LOS ANGELES : City Sues to Block Planned Burbank Airport Expansion
The city of Los Angeles sued the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority Friday in an effort to block the planned expansion of the Burbank airport.
The lawsuit followed the filing earlier this week of a similar action by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Both plaintiffs allege that the airport authority did not perform an adequate environmental review before approving the expansion plan March 22.
If the expansion project is allowed, the airport’s ground area would go from 40 to 140 acres, and the 163,000-square-foot terminal would be replaced with a 790,000-square-foot terminal. The number of boarding gates would go from 13 to 27.
It is anticipated that the expansion would increase the airport’s annual passenger volume from 1.7 million passengers, the 1990 figure, to 5 million by the year 2010. The city’s lawsuit contends that the resulting noise, air pollution and ground traffic will hurt the quality of life in the areas of Los Angeles that abut the airport on two sides. The school district’s case raised the same issues, citing the effects on 25 schools within a 3 1/2-mile radius of the project.
Airport authority spokesman Victor Gill said that the city challenged an earlier expansion plan in 1983 and lost that bout.
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