FAA Is Fighting Van Nuys Airport Anti-Noise Plan : Aviation: The proposal would phase out the loudest jets by the year 2000. Federal officials threaten to withhold $60 million a year if the ordinance is adopted.

A proposed anti-noise ordinance for Van Nuys Airport is generating high-decibel complaints from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has already forced Los Angeles city officials to rewrite a similar noise ordinance proposed for the Los Angeles International and Ontario airports.

The FAA has substantial financial clout with airport officials because it provides so much of the money for capital expenditures, like new buildings.

The proposed noise ordinance for Van Nuys and the ordinance for the Los Angeles and Ontario airports both would have phased out the oldest, noisiest jets by the year 2000, slashing by 65% to 95% the number of households affected by excessive noise under a commonly used measurement.

But FAA officials have raised distinct complaints about each proposed ordinance.

In the case of the ordinance for Los Angeles and Ontario airports, FAA officials said last year that the timetable for banning the noisiest planes is too strict and would conflict with a national noise abatement program, which has more lenient standards.

They threatened to withhold about $60 million annually in federal airport funds if the City Council adopted the ordinance as written. In response, city officials forged a compromise ordinance in February after a series of meetings with FAA officials.

The new ordinance, which would allow airlines to seek exemptions from the guidelines under certain circumstances, will be considered for adoption next week by the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners. It must then be approved by the City Council before it can take effect.

In the case of the Van Nuys Airport ordinance, FAA officials said in a letter last month that airport officials neglected to study the economic harm it would do to pilots and airport businesses. And the FAA is once again threatening to use its ultimate power: withholding federal airport construction funds.

Loss of federal funding would be severe for the city, which operates Los Angeles International, Ontario, Van Nuys and Palmdale airports.

The amount of federal funds used at the Van Nuys Airport varies from year to year depending on airport improvement plans, airport officials said. Next year, the Department of Airports plans to ask for $3.7 million in federal grants to relocate and improve a taxiway that airport officials say is too close to several structures.

The FAA is not alone in opposing the proposed Van Nuys Airport ordinance. A coalition of eight Van Nuys Airport tenants who say the ordinance would severely damage their businesses has hired a Washington, D.C.-based attorney to fight the measure.

The attorney, Ray Rasenberger, who specializes in airport noise issues, said the proposed noise ordinance is legally flawed and will probably not be approved by the City Council as written.

But he said that if it is adopted, he would probably sue the city on behalf of the airport tenants. “There is an array of problems with that ordinance,” Rasenberger said.

Jon Winthrop, president of Air Group Inc., an aircraft management company based at Van Nuys Airport, said he helped form the coalition of tenants because the ordinance would eliminate half of the jets he manages and force him to lay off half his 60-person work crew.

“With this ordinance you are wiping out quite a few families,” he said.

He said he agrees that there is a noise problem at the airport but believes that the proposed noise ordinance would go too far. “That noise ordinance is something we cannot live with,” Winthrop said. “If we cannot come up with some kind of compromise that would allow us to live with the community we will litigate.”

Airport officials said the Van Nuys ordinance would phase out almost half the 98 jets based at the airport. There also are 745 piston-engine and turbo-prop airplanes and helicopters at the facility.

Robert A. Chick, president of the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners, said he sees the FAA’s criticism and the tenants’ opposition as part of the give-and-take process required to adopt an effective noise ordinance.

“We believe that this is a fair program and we will see as the process goes along who disputes it and then we’ll respond to that,” he said. “I see this as all part of the process.”

But Don Miller, deputy executive director of the city Department of Airports, said he is concerned about the FAA’s opposition to the Van Nuys ordinance.

Although city officials have not yet suggested rethinking the proposed ordinance to address the FAA’s concerns, “it could very well be that’s the way it ends up,” he said.

Before the Van Nuys ordinance can be put into effect, it must be approved by the City Council.

In a letter sent last month to City Council President John Ferraro, an FAA official urged Ferraro to delay adopting the Van Nuys Airport ordinance until the FAA has thoroughly reviewed the measure and until the city has completed a study of the economic effects that the ordinance could have on pilots and airport businesses.

“Without such analysis, assessment and balancing of the costs and any benefits of the proposed ordinance is difficult, if not impossible,” Dale E. McDaniel, an FAA deputy assistant administrator, said in the letter.

McDaniel also warned that violating FAA regulations “could jeopardize the city’s eligibility for airport development funds and authority to impose passenger facility charges at airports owned and operated by the city of Los Angeles.”

FAA officials have said that they support a less restrictive noise control plan that was developed over the past 3 1/2 years by an advisory panel of residents, pilots and airport officials, known as the Part 150 Committee, a name taken from the number of the FAA regulation governing local noise control efforts.

In the letter, McDaniel suggests that the Part 150 noise plan be adopted and allowed to take effect before the more restrictive noise ordinance is considered.

The Part 150 noise control plan would extend a nightly curfew by one hour, encourage pilots to reduce thrust on takeoff and add a noise-abatement officer to the airport staff. Airport officials had hoped that the cost of noise monitoring equipment needed to implement the plan would come from an FAA grant.

After the Board of Airport Commissioners voted in October to support the Part 150 plan and the tougher noise ordinance as well, Don Schultz--an anti-noise activist and member of the Part 150 group--warned against adopting the stricter noise ordinance. He argued that such an action would lead to a confrontation with the FAA and would ruin the chances of getting federal funding for the Part 150 plan.

Schultz, who is also president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and the group Ban Aircraft Noise, said his predictions are now coming true. “We knew this noise regulation was never going to fly,” he said.

And while the city and the FAA wrangle over the noise ordinance, he said, the Part 150 plan will be ignored.

But Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino and a vocal supporter of the controversial noise ordinance, called the FAA warnings “veiled threats” and said the city has reviewed the ordinance sufficiently to put the guidelines into effect.

“They are just blowing smoke,” Silver said of the FAA warnings. “They have no fire behind it.”