeles residents.

Six Los Angeles City Council members with Valley constituents have taken strong stands in attempts to force the airport to adopt the “share-the-noise” plan. They wrote a letter of strong protest last year against the refusal of the airport authority to adopt the plan, which the Los Angeles council backs.

Wachs wanted Los Angeles to sue the airport authority over the issue.

2 Suits Filed

The suit was not brought but Los Angeles already has sued the airport twice over noise-related issues.

Settlement terms for one suit led to a three-year, $450,000 federally sponsored noise-control study, which concluded that not much more could be done to control noise and the federal government should pay the airport’s closest neighbors to soundproof their homes or move. The recommendation is still under study by the FAA.

At the urging of anti-noise groups, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) got the state Department of Transportation last year to hold a hearing aimed at revoking or restricting the airport’s state permit to operate. The city of Los Angeles took part on the protesters’ side. After two weeks of hearings and 10 months of arguments on paper, an administrative law judge renewed the permit and rebuked Los Angeles, saying city officials created the city’s problems by allowing land near the airport to be used for private housing.

In 1987, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) succeeded in inserting an amendment in the federal budget to withhold $40 million in FAA loans from the airport until it acquiesced in the “share-the-noise” proposal. The amendment was eventually killed by a Senate-House conference committee, but only after Berman’s action led to a bitter personal squabble with Garcin, the head of the airport authority.

Garcin called Berman a liar. When Garcin appeared in Washington to plead the airport’s case, Berman refused to speak to him unless he apologized. Garcin refused and came home.

A coalition of 466 homeowners fought the airport in a seven-year-long lawsuit, part of which went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the airport’s appeal of a state court ruling. Most of the homeowners ultimately lost, but a handful of the cases remain in the courts.

POLL AT A GLANCE

Aircraft noise offends relatively few Valley residents.

How much does aircraft noise bother you? Little or hardly at all 88%

Some or a lot 12%

What do you like most about your neighborhood? Peace and quiet 39%

What do you dislike about your neighborhood?

Transportation problems 17%

Crime and drugs 11%

My neighbors 9%

Air quality 6%

Overcrowding 6%

Not sure 4%