Study to gauge LAX’s role in pollution

The Los Angeles Board of Airport Commissioners unanimously agreed Monday to spend $2.2 million to look at the effect of airport pollution on communities around LAX.

The ambitious study, said to be the largest of its kind, will monitor Westchester, El Segundo, Inglewood and Lennox to identify the sources of pollution there and determine how much of it can be attributed to airport activities.

“This is the most comprehensive air quality study that’s ever been taken on by an airport in the United States,” said Roger Johnson, deputy executive director for environmental services at Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that runs the airport.

Some of the airport’s toughest community critics, who have been battling the airport commission over expansion and renovation plans, praised the decision to begin the study as “trailblazing.”

“It’s critical to understand that what they’re doing is useful for not only this airport, but for all airports,” said Denny Schneider, vice chair of the LAX-Community Noise Roundtable and president of the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion. “The United States has been delinquent in assessing how to reduce the impact of environmental pollution from airports.”

The first two phases of the study, expected to cost about $2.2 million, will develop an inventory of potential air pollution sources and monitor and analyze emissions on the airfield. Those phases should be finished by the end of the year, officials said.

A third phase would involve yearlong monitoring of as many as 11 sites in the communities and is expected to cost an additional $3 million to $5 million.

“Obviously we don’t know until it comes in what it gives us,” said Alan Rothenberg, airport commission president. “It’s an incredibly complex issue to find out what pollutants come from what sources, but the attempt to seriously measure it is commendable. And I hope that we can show the way to airports everywhere and other public entities that are faced with situations where pollutants are from multiple sources.”

A UCLA study commissioned by the California Air Resources Board about three years ago and released last year also looked at the airport’s effect on air quality. That study, however, was done on a smaller scale, analyzing ultra-fine particulates.

The study will be independent of the environmental impact report currently underway that includes possible reconfiguration of the airport’s northern runways. It also satisfies a number of the airport’s previous agreements with local communities, including the community benefits agreement in late 2004, which set aside $500 million to be spent on projects to help those living near LAX.

Environmental activists say there is ample anecdotal evidence that increased pollution from the airport has caused a higher incidence of asthma and other respiratory illnesses in neighboring communities. But airport officials say offshore shipping, freeway and roadway traffic, among other sources, may play greater roles.

Martin Rubin, 61, who lives about five miles north of the airport in Los Angeles, said on some nights the odor of jet exhaust is pervasive.

“Somehow in this process, it’d be valuable to follow where the odors go,” said Rubin, director of Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution. “Actually, I’m a bit proud that Los Angeles is taking leadership in this. In many studies around the country, they have missed the mark.”

Although air quality studies have been performed at airports in Chicago, New Jersey and Rhode Island, they have not been as comprehensive as the one proposed by this plan, Johnson said.

The study is a coordinated effort that involves the California Air Resources Board, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“If we have the knowledge we’ll be able to develop policy tools to mitigate those effects,” said Laurie Kaye, a policy analyst for Environmental Defense and a member of the LAX Coalition for Economic, Environmental and Educational Justice. “But right now we can’t tell the airport to do anything because we can’t tell what caused it; we don’t know what’s out there.”

The study has been in the planning stages for more than a decade but was put on hold after Sept. 11, 2001, when funding dried up for all nonessential projects, officials said.

The three-year contract was awarded to Jacobs Consultancy.

--

tami.abdollah@latimes.com