Airport’s Neighbors Blast Expansion Plan : Transportation: Criticism is leveled at environmental study dealing with new terminal at Burbank facility.

Burbank Airport’s neighbors expressed skepticism Wednesday night of a recent environmental study concluding that expansion of the airport’s terminal will not adversely affect them.

During a sometimes-contentious public hearing at the Burbank Airport Hilton, about 100 people from Burbank, North Hollywood, Studio City, Sun Valley and Van Nuys voiced angry opposition to plans to build a terminal more than four times larger than the present one.

Many complained that aircraft noise rattles their windows, triggers car alarms, makes telephone conversations difficult to hear and disrupts lessons at nearby elementary schools.

As a result, some homeowners said their property values have dropped. Others said they worry about hearing loss.

Theresa Karam, president of the Toluca Terrace-Woods Homeowners Assn. in North Hollywood, compared airport officials to Adolf Hitler.

“We are currently observing a corporate psychopath in motion,” she said. “The airport (officials are) acting as if the issues at hand are not significant.”

The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority, which oversees the airport for the three cities that own it, was ordered last year to update a March, 1993, environmental impact report on the proposed project, in response to a lawsuit by the city of Los Angeles.

Los Angeles city officials, acting on behalf of Los Angeles residents who live near the airport, charged the Airport Authority with failing to properly study the potential for increased noise, traffic and air pollution that a new terminal might bring.

A Superior Court judge agreed and required airport officials to address those concerns.

Airport officials released an updated report last month that stood by the first report’s primary conclusion: The number of passengers using the airport will be the same with or without a new terminal. Thus, any increase in aircraft traffic will occur regardless of whether the terminal is expanded.

“Certain people want to say that a new terminal induces growth. Our position is the market determines growth,” said Victor Gill, an airport spokesman.

Airport executives say they must move the present 163,344-square-foot terminal away from the runways, under an order from the Federal Aviation Administration to meet current safety regulations, which were not in effect when the airport was built more than 60 years ago.

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Some $200 million or more is expected to be spent on a new building on about 140 acres of Lockheed property near the present terminal. The new terminal will probably be completed in two stages by the year 2010, airport officials say.

“We are extremely disappointed in the document that the airport has produced,” said Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Keith Pritsker, who worked on the lawsuit against the Airport Authority. “They’ve still not gotten the picture. . . . No one builds a project that they don’t anticipate growth for.”