Airport Noise Strikes Wrong Chord : Land-use: Homeowners say Orange County’s refusal to buy them out makes it impossible for them to move elsewhere.

When Mariann Towersey came to this agricultural strip near Newort Beach 10 years ago, she and her husband knew there was going to be noise from nearby John Wayne Airport.

But in those days, Towersey recalls, flights were fewer and farther between, and the commotion seemed tolerable.

Things today are different. Last week, as Towersey described half a decade of battles that she has waged with the county, flights departed every few minutes, forcing her first to shout and then wait silently, burning with anger, until planes passed.

“How do you like that?” she yelled, glaring daggers at one offending Alaska Airlines jet as it drowned all conversation. “What are we supposed to do about that?”

Towersey is one of a dozen or so neighbors strung along Birch Street, a two-lane road just beyond the end of the airport runway, who want county officials to buy them out. So far, however, the county has been unwilling to meet their price.

“We’re trapped here,” said resident Fred Peterson, a business teacher at Newport-Mesa Alternative Education Center. “The county’s willing to pay me $363,000 for this place. I can’t buy anything like this in Orange County for that amount of money, so I have to sit here.”

It’s not that the county has failed to recognize noise as a problem. After a long review of the land-use for the area in the early 1980s, the county determined that the area around Birch Street would be more appropriate for offices than homes.

The land was rezoned, and the transition took hold.

By most measures, it has been a rousing success. New offices are springing up along the street, and construction is booming. County planners envision a vibrant office park within a few years, one that works in tandem with the expanded airport and its new opportunities for business.

“I really think the economic engine that is driving that area is the airport,” said Tom Mathews, the county director of planning. “What you see out there is really progressive.”

But that’s not a view that’s widely shared on Birch Street.

Like his neighbors, Peterson’s options are limited: He can’t sell his house to another homeowner because the area is zoned for office complexes. But his property is too small to hold an entire office building, so he’s had trouble finding a developer willing to complete a deal for the land.

Peterson said he’s entered into negotiations for the property five times, only to have escrow fall through. Several doors up the street, a neighbor living near a new construction site echoed those complaints, pointing as he did toward the growling heavy machinery a few feet away.

“You think the airplanes are loud,” he said. “Try living next to those.”

The neighbors blame the delays and frustrations squarely on County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, saying he pursued the airport expansion with a vengeance and ignored the plight he was creating for his constituents living in its shadow.

“He knows what we’ve been through, and he hasn’t done a thing,” Towersey said, as a neighbor nodded in agreement. “We were promised that no one here would suffer, and I blame him totally.”

Riley said last week that he was sorry to hear of his constituents’ complaints but added that he’s available to help if they want his support. “I think you know that my door is always open,” he said. “I’d be happy to hear their complaints.”

Some of the area residents did get out, having taken advantage of a county purchase assurance program years ago. But even they say the process was infuriating and left them battered.

“It was incredibly frustrating,” said Jack Mullan, who once lived just around the corner from the Towerseys. “I feel sorry for the people who are left. They’re getting the shaft.”

The Towerseys agree. Their house lies in the area that the county has identified for a reconfigured Birch Street, and a new arterial street project would run directly across the Towerseys’ property, so no developer is likely to touch it.

But the county still has not funded the road project, so officials say they are not prepared to buy out the Towerseys, at least not yet. That leaves the family without any likely buyer, and they remain stuck for the indefinite future.

“At this time . . . no particular date has been established for implementation of the (street project) improvements,” according to a status report written this week on what is known as the Mesa/Birch realignment. The report adds that it is “not possible to put a time estimate on the implementation.”

Mathews, citing litigation that the Towerseys have brought against the county, declined to comment on the specifics of their case.

Meantime, Towersey says she’s left in a home that becomes increasingly unlivable as the airport becomes increasingly successful: The airport added several flights a day to its expanded operations last Monday.

When their kitchen trash compactor recently broke, the Towerseys left it unrepaired. Why improve a home that the family only hopes to leave? Towersey asked.

“This has just gotten us so depressed,” she said. “And the worst of it is that we can’t appeal to our elected officials because they’re the ones behind it. What do you do when your representative is the one torturing you?”