Riordan Pushes LAX Growth

Mayor Richard Riordan waded into the communities surrounding Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday and found himself up to his waist in the emotional and political caldron that surrounds plans to double the airport’s capacity over the next two decades.

Arriving at a Westchester hotel for a morning speech, Riordan was greeted by nearly 100 demonstrators. The protest, though polite, reflected the crosscurrents of the airport debate. Riordan supports a massive, expensive overhaul of LAX. City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the communities closest to the airport, leads the opponents of his plan.

On one patch of sidewalk Thursday morning, a small group of residents and local officials carried signs urging Los Angeles to send its air traffic to Palmdale, where the city owns a struggling airport. Next to that group, a larger labor organization picketed in favor of the LAX expansion, which unions favor because it would produce jobs.

Tom Brands, who has lived in Westchester since 1963, warned that more planes at LAX would increase the risk of accidents. “Crashes kill everybody,” he said, “including union members.”

But a burly man wearing an International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers T-shirt and standing a few feet away shrugged, unimpressed. “Working people need jobs,” he said. “And we need them here, not in Palmdale.”

Riordan mingled with the two camps for a few minutes, then spent much of the day trying to walk a fine line on the issue--touting LAX expansion while promising to limit the damage to its neighbors in Westchester and Playa del Rey, two of the areas most affected by the city’s main airport.

“LAX must prepare [for the future] in a way that is responsible not just to the region but to the communities around it,” Riordan said. “Regional and local issues are not mutually exclusive.”

The mayor said LAX expansion should be accompanied by growth at other Southern California airports, including Palmdale, Ontario and a much-discussed possible airport at Orange County’s decommissioned El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. But even if all those other airports grow exponentially, Riordan said, LAX will still need to expand to accommodate the booming demands of the region’s growing foreign trade.

For all his comments about protecting communities, Riordan left no doubt about his commitment to expand LAX, which already is one of the local economy’s most powerful job-producing engines. According to city statistics often cited by Riordan, 12% of Los Angeles-area jobs are in some way connected to LAX.

“Let me be clear about my position,” Riordan said. “I support LAX expansion.”

Under the proposed expansion, LAX’s capacity would grow from nearly 60 million passengers a year to more than 100 million. Cargo facilities also would be dramatically increased, and road improvements around the airport would be designed to take some of the pressure off neighboring communities.

That was not what everyone wanted to hear. As Riordan traveled around the area, a few residents--including one who effusively praised the mayor’s management of the city--gave him an earful of their airport complaints.

Gerald Culey told the mayor that residents of his Playa del Rey neighborhood are so fed up with noise that some have taken up a collection for a device that will record the sound of roaring jets and prove to local officials how bad it is. As Culey spoke, jet after jet flew overhead, forcing him to pause several times so that Riordan could hear.

Another longtime resident of the area corralled Riordan and spoke to him with such passion that his eyes watered. “I just want you to know,” the man, a 45-year resident of Playa del Rey said, “the citizens of Playa del Rey are very unhappy.”

Riordan responded that he would do his best to fix the problems.

But at the airport, the issues are huge, the antagonists well-entrenched and the problems not easily solved. Airport expansion has been under consideration for years, and yet the range in estimates of its total cost still covers an extraordinary $4-billion spread, with the high estimate at $12 billion and the low at $8 billion.

That has contributed to wariness on the part of some of the airlines using LAX. They will be asked to foot much of the bill for the expansion, but are reluctant to sign on to a project whose exact impact and cost remain unclear.

Meanwhile, opponents have built a strong and outspoken coalition.

Their leader, Galanter, favors development of the Palmdale airport over LAX expansion and has proved to be a pugnacious opponent of the mayor’s office. She and Riordan appeared together at one stop Thursday, uncomfortably sharing a microphone on the back porch of a home demonstrating the effectiveness of soundproofing.

Told of Riordan’s morning comments on LAX expansion, Galanter replied with characteristic bluntness as the mayor stood a few feet away.

“I think he’s wrong,” she said. “The job of Los Angeles leadership, elected and otherwise, should be to solve this problem while recognizing that there’s no more room” at LAX.

Galanter was equally dismissive of Riordan’s insistence that Palmdale is an attractive but impractical substitute for LAX. “That’s probably what they said to Bill Mulholland too,” she said.

Mulholland, legendary chief engineer of the city’s Department of Water and Power, foresaw the day when Los Angeles would be desperate for water. At great expense, he secured the water of the Owens Valley and used it to build a city.

That transformed Los Angeles’ history, and Galanter said a comparable effort to build up the Palmdale airport would transform it again.