FAA and City Hall clash over safety at the local airport
SUNSET PARK Weekend barbecues, quiet nights relaxing on the back patio, opening up windows to embrace the afternoon sun — residents here who live in the shadow of the Santa Monica Airport say forget it. They’ve given up on those idyllic outdoor pursuits long ago.
That is, unless they don’t mind the roar of jets flying overhead every 10 to 20 minutes or the sickening stench of fuel left behind in their wake, permeating their living rooms.
Such is the reality for those Santa Monica residents who have chosen to live within 300 feet of the airport’s runway. Nowhere else in the country are homes located so close to a bustling airport, one that accommodates 140,000 take-offs and landings each year. “It’s gotten worse over the years,” said Adrian Harewood, who moved in 1992, along with his wife and two children, into a modest home at the corner of Pier Avenue and Clover Street, just a stone’s throw away from the airport’s northwest boundary.
“Part of the reason why we moved here was because we could afford it, and that was because it was right next to the airport,” Harewood said.“We knew we were living next to an airport, and after a while, we didn’t hear the smaller planes at all. They were like flies just buzzing in the background.
“But in the last few years, more jets have been flying overhead,” he said Friday.“Now it’s almost unbearable. And what’s more devastating than the noise are the fumes.”
At present, Harewood has to periodically pause for 10 to 15 seconds if he wants to have a conversation with someone in his front yard, waiting for the jet engines to subside. Windows and doors are kept closed throughout the weekends, when jet traffic seems to spike, he said.
“We’re outside less,” Harewood added. “I’d say it’s had a negative impact on our lives.”
Harewood isn’t alone. The vast majority of residents living near either end of the airport’s runway share similar stories about having to change their daily routines because of the municipal airfield. Some sleep with earplugs so they aren’t woken up in the middle of the night when a jet makes an unscheduled landing. Others seldom take to their backyards, concerned the fumes they smell might be harming them physically.
“The sad thing, for me, is that I do love to garden and be outside, but since moving here I’ve noticed that... I don’t enjoy them as much because of the planes,” said Ellen Mark, who has lived in Sunset Park for nine years. On Friday, Mark said she has no regrets and is not opposed to the airport, just the increase in jet traffic.
“People will say, ‘Why did you move there knowing that there was an airport?’” Mark said. “It’s not about that anymore. The issue is that the airport is a disaster waiting to happen.”
SHOWDOWN WITH THE FAA Residents are expected to show up to City Hall in force Tuesday night to confront officials from the Federal Aviation Administration, which will present its latest runway safety proposal, one that has already been rejected by city officials and residents for being inadequate, and in many ways, insulting since it places an emphasis on protecting private flights instead of the lives of pilots, their passengers and the people living less than a football field away from aircraft traveling at high rates of speed.
Residents plan to rally in front of City Hall to force the FAA to stop playing “runway roulette” with their lives.
“This latest offer (from the FAA) is absurd,” said Sunset Park resident Cathy Larson, who is concerned that a jet will one day travel past the runway and collide with homes, causing a disaster the likes of which the city has never seen.
“I’m surprised by how bad the offer is,” Larson added. “I wouldn’t say I am living in constant fear, but I’m concerned because we know that we don’t have the safety bumpers that the FAA recommends. We don’t even have the minimum. We have less than the minimum. We have nothing, basically.”
The FAA’s proposal calls for City Hall to take extreme measures to enhance safety at the airport without limiting the types of aircraft that can use it, according to a letter from the federal agency to city officials.
As part of the proposal, City Hall would have to extend existing runways closer to homes in order to accommodate a 155-foot runway safety area that would include a 130-foot Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS), which is basically a ramp at the end of a runway made of collapsible concrete that crumbles under the weight of an errant aircraft. The extensions would reach the inside lane of the existing perimeter road, which would be reduced to one lane for several hundred feet at each end of runway. The extensions would be made through the addition of infill and the use of retaining walls.
The FAA also suggests City Hall, with the help of the City of Los Angeles, purchase 14 acres of land on each side of the runway (the eastern side is in Los Angeles) to create a Runway Protection Zone, a trapezoidal area “off the end of the runway end that serves to enhance the protection of people and property on the ground in the event an aircraft lands or crashes beyond the EMAS system.”
That would require both cities spending millions of dollars to buy homes and demolish them, which is not likely a realistic option for city officials, who have received enough criticism from residents over the last 23 years — when City Hall last entered into a legally-binding agreement with the FAA over the operation of the airport.
That agreement ends in 2015 and city officials said they have no desire to extend it by accepting federal grants to help pay for the runway safety enhancements.
‘LAUNCH PAD INTO THE COMMUNITY’
In an interview with the Daily Press on Friday, City Manager Lamont Ewell and Airport Manager Bob Trimborn expressed their extreme disappointment with the FAA’s suggestions and hope that the Council discussion Tuesday will produce better results.
“It’s extremely disappointing and frustrating,” Ewell said of the process. “It took seven years to get here and (the proposal) is clearly inadequate and deficient … We need to come up with a solution, like yesterday, and even that’s not fast enough.”
Ewell and Trimborn said the current proposal, which is estimated to cost around $5 million or $6 million, does not even meet the FAA’s minimum standards for safety and would actually make the runways more dangerous because of the construction of runway extensions.
Since the EMAS beds would only work for aircraft weighing in excess of 12,500 pounds that exited the runway at 40 knots or less, smaller aircraft — which represent roughly 85 percent of the planes flying in and out of the airport — would roll over the EMAS and crash into homes or the service road below, “virtually ensuring a catastrophic event,” Trimborn said in his report to the council.
The EMAS would act as a “launch pad into our community,” putting residents living on the western end at risk, Ewell said. The effectiveness of the blast wall at the eastern end, built to deflect exhaust from aircraft taking off, would also be limited by the extensions.
For their part, the FAA has repeatedly said that it will not support any runway safety enhancements that dramatically reduce the length of the runway, and therefore, prevent larger jet aircraft from using it. Federal officials made it clear in previous interviews that they want Santa Monica Airport to remain a reliever for LAX.
“The FAA’s focus seems to be on access and use,”Trimborn said.“You won’t read anything about safety...All life is precious and we shouldn’t be pitting one against the other.”
Ewell said it is not the city’s goal to close down the airport, but rather, make it safe for everyone.
Trimborn criticized the FAA for allowing larger aircraft to use the airport over the last decade. The airport was never meant to handle such aircraft, but because of advances in technology, pilots are able to land the jets on runways once considered too small.
Pilots have complained that if the runway were shortened, they would have to carry less passengers or make an extra stop to refuel. While Ewell understands the importance of the airport to the city’s economy, he said he is not worried about pilots being inconvenienced.
“That’s not a concern for us,” Ewell said. “Our concern is safety, not the convenience of travelers going from point A to point B.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 25, 2007. Read the original PDF.