WESTSIDE / COVER STORY : The Jet Scream : El Segundo residents are raising a din of their own over delays in a program to insulate their homes from airport noise.

The noise of departing jets starts with a high-pitched whistle. Within seconds comes a thunderous roar that blasts through portions of Westchester, El Segundo and Playa del Rey, building to a deafening crescendo before slowly trailing off over the Pacific.

For Winifred Jewell, who has lived for 25 years a third of a mile from Los Angeles International Airport in El Segundo, the racket can have the force of a nightmare, rattling her from a sound sleep. “It can be so loud you think the jets are coming right through your window,” Jewell said. ‘It really gets to me sometimes.”

It not only gets to Jewell, but to thousands who live within earshot of the airport. The din, which passes through the houses as often as every few minutes, silences conversations, disturbs sleep and rattles nerves. But what’s more frustrating, some say, is the government’s handling of the problem.

In the last several years, Congress has allocated nearly $10 million to make homes in Los Angeles and El Segundo quieter by beefing up walls and adding double window panes to the structures. About 24,000 houses near the airport qualify for the program, but so far the improvements have only been made on 86 homes.

Before more insulation is added, airport officials want the homeowners to sign away their right to sue LAX over noise. City officials and homeowners say that is unreasonable and refuse to comply.

Before the stalemate, Harvey Holden was hired by El Segundo to oversee the task of sound-insulating residences. Since 1993, he has lived in the city’s model quiet house, complete with double-pane windows, extra thick walls and doors, and a special ventilation system that cuts jet noise by dampening sound waves in a twisting air duct.

The city bought and insulated the house to show the airport’s neighbors how they could benefit from sound insulation, and every so often Holden gives tours of the home to El Segundo residents. Although jet noise still rumbles through the brown, single-story house on Hillcrest Street, it’s much quieter than the roar that sometimes rattles Jewell out of bed less than a block away.

Conversations in the model house rarely, if ever, are interrupted by jet noise, and the TV volume stays at a steady level. “It really is a big improvement,” Holden said as he leaned against the kitchen counter. “It’s not bad in here.”

At the time the model house was insulated in 1992, El Segundo was poised to insulate more than 3,000 homes in the city’s north end using federal and airport funds. Because the cost to thicken walls, add extra window panes and rework ventilation systems adds up to about $20,000 per home, the city anticipated spending $40 million to $70 million over the next 15 years on the program.

In 1992 and 1993, airport and El Segundo officials negotiated the details of the program. Then last year, just when it looked as though the project would go forward, the airport board placed it on hold so airport staff could review how the money will be distributed.

Airport officials said homeowners who benefit from the program should give up their rights to sue the airport over noise issues, a requirement many El Segundo and Los Angeles officials consider Draconian.

“No homeowner in his right mind is going to sign something like that,” said Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the airport area. “This is reparation for damage inflicted on their property, and I don’t think they should have to sign something away in order to get the damage repaired.”

Airport officials defend the requirement. “We’re just looking at the whole program so everyone will benefit,” airport spokeswoman Cora Fossett said.

That leaves residents such as Margaret Keich, who has lived in the same, single-story Playa del Rey home for decades, to continue to suffer dozens of interruptions each day because of the noisy jets. “It’s very frustrating,” she said.

Much has changed from the day, 53 years ago, when Keich and her husband bought the modest, cream-colored home on Earldom Avenue. In those days, the small planes at the nearby landing strip were barely audible in the quiet, beach neighborhood, Keich said.

“This was such a delightful place to live,” she said. “This place was so serene, my mother used to come visit and say the place made her nervous because it was so quiet.”

But Keich loved the peace. Now, quiet times are rare. “It’s constantly noisy,” she said. “You can’t hear the punch line on the TV, and you can’t talk on the phone because of the noise.”

Adrienne Collis, who lives in a condominium complex perched on the northwestern edge of El Segundo, has similar problems.

Collis, who often watches the “Jeopardy” game show with one finger on the volume control to battle noisy jets, said she dreams of having extra window panes added to cut the noise.

“Do you know what it’s like to miss the final “Jeopardy” question at the end of the show because of a jet going by?” she asked. “It’s so frustrating.”

Collis fears that the noise may be hurting more than just her trivia knowledge.

Her three children, ages 1, 3, and 8, often cry in their sleep, and she suspects the noise from round-the-clock jet flights may be contributing to the problem. In addition, Collis is occasionally jolted out of bed by the roar of jets on takeoff.

“One time I bolted up and ran to the phone,” she said. “I was sure a jet was about to crash. Then I called the airport, and they told me it was just a big military aircraft.”

She suspects that the stress has also taken a toll on several romances in the building.

“There have been a lot of split-ups here,” Collis said. “The noise keeps people from sleeping and they get irritable. One couple was just about to break up, but they bought a home farther away from the airport, and now they’re doing great.”

Regardless of whether the noise is responsible for relationship woes in the building, such incidents make homeowners increasingly frustrated by delays in the funding.

In 1982, Congress passed legislation making about $100 million available each year to local jurisdictions for sound-insulation programs. Under the program, Congress agreed to pay for 80% of the insulating costs if local jurisdictions paid the remaining 20%.

Three years later, airport officials developed a program to determine which homes were eligible for sound insulation.

Soon after, about 30 homes in Playa del Rey were insulated using federal and airport funds. Inglewood, which began converting homes to industrial and commercial uses in the 1970s with city funds, embarked on an aggressive program using federal and airport money.

So far, Inglewood has spent about $70 million, including $24 million of its own money, to buy and convert nearly 1,200 homes and apartments. The city also has built about 500 homes in quieter areas of the city.

It was not until the early 1990s that the Westchester area of Los Angeles, and El Segundo, began to develop their own sound-insulation programs. Until then, El Segundo officials said, the airport’s requirements for funding were unreasonable because homeowners were being asked to sign away their rights to sue the airport over noise issues.

In 1992, Los Angeles received a $3.6-million grant from the FAA to insulate 275 homes in Westchester, and El Segundo received $1 million to insulate about 75 homes. But so far, little of the money has been spent.

The same year, the Board of Airport Commissioners agreed to match the federal grants with airport funds. El Segundo and Los Angeles officials, believing that homeowners would not have to waive their rights to sue, assumed their programs would take off.

But a new board appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan indicated that the airport would withhold funding unless area homeowners relinquished the right to sue the airport over noise. That’s a concession El Segundo and Westchester residents will not make, officials said.

Airport officials defend the requirement, saying that if the airport is going to spend thousands of dollars to insulate a home, the least the homeowner can do is assure the airport they won’t sue over the issue.

“We still plan to spend the money (to insulate homes),” said John J. Driscoll, executive director of the Department of Airports. “There’s no lack of commitment.”

Officials in El Segundo and Los Angeles also are frustrated that the airport board has changed its plans to spend $100 million from fees collected from a $3 commuter departure tax to insulate homes around the airport.

When the FAA granted the airport the right to collect the fees, airport officials indicated some of the money would be spent to alleviate noise problems in the area. But airport officials now say that money will be spent elsewhere.

El Segundo officials cite the incident as yet another example of the airport’s lack of commitment to sound insulation. Despite their frustration, Driscoll insists the sound-insulation program will move forward using other airport funds.

Meanwhile, Galanter and airport officials are negotiating how airport money will be distributed to Los Angeles and under what provisions.

El Segundo officials continue to solicit funds from the airport. While they are frustrated by the delays in funding, they are quick to acknowledge their city’s economic dependence on the airport.

El Segundo recently spent thousands of dollars touting the city’s proximity to the airport in billboards stating: “One mile from the beach. One mile from LAX. A million miles from LA.”

For Holden, who says he sometimes feels as if he’s in a constant battle with airport officials over funding, the billboards are another reminder of El Segundo’s struggle.

The former Navy pilot was hired by El Segundo to oversee sound insulation in the city’s homes and deal with the airport on its own terms. Frustrated with the lack of progress in the city, Holden frequently writes stern letters to airport officials to request funding.

“We’ve requested funding from them seven times recently and never received a written reply,” Holden said. “I send out more hate mail than anyone else on earth.”

Airport officials say they are working as rapidly as possible to ensure an effective sound-insulation program is implemented. Meanwhile, Holden is trying a new tack to reduce noise in El Segundo.

Holden believes jet noise is at its worst when the aircraft fly directly over neighborhoods. Under airport regulations, the jets are not to turn south before they reach the coast. But an average of 1,000 times a month, jets turn early over El Segundo, he said.

To discourage early turns, El Segundo erected an illuminated sign in the late 1980s on a slope on Imperial Highway just south of the airport stating: “Unsafe Area for Jets.”

The city agreed to cover the sign in 1990 after airport and FAA officials vowed to ensure that commercial airplanes did not turn before reaching the ocean. But according to Holden, the improvement was short-lived, and lately, some residents have suggested removing the tarp over the sign to keep pressure on the agencies.

Instead, the city is trying a new approach.

Officials recently installed video cameras on a telephone pole near the airport to determine which jets turn early over the city. Starting later this month, volunteers will spend about 15 hours a week screening the videotapes. Then, armed with evidence of the early turns, the city will pressure offending airlines to stop, Holden said.

“We’ll try to hit them in the pocketbook,” he said. “We’ll tell them we’ll publish their names on the front page of the paper and show which airlines are good neighbors and which are bad, and say, ‘Guess which category you fall into?’ ”

Meanwhile, residents will continue to live with the roaring jets and rattling windows. For El Segundo resident Jewell, who has lived with the jets for a quarter of a century, it’s a love-hate relationship.

As a child in the 1920s, she frequently paid a dime for the thrill of riding in biplanes off dusty San Bernardino airstrips. Still today, she delights in watching the jets take flight through her kitchen window, which she affectionately calls her “personal airport tower.”

But then there’s the noise--the high-pitched whistle, the building roar, the thundering crescendo. “It gets very tiring,” she said. “I’ll never lose my love for planes, but that noise we have now, it’s a nuisance.”