Neighbors Fight Takeoff in Airport’s Growth : Agua Dulce: The county proposes buying and expanding the tiny airstrip. Residents say the increased noise and traffic would radically alter the area.

Try to bring an unleashed goat for a walk on the grounds of most airports in Los Angeles County, and you won’t get far.

But every Sunday at tiny Agua Dulce Air Park, a scraggly, white goat named Lucky frolics near the runway while her owner breakfasts at the airport restaurant.

The rustic airstrip north of Santa Clarita is probably the only one of 15 public-use airports in the county where coyotes scamper across the runway undeterred by a rusty barbed-wire fence, horseback riders tie up at the restaurant’s hitching post and joggers lope along the taxiway. Even the far smaller airport on Catalina Island has a chain-link fence to keep out local bison, aviation officials said.

“There used to be a slew of airports like Agua Dulce in the county, but they’ve all fallen victim to development,” said Ted Gustin, chief of the aviation division of the county’s Public Works Department. “Agua Dulce is the last of a dying breed.”

But the fate of the quaint, privately owned facility is up in the air, pitting the 60 or so pilots who keep their planes there against some of the 2,100 residents who live in the surrounding hamlet of Agua Dulce.

“I guess Lucky’s days are numbered here unless the airport stays the way it is,” said Pat Chiodo, a retired engineer whose goat tags along behind him like a dog when he strolls from his house in Agua Dulce to the airport.

The county has proposed using almost $5 million in federal funds to buy and expand the Agua Dulce Air Park to relieve congestion at other airports. Under the proposal, a maximum of 175 aircraft would be based there, almost three times as many as are there now, and the average number of takeoffs and landings could increase sixfold. The Board of Supervisors is expected to review an environmental impact report on the proposal this summer.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who represents the area, has not taken a position on the issue.

The pilots who keep their planes at Agua Dulce strongly support the county’s acquisition proposal as the best means of preserving the airport. But a group of local residents vehemently opposes it, claiming that increased noise and traffic would radically alter the rural community.

In Agua Dulce, construction of houses on less than two acres is prohibited, and even with the existing airport the community is now so quiet that “you can hear your neighbor calling her kitty from five miles away,” one resident said.

The residents group would prefer that the 208-acre airport be sold to a private developer. Residents said they would support either a housing development or a private, fly-in community of about 70 single-family houses bisected by an airstrip.

A Los Angeles psychologist who entered into escrow to buy the airport about two years ago for $3.25 million is embroiled in a legal fight over the sale with the two brothers who own it. Ralph Herzig sued owners James and John Annin last year, claiming that the brothers failed to disclose certain conditions at the airport, including the existence of about 15 illegal hangars.

County building inspectors said that a sprinkler system must be installed in the hangars to bring them up to code. In 1988, responsibility for hangar inspections was shifted to the county from the state Department of Motor Vehicles, which previously licensed the hangars under less stringent regulations.

County officials have not aggressively pursued compliance with the code because the fate of airport is uncertain and they are burdened with other cases, said Bruce Carlander, a supervising engineer with the building and safety division of the county Public Works Department.

James Annin, who lives in La Canada Flintridge, refused to comment on the litigation. John Annin could not be reached for comment.

Herzig’s attorney, Gary Barr, said his client is seeking to get the Annins to correct the problems so he can purchase the airport and operate it while deciding what ultimately to do with the land. Although Herzig has a legal hold on the property that prevents another private party from buying it, the county could obtain it if the Annins and Herzig settle the suit or through its power of eminent domain, said Harry Stone, the county’s deputy director of public works.

The airport has been a source of contention since three businessmen built it in 1959 for their private use, but soon tried to expand the number of planes housed there, residents said. The city of Los Angeles leased it from the Annins--whose family bought it in 1961--for nearly 10 years beginning in 1968, but eventually dropped plans to use it as an auxiliary to Van Nuys Airport because of community opposition, said Van Nuys Airport Manager Richard Davison.

Animosities were rekindled in 1986 when the county focused on the tiny airstrip as the most feasible site for a general-aviation airport in the Santa Clarita Valley. The issue then became so divisive that shouting matches broke out at public meetings between the pilots and airport detractors, with some threatening to sue one another for slander.

“It got to the point where I told my husband I wouldn’t go out with him anymore unless he promised not to bring up the airport,” said Jane Pepiot, an Agua Dulce resident whose hilltop house overlooks the runway where her husband, Ken, keeps his plane.

County officials claim that it is necessary to have a general-aviation facility in the Santa Clarita Valley because the population of the area is expected to continue to skyrocket in the next 20 years, adding more planes to the already busy skies above the Los Angeles Basin and the San Fernando and Antelope valleys and creating an even greater shortage of hangar space at airports.

Scores of pilots are waiting for hangars at all five of the county-owned airports, including Whiteman in Pacoima and General William J. Fox AirField in Lancaster, said Richard Loomis, a vice president at Comarco Inc., an Anaheim-based defense contractor that began managing the county facilities in April. Rental hangars are available at Van Nuys Airport, which is owned by the city of Los Angeles, but are so expensive at about $350 a month that even the airport manager, Davison, said he cannot afford to keep a small plane there.

The Agua Dulce airport attracts recreational pilots and visitors from throughout the region who enjoy the ambience of the scenic community and the airstrip, which does not have an air traffic control tower.

“We’ve been coming since the kids were babies to watch the planes land and take off,” said Scott Anderson, 33, a computer salesman from Santa Clarita.

But local school officials and members of the Agua Dulce Civic Assn. are not sympathetic to the visitors or pilots. The association has conducted a recent poll indicating that about three-quarters of the community is opposed to the county’s proposal, and its members have pledged about $35,000 to fight expansion of the airport.

In 1985, members of the group were instrumental in getting the county to designate the community as a special zoning district where construction of houses on less than two acres is prohibited. To control development, they also have successfully fought a proposed municipal sewage system and a state prison, and once burned a developer in effigy to protest a massive housing development that was never built.

“The county is trying to put a recreational facility here on the backs of this community, and we’re not going to let it happen,” said Joanne Swanson, an opponent of the proposal. “We object to having federal taxpayers buy these pilots a $10-million toy.”

Carol Urban, principal of Agua Dulce Elementary School, which is located about a mile and a half southwest of the airport, considers the planes a safety hazard to the 430 children enrolled there. Although the pilots are advised by airport officials to avoid the school, Urban said that planes frequently fly so low that the building trembles and children playing in the schoolyard can read their identification numbers.

Association members have urged the county to explore the possibility of using Baker Canyon to the south as an alternative site for the airport. Watt America, a Santa Monica-based developer which owns more than 300 acres near the existing airport, also owns Baker Canyon and has offered it to the county, Stone said. County engineers are studying Baker Canyon’s feasibility this month, he said.

But Jerry Hider, president of the Agua Dulce Pilots Assn. and the owner of the rustic runway restaurant, said that flying into the narrow canyon would be “like trying to land in a celery stalk.” He and the other pilots are considering a direct-mail campaign to persuade residents to support the county’s plans, in part because the airport would be useful in an earthquake or other emergency.

The pilots who have already invested thousands of dollars in purchasing hangars at the beleaguered airport are reluctant to invest more to install sprinklers, Hider said.

“We’re caught between a rock and hard place until we see what happens with this place,” said Hider, who paid $29,000 for a 43-by-60-foot galvanized steel hangar he calls “Jerry’s Toy Box.”

“It’s strictly a gamble at this point, but it’s still worth it to be out here in the country.”