6-Month Delay Sought on Airport Zoning Law : Local control: The 1970 measure enforces statutes that ensure projects are compatible with airports.

Sen. Robert G. Beverly is pressing for passage of a bill to temporarily exempt cities in Los Angeles County from a potentially far-reaching law that would reduce local zoning power near airports, including Burbank and Van Nuys airports.

With the support of the League of California Cities, Beverly is seeking a six-month moratorium on enforcement of the law that put teeth into statutes aimed at ensuring that hotels, office buildings, industrial parks and other projects are compatible with airports.

Beverly, a Republican from Manhattan Beach, described his bill as a stopgap measure until he can help reach a permanent solution.

The law, on the books since 1970 but largely ignored, requires all California cities with airports to prepare land-use plans for territory within two miles of the runways. The plans are to be used by local airport land-use commissions in deciding whether to grant building permits on property within two miles of the airport.

If enforced, the law is expected to have the greatest impact in communities surrounding such controversial airports as those in Burbank and Van Nuys and Los Angeles International Airport.

Proponents say the law is designed to protect pilots from undue hazards around airports and protect people who live and work around airports from noise and safety hazards.

Under the law, the Regional Planning Commission could determine that some types of development would be incompatible with an airport. This could undermine the authority of cities to make their own decisions about how to best use the land around airports, some local leaders fear.

Noting that airport land-use plans required by the state since 1970 had been completed for only about half the state’s 269 airports, state Sen. Marion Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) last year sponsored a law setting a June 30, 1991, deadline for the plans.

Beverly’s proposal would delay the effective date in Los Angeles County until Jan. 1, 1992.

County officials contend that the extra six months is justified because the Bergerson-sponsored law indicates that in Los Angeles County the Regional Planning Commission will serve as the airport land-use agency, rather than a specially created commission as elsewhere, and that it will “coordinate airport planning.”

County Planner John Huttinger said that because “no one knows exactly what it means to coordinate airport planning,” only Torrance and San Dimas among the 39 affected cities in the county have taken action to prepare plans or to submit building applications to the Regional Planning Commission.

Despite the claimed ambiguity in the law, Bergeson wrote in a letter to Beverly last week: “I firmly believe that the Legislature should not give Los Angeles County officials the ability to delay even longer.”

“We sent the county a plan,” Rick Pruetz, Burbank planning director, said. “But we’ve heard nothing and we’ve been waiting for direction from the county.”

“Our position is that it’s a county matter,” said Cora Fossett, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles City Department of Airports, which owns LAX, Van Nuys, Palmdale and Ontario airports.

Beverly inserted his proposal into a bill that was already in the Assembly. Action by the Assembly on Beverly’s bill could come as early as today.