Noise From Airports

I am in sympathy with the plight of those who live within the area of the Van Nuys airport, for I am a longtime resident of Sun Valley, living well within 700 feet of the north / south runway of the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport. Consider me a Burbank Airport noise authority. I moved here in 1972. Then planes had propellers and noise was not a big problem. But those noisy jets came and difficulties began.

While Lockheed was still here, large planes landed here, loaded stealth things from the Skunk Works and took off, with those engines shaking my entire house. Things kept getting worse, but I kept faith that I would one day see a solution to the matter and finally it came. Not a total solution, but one that I could live with. The airport built sound baffles at the end of the runway, where the planes rev their engines before takeoff, and they deflected the noise up and away from the neighbors’ eardrums.

Compromise is the secret. That airport is going to grow, regardless of the battle that stubborn Burbank is waging. They forget that the airport is also here, in our area, called Sun Valley, not in Glendale or in Pasadena. We border the airport on two sides. Burbank is retarding job opportunities in this particular area. This is just more of their Golden Mall thinking. Pasadena has no business here and should be forced to release its investment. Sun Valley suffers the noise, pollution and never gets any part of the revenue. Now Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, speak to us about the word “fair”!

RON HALL

Sun Valley

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[Recently] several local homeowners went to a meeting to complain about noise at Van Nuys Airport. Though the city has offered to soundproof homes in the immediate neighborhood, they continue to complain. One went so far as to say that she didn’t want management of the noise, she wanted it eliminated, admitting that airport opponents really want to shut Van Nuys Airport down.

Van Nuys Airport neighbors knew there was an airport there when they bought there, and for those who say the noise has grown, I say hogwash. The airport was a California Air National Guard base until just a few years ago, and there’s no jet at the airport today that matches the roar of a tank or troop transport plane.

You may think we live in peace and quiet here in Malibu. But let me tell you there is no aircraft noise that can compete with a full-blown college party, complete with blaring music and drunken students, lasting until the early morning hours. Eliminate colleges! Or how about those nasty Harleys that scream down Pacific Coast Highway every weekend? I say no more motorcycles in my neighborhood. Then there are the speedboats and jet skis. . . . Down with motorized water craft. And how ‘bout those all-terrain vehicles tearing through the local mountains with no concern for private property, fencing, ecology, hikers or equestrians? No off-road vehicles off the roads! Worst of all are the hordes of flatlanders who jam our streets and leave their trash all over the beaches. Close the beaches to all but locals.

Every neighborhood has its problems. The soundproofing is a very generous offer; take the soundproofing and stop complaining!

CONNIE SCHURR

Malibu