On Living With Boom, Boom, Boom

Tom Paterson poured the coffee and sat down on the couch. Documents were spread across a table--lawsuits, press releases, neighborhood bulletins. We could pick through those later. For now, we waited, listening. We did not wait long. The sound began as a distant drone and grew steadily into the unmistakable rumble and whine of jet engines, peaking as the plane passed almost directly overhead.

“No. 1,” Paterson said.

It was 6:42 a.m. Tuesday. The day had begun as it always does in Paterson’s North Hollywood neighborhood--with the sound of a jetliner taking off from the Burbank Airport and twisting west over the San Fernando Valley. More would follow. Burbank flight traffic tends to duplicate freeway patterns, with morning and evening rushes. At the airport a few miles away from Paterson’s house, the jetliners would be pushed back from the gates, the passengers buckled in and trays locked in their full, upright positions. The morning stampede was on.

“One plane you don’t notice,” Paterson said. “It’s the rapid repetition--when they come boom, boom, boom--that gets you.”

It was now 6:48 a.m. In the distance, a drone: No. 2.

*

Paterson lives in a modest house on a quiet street off Riverside Drive. When he purchased it in 1968, there wasn’t enough Burbank jet traffic to bother him. This changed. For the last 15 years, he has been engaged in one of California’s more tangled public policy disputes, a battle that has been waged on many fronts and in many forms--lawsuits, environmental impact reports, congressional hearings--but one that essentially boils down to this: noise.

Airplanes taking off from the Burbank Airport usually turn west upon takeoff and loop over the Valley. Airport officials say this is done for safety. To go straight or turn east presents hazards--the Verdugo Hills, incoming LAX traffic, Mt. Baldy. Paterson and his allies advance a different theory. They contend the flight paths are drawn to protect residents of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena--the cities that own the facility--from jet craft noise.

While this is an old struggle, it is about to reach a new pitch. Airport officials want to to construct a new terminal, four times bigger than the current one. It is intended to service eventually four times as many passengers. That’s a lot of boom, boom, boom. Supporters say the old terminal is too close to runways for comfort. They argue economics, that a new and bigger Burbank Airport will mean jobs, jobs, jobs. And since jobsjobsjobs has become the dominant argument in California debate, expansion opponents are in trouble.

The conflict at present is focused on an environmental impact study. Lawsuits have been filed, lawmakers lobbied, committees formed. What most amazes critics is what the study failed to study: noise. With an absolute straight face, airport officials contend that airport terminals do not create air traffic noise, airplanes do. Thus, there is no need to evaluate how quadrupling the size of an airport will affect the suburban neighborhoods that encircle it. This is akin to arguing that freeways do not create congestion and traffic noise, cars do--and those upset with plans to run an interstate through their back yard should take it up with GM.

“Loony tunes,” said Paterson.

It was 7:15 a.m. A jet roared overhead. No. 7.

*

It felt somewhat odd to sit with Paterson and listen to the morning thunder. Many mornings, I’m up in one of those jetliners myself, finishing my fifth Act of Contrition as the pilot wheels over North Hollywood. I always try to fly out of Burbank. There are two basic rules to life in Greater L.A.: Never drive the Golden State Freeway, and avoid LAX whenever possible. The smaller airport has an almost countrified feel, with easy parking and simple logistics. Also, I have never been one to complain about pilots keeping a healthy distance from any and all mountaintops.

Still, to sit in Paterson’s living room and listen to jets pass over every five minutes is to gain empathy for critics of airport expansion. They have been accused of Marxism, NIMBYism, obstructionism and more. In Tom Paterson’s house, however, it no longer seems unreasonable to worry about the Burbank Airport becoming, as he calls it, “a mini-LAX.” It no longer seems strident to ask why airplanes rarely fly east, over Burbank and the other cities, or to wonder where the economic windfall will be for San Fernando Valley neighborhoods located under the flight path.

“The noise is a nuisance now,” Paterson said. “What we are trying to do is to prevent it from becoming a disaster.”

It was 7:32 a.m. In the distance, a jet engine droned. No. 9 was headed our way.