Residents’ Airport Noise Plan Criticized as Legally Precarious : Van Nuys: A city attorney warns that a judge rejected a similar proposal in 1979. It is feared that businesses may sue.

A proposal by Encino homeowners to reduce noise at Van Nuys Airport is a “loser” and would probably leave the airport open to lawsuits, a Los Angeles city attorney said Monday.

Assistant City Atty. Bret Lobner criticized the homeowners’ proposal at a meeting of a panel studying ways to reduce noise at the Van Nuys Airport. Lobner said the proposal is flawed because a judge rejected a similar proposal adopted at the Santa Monica Airport in 1979.

The panel delayed a decision on the proposal until Feb. 24 to allow the airport staff to further study its impact.

Drafted by Homeowners of Encino--a group that has long been critical of airport operations--the proposal would impose a noise limit throughout the day and prohibit all jet takeoffs at night, except for emergency flights.

The homeowners’ proposal, however, was supported by two elected officials who spoke Monday before the Van Nuys Airport Part 150 Committee, an appointed panel of residents, pilots and others. The committee is named after a section of Federal Aviation Administration rules dealing with community participation in airport noise studies.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles), who represents the area just south of the airport, said in a statement read to the panel by an aide that he backs the homeowners’ proposal.

“Residents must be our first priority,” Friedman said.

Also backing the proposal was state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), who also represents residents near the airport.

“I am aware of the potential for litigation against the city of Los Angeles and I am prepared to author legislation to protect the city from legal action,” he said in a statement read to the panel by an aide.

Airport noise that often exceeds 65 decibels now reaches 3,263 people living in 1,445 houses around the airport, according to airport measurements. But under the homeowners’ proposal, that number would shrink within five years to 12 people in four single-family houses, according to a study by the Los Angeles Department of Airports.

But Maurice Laham, an airport environmental manager and chairman of the committee’s technical panel, said the study also indicated that the homeowners’ proposal would leave the airport open to lawsuits by airport tenants whose businesses would suffer.

“We feel that it will be highly probable that there will be litigation,” he said.

Hank Miller, president of the Mid-San Fernando Valley Chamber of Commerce, said he opposed the homeowners’ proposal because it would force airport businesses to relocate.

The airport department’s staff earlier offered 10 noise-reduction scenarios for the panel to consider. But the homeowners group did not like any of them and submitted its own proposal to the panel.

The daytime noise limit proposed by the homeowners group would ban those jets classed by the FAA as generating 74 decibels of noise on takeoff. The committee has already given tentative support to one of the 10 scenarios. It would require pilots to voluntarily reduce airplane thrust during takeoffs and would expand by one hour a nighttime ban on departures by planes generating 74 or more decibels of noise on takeoff.

The present noise curfew extends from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The proposal would begin the curfew at 10 p.m.

Under that scenario, airport noise that often exceeds 65 decibels would reach 847 people living in 378 houses, according to the airport study. The potential for lawsuits under that proposal would be unlikely and the impact on airport operations would be minor, the study said.