Airport Noise Ordinance Called Too Restrictive

A proposed Van Nuys Airport noise ordinance should be scrapped as “premature and not in the best interests of the city,” possibly exposing the city to lawsuits, according to a report by the Los Angeles city administrative office that has been endorsed by Mayor Tom Bradley.

The report, written by Principal Administrative Analyst Benjamin A. Waitman, said that an endorsement of the ordinance by the Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners should be rescinded until the potential economic harm the ordinance may do to pilots and airport businesses is studied.

Bradley, who received the report two weeks ago, endorsed it and asked the Board of Airport Commissioners to follow Waitman’s recommendations, a Bradley spokeswoman said Tuesday. The mayor’s alternative was to pass the ordinance on to the City Council for a final vote.

“This means war,” declared an outraged Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, who accused Waitman and Bradley of ignoring the noise concerns of the airport’s neighbors.

As proposed, the noise ordinance would phase out the older, noisiest jets from the airfield by 1998 and slash by up to 90% the number of residents estimated to be affected by airport noise under a common statistical measurement.

But the Federal Aviation Administration criticized the proposed ordinance in a letter to City Council President John Ferraro, saying the timetable for phasing out the noisiest planes is stricter than a national noise-abatement program adopted in 1990. Federal aviation officials also said city officials failed to study the economic harm the ordinance may do to airport businesses.

In his report, Waitman said that angering the FAA may undermine the city’s ability to get airport-improvement and noise-mitigation grants from the federal agency.

“The potential for litigation caused by the adoption of the noise regulation is high and financial exposure significant,” Waitman said. Indeed, a coalition of airport tenants already has hired a Washington-based attorney who threatened to sue the city if the measure is adopted.

Waitman said the city should first implement a more lenient noise-abatement program that was developed over a 3 1/2-year period by an advisory panel of neighbors, pilots and airport officials.

No date has been set for the Board of Airport Commissioners to consider Waitman’s report.