Airport Ruling Lands on Peace of Santa Ana Heights

I live in Santa Ana Heights, which is an enclave of less than a thousand people gummed to the underside of Newport Beach but actually belonging to nobody in particular except for a tenuous connection with the county of Orange. Throughout the 10 years I’ve lived there, we have heard constant rumors of our impending annexation to Newport Beach, but it hasn’t happened yet, and I strongly doubt that it will.

For some years, however, we have shared one strong common bond with the Newport Beach folks: the noise and other pollution from planes taking off at John Wayne Airport. Up until a few months ago, we shared it more or less equally. Lately, however, we have it worse so Newport can have it better. And if a federal report just released is implemented, it’s going to get a whole lot worse.

It has always been there, but it was bearable because takeoff procedures--spelled out in an agreement between airport and Newport Beach officials when the airport was expanded--required pilots to throttle back until they cleared the congested residential area beneath their takeoff path.

In recent months, two things have happened to break down the fragile protections those of us who live in Santa Ana Heights had against 16-hour-a-day noise pollution from aircraft. First, the FAA demanded conformity at John Wayne because its bureaucratic mind-set simply could not countenance the possibility that one American airport--no matter the circumstances--could be allowed to require takeoff procedures different from those in the rest of the country. And, second, a new set of takeoff rules was adopted--and, according to the recent federal report, will be cast in stone--that sticks it to the people of Santa Ana Heights in such a way that our rich cousins in Newport Beach will continue to be protected.

The rationale for all this monkeying around with the takeoff rules is safety. Pilots have done a lot of complaining that procedures in effect there for many years required them to endanger folks on the ground by throttling back prematurely. Some of them loved to explain that in painstaking detail to passengers while we were climbing out of the airport. This is mostly baloney. I don’t recall any planes crashing on takeoff out of John Wayne, and I piloted enough transports in World War II to ask airline pilot friends who fly out of John Wayne if the old takeoff procedure was really dangerous. They allowed as how it was more inconvenient than dangerous.

As a result, we’re taking the rap in Santa Ana Heights so pilots don’t have to think as much and the feds can have their conformity. What does that mean in specific terms? I’d like to invite the bureaucrat who suggested in the report that “homeowners learn to live with it” to spend a day or two with me. It might be useful if he did his research in and around my home instead of an office in Washington.

Since opening our windows to spring, I don’t think I’ve completed a single telephone call up to mid-morning and after mid-afternoon without waiting until a plane passed over, then asking the caller to repeat what he had just said.

I got a new CD for Christmas, and I have yet to listen to a symphony that didn’t include the obbligato of aircraft noise.

Entertaining people on our patio or in our back yard in late afternoon or early evening is impossible unless we want to eschew conversation and just drink.

Most of our outside greenery carries a constant patina of oil, as does our dog’s water, which has to be changed several times a day.

And then there’s the constant irritation, knowing that when one burst of aircraft noise subsides another will follow soon.

Orange County clearly needed a larger airport, but the decision to expand John Wayne rather than move to a new and less congested location was predicated on an agreement public officials made with the people who lived in the airport area: that if you allow us to expand here, we will protect you from greater noise pollution by the way we run our airport.

That agreement has been violated and the violation compounded by turning up the heat on the residents of Santa Ana Heights so the folks in Newport Beach don’t get too upset.

It’s a lousy deal.