Burbank Airport Plans May Face Rigorous Scrutiny : Expansion: The Los Angeles City Council has conditionally required the Airport Authority to submit its 2,000-foot taxiway proposal to the city for approval.

In the latest chapter of a longstanding feud, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday conditionally approved requiring Burbank Airport to submit its plans for a 2,000-foot taxiway to rigorous scrutiny by the city.

If the proposal wins final council approval, its significance may be tested as early as mid-July when Burbank Airport expects to begin building its Taxiway B extension. Los Angeles has complained for years about airport noise and is eager to block any plans that would sharply expand the airport terminal.

Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority spokesman Victor Gill said that the proposed law is moot and illegal, and that the authority has no plans to accede to it.

The U. S. Supreme Court has previously prohibited cities from imposing special land-use restrictions on land already zoned for airport use, he said.

Gill called the move another attempt by the city to prevent takeoffs and landings along the airport’s main north-south runway. The southern approaches to the runway are over neighborhoods in the city of Los Angeles.

“We’ll find out if it’s meaningless,” said Greg Nelson, a chief deputy in Los Angeles Councilman Joel Wachs’ office. “We’re certainly not going to take Burbank Airport’s word that our legislation means nothing.”

To be enacted, the proposed zoning ordinance must be approved a second time by the council, receiving at least 12 votes from the 15-member council. The measure needs more than a bare majority because it would override an earlier Planning Commission decision and because Wachs wants the measure to become effective as soon as it is published--instead of after the normal 30-day waiting period.

The ordinance will come back to the council for further action next week.

“We want to make sure that before anything is permitted to be developed on this site that it go through a full environmental review and that the matter come to the council for approval,” Wachs said in an interview.

“We’re concerned that the land will be used to expand the number of flights into and out of the airport, and anything that would be done in this regard is of enormous concern to us,” he said.

But Gill said extending the taxiway would not allow an increase in airport traffic nor is it related to the terminal expansion plans.

Rather, the extension is a safety step, Gill said.

Aircraft now using Taxiway B must cross the north-south runway to prepare for takeoff, a maneuver that would be unnecessary if the extension is built.

“It’s not a good safety situation,” Gill said. “It’s not dangerous, but it creates an opportunity for accidents.”

Under the zoning measure voted on Tuesday, the airport would be required to get Planning Commission approval for any construction project on land within the boundaries of the city of Los Angeles, including the 54 acres where the Airport Authority wants to build the extension.

The Planning Commission would have to find that any construction would be beneficial to the public and would not harm other developments already in the area, and that all negative environmental impacts would have to be remedied in order to endorse any proposed development.

Gill said such terms would make it politically impossible for the airport to win any land-use permits at Los Angeles City Hall.

The Taxiway B expansion project has been under consideration by the airport since 1985.