Proposed Airport Noise Limits Criticized on Both Fronts : Van Nuys: The ordinances could bar half of the jets. Airport operators say the limits would hurt business, but a homeowner activist says they don’t go far enough.

Aircraft operators at Van Nuys Airport are organizing to fight two proposed ordinances to be considered tonight that would clamp down on the noisiest jets, but homeowner group leaders say the suggested regulations would bring little relief from jet roar.

One of the ordinances to be considered by the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners would ban takeoffs and landings of the noisiest jets over the next eight years. The other would immediately bar additional noisy jets from being based at the private aviation facility.

The immediate ban would permit no additional jets that generate 77 or more decibels on takeoff to be based at the airport--a standard that is not met by half of the 90 jets now based there. The ban “will be a severe hardship” on the charter and aircraft servicing businesses that operate at Van Nuys, said Rick Voorhis, president of the Van Nuys Airport Assn.

“What about someone who has put a deposit on a plane that doesn’t meet the 77 d.b.a. rule?” he asked. “It’s not fair.”

And the gradual phasing out of the noisiest jets will “shrivel up much of the businesses at the airport,” said Voorhis, who said his group represents more than 200 businesses and individual pilots operating at the airport.

But the two proposed ordinances are “too little and way too late, considering how much noise this airport causes,” said Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino.

He has led efforts for a complete ban on planes that generate 74 decibels or more. “The airport people are just throwing us a bone.”

A study of airport records indicates that an outright ban on planes that generate 74 or more decibels would affect no propeller-driven planes and would bar “only about 25% of jet operations, and with that the neighborhood would grow much quieter,” Silver said.

Airport commissioners are to consider both proposed ordinances at a meeting at 7 p.m. at the Airtel Plaza Hotel.

Airport Manager Charles Zeman said he is expecting a “contentious meeting, based on what I’ve heard about the noise regulations.”

The Department of Airports staff has suggested that only the ban on basing more noisy jets at the airport be contained in an interim ordinance. It would go into effect immediately and last six months.

The remainder of the noise regulations, contained in a long-range ordinance, would be opened up for comment for six months, then brought up for final action.

Under the proposed ordinance, starting next January, the maximum noise level would be set at 85 decibels--a level that airport officials said would affect only a handful of older craft.

Between next January and January, 1998, the maximum level would gradually be lowered to 77 decibels.

That would force out about half of the 90 jets now based at the airport, according to airport officials. About 800 non-jets are also based at Van Nuys.

At present, the airport has only one noise regulation--banning takeoffs by airplanes generating more than 74 decibels between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Under the proposed long-range ordinance, that nighttime ban would be moved up to 10 p.m., but not until January, 1996.