Airport Commissioners to Meet Valley Critics

Los Angeles airport commissioners have agreed to face head-on a growing controversy over increased jet noise at Van Nuys Airport.

For the first time in nearly four years, the commission will meet in the San Fernando Valley to hear from anti-noise activists and aviation interests who have long complained they are being ignored.

The meeting was announced Tuesday by Sandor Winger, chairman of the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, whose members last summer urged the City Council to appoint a separate airport panel to govern the Valley airport. The Airport Commission presently oversees Los Angeles International and the city-owned Van Nuys, Ontario and Palmdale airports.

The five-member commission, which ordinarily convenes at LAX, is tentatively scheduled to meet the evening of Jan. 27 at the Airtel Plaza Hotel at Van Nuys Airport. It last conducted a public meeting in the Valley on July 25, 1995.

In the midst of a series of controversies surrounding the Airport Commission’s actions, Mayor Richard Riordan last summer replaced commission President Daniel P. Garcia with John J. Agoglia, who Tuesday agreed to the Valley meeting.

Announcement of the meeting came one day after release of a city-commissioned study on the economic impact of a proposed rule to curtail the number of older and noisier jets--called Stage 2 aircraft--based at Van Nuys, the busiest general aviation airport in the nation.

The report concluded that the proposed limits would be economically ruinous for the airport, perhaps costing as many as 565 jobs and more than $190 million within three years.

At its meeting Tuesday night, the advisory council voted to hold a special meeting Jan. 19 to discuss the economic impact report.

The report was released nearly a year later than promised, a delay that was among reasons cited in a July 7 resolution by the advisory council seeking an independent commission. The City Council has not responded to the request.

While some anti-noise leaders questioned the integrity of the report, which bases its conclusions generally on estimates supplied by the aviation industry, others accepted it as a warning of the potential consequences of the rule as currently written.

One of the conditions would limit visits to Van Nuys by Stage 2 jets to only 30 days a year, which the report said could bankrupt several businesses that maintain such aircraft or force them to move.

Several representatives of homeowner groups said they will ask that the proposed rule, which is pending before a City Council committee, be withdrawn and that negotiations be restarted to forge a compromise between airport tenants and homeowners.

Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. and a longtime anti-noise crusader, called findings in the economic impact report “perfect ammunition” for a lawsuit by airport tenants should the city adopt the proposed rule.

“I don’t want to see us get tied up in the courts for years and get nothing in the meantime,” Schultz said.

Schultz and others more than a year ago proposed that a small group of aviation and homeowner representatives meet independently to work out a compromise. “We are not going to get rid of Stage 2 aircraft without some sort of a fight,” Schultz said. Anti-noise forces can’t expect to “just do a severance of all [the aviation industry’s] limbs,” he said.

Winger, serving his fifth term as chairman of the airport advisory council, commended Agoglia for promoting a “good working relationship” with the Valley group.

Winger said he “was flabbergasted” by the extent of projected losses at the airport, but added, “We now know what the economic impact is, and certainly there is room for compromise.”