ROAR Initiative and Burbank Protections

Re “ROAR Airport Initiative,” Letters to the Valley Edition, April 15.

A writer inquired as to how the ROAR initiative is illegal, while John Wayne Airport [in Orange County] has a curfew and cap in place. The cap and curfew at John Wayne were grandfathered in before the Airport Noise and Capacity Act was implemented in 1990. An attempt to get the current voluntary curfew at Burbank made mandatory was rejected by the Federal Aviation Administration several years ago.

The irony of the ROAR initiative is that it [opens] to challenge--by Burbank Airport, the FAA or other entities--the very protections Burbank won under the state Public Utilities Code court victory.

The PUC law clearly states that the city of Burbank can only address land-related acquisition issues in approving the sale to an airport of non-airport-zoned land.

The ROAR initiative would not allow Burbank to approve any land acquisition until conditions were met, such as a curfew and cap on flights. Those measures can only be granted by the FAA, after a federal Part 161 study, currently underway, is approved. To put it simply, Burbank cannot consider caps and curfews in its deliberations on land matters. If the Burbank Airport Authority submits a request to the city of Burbank under the PUC process and is denied due to the ROAR initiative being in effect, the PUC case could be challenged in federal court.

Burbank Airport spent years trying to challenge the PUC section in federal court by arguing that it was a law that circumvented federal issues relating to curfews and caps. By adhering to the state PUC rules, the city of Burbank won the court challenges and brought the Airport Authority to the negotiating table for the first time in many years.

That is why the voters of Burbank must defeat the ROAR initiative when it is brought before them later this year. Merely relying on the courts to overturn it through legal challenges could have serious unintended consequences.

The two Burbank City Council incumbents recently reelected ran on a platform of resolving the terminal matter through negotiation, which would limit the size and numbers of gates and ensure that additional noise mitigation measures are provided in exchange for PUC approval.

Have we forgotten that the airport wanted to build a 27-gate terminal containing nearly 700,000 square feet and claimed that it was exempt from the PUC process? If Burbank voters don’t soundly defeat the ROAR initiative, we could lose what we fought so hard for and won: local control.

CHARLIE LOMBARDO

Burbank

Editor’s note: Lombardo is a commissioner representing Burbank on the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority.