Airport Seeks Funds to Buy Nearby Houses : Santa Paula: The money is available under recently approved state legislation. The goal is to remove structures in the flight path.

Santa Paula Airport--the site of two midair collisions in the past 18 months--could soon receive as much as $500,000 for safety improvements under recently approved state legislation, officials said Monday.

The money would allow Santa Paula officials to buy houses and other structures that are considered too close to the airport’s flight path. Two houses at the eastern edge of the airport were severely damaged last month after a midair collision sent a disabled plane plummeting into them.

“What we’re dealing with is the most basic aspect of airport safety, which is a good, clear approach to the runway,” said Norman Wilkinson, Santa Paula’s public works director and city engineer.

Of Ventura County’s four airports, the Santa Paula field has the most acute problem of buildings standing in the flight approach path, according to a study last year by the county Transportation Commission. After the crash last month, residents said planes sometimes clip the tops of trees as they land at the general-aviation field.

“You have a number of homes in the immediate vicinity of the runway,” commission Director Ginger Gherardi said. Wilkinson said a few commercial buildings at the east end are also too close to the airport, as is a duplex at the west end.

Under legislation signed last week by Gov. Pete Wilson, the city will be allowed to apply for state funds to start buying and removing the structures, said Paul Smith, an aide to Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria), who sponsored the bill.

The measure was needed because under the old law, privately owned airports such as Santa Paula’s were not eligible, even if they were used by the public, Smith said.

“We argued that the public uses this, and we need to be able to compete for these funds,” Smith said.

In anticipation of the bill’s approval, the Southern California Assn. of Governments included the Santa Paula project in its request for state airport improvement funds, Gherardi said. The group ranked the project as the fifth-most-important project in its six-county region.

Now that Wilson has signed the bill, a request for $500,000--the maximum possible grant--will go before the California Transportation Commission, possibly as early as November, Gherardi said. Money for the grants comes from taxes on aviation fuel.

The city and the county transportation commission are trying to set priorities for using the money, assuming the grant is approved.

“My priority, personally, is the people who are living there,” Gherardi said.

Wilkinson said he shares that concern, but he foresees “some very difficult emotional issues” as safety concerns conflict with property rights.

For example, he said, the owner of one of the houses damaged last month has applied for city permits to rebuild. Local officials will probably say reconstruction is inconsistent with the city’s airport land-use plan, he said.

But the homes--many built before the airport was opened in the 1930s--stand on lots too small for non-residential uses allowed by the plan. “If they can’t rebuild, they can’t grow strawberries,” Wilkinson said.

“It’s a neighborhood where some property has been in the family’s hands for several generations,” he said. “You’re talking about relocating people from long-held property. Some property has been in the same family’s hands for generations. It’s going to be an extremely difficult process, I’m sure.”

Wilkinson acknowledged that $500,000 would not be nearly enough to deal with all the flight-path hazards.

“Even little houses built 60 years ago cost a lot of money,” he said. “But it’s a start. We’ll be back in line next year.”