Noise and Burbank Airport Expansion

Noise No Justification for Impasse? Baloney!

It is clear that Joyce Streator does not live in Burbank Airport’s flight path. Her article, “Noise No Justification for Impasse” (Nov. 29), demonstrates the lack of awareness many expansion proponents have for the plight of people living under the airport’s onus of noise.

I’m sorry Streator doesn’t see the light concerning a mandatory curfew. If a jet thundering overhead at midnight awakened her, maybe she would be more understanding. Any airport that takes off over residential housing should expect local communities to lobby for such a reasonable restriction.

Streator’s only concern in this matter is to maximize the potential of the local airport. This contrasts with the position of elected officials who speak for those of us living in Burbank Airport’s flight path. These officials are some of the few advocates local residents have against noise and expansion.

Streator champions the authority’s efforts at noise reduction through home and school insulation. To many of us, this is laughable. Many surrounding communities will not be likely to qualify for such assistance. And besides, many of us wouldn’t want it. Apparently Streator feels that residents locking themselves up tightly in soundproofed homes is a reasonable mitigation measure against airplane noise. I do not agree.

It is apparent that Streator and others on the authority are frustrated. Good. I will do whatever I can to keep her frustrated until local residents see concrete measures implemented to assure the preservation of our neighborhoods.

MARTIN BRINER, Studio City

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I want to thank Airport Authority President Joyce Streator for her Nov. 29 column, for finally telling the truth, for when one reads her column it becomes very apparent that the airport’s only agenda is expansion and to hell with the people.

For the airport authority to even contemplate the separation of expansion and noise is to ruthlessly hold the quality of life of those hundreds of thousands of people in the communities of Burbank, Studio City, North Hollywood, Sun Valley and yes, even Glendale, as meaningless. It is the people of these communities who are being held hostage to Streator’s implacable attitude that people mean nothing, and that the increased size of a new terminal is all that matters.

MOLLY HYMAN, Burbank

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I attempted to read out loud to my wife [Streator’s] paragraph quoting the Burbank Airport’s claims that noise from takeoffs from a new terminal “will not exceed the FAA’s threshold of ‘significance’ in the noise impact area,” but my voice was drowned out by an Alaskan Airlines MD-80 passing over my house.

We live some three miles or more from the end of the runway in Burbank, well beyond the FAA’s noise impact area. But I can assure you that our property values and our sleep are both impacted significantly by noise. In the summer, we cannot open our windows or balcony doors and still hear our own television. And on days when cloud cover increases the roar of the engines, closed doors and windows are of little help.

We need airports. We need them to be convenient. But first we need them to be good neighbors. Public dumps are required by every community, but the smell from the dump is not allowed to destroy the value of the community they are supposed to be serving. That is the lest we can expect from an airport.

KIMIT A. MUSTON, North Hollywood