Study Warns of Suits Over Noise Limits on Aircraft : Van Nuys: Bid by homeowners to lower day decibel levels and ban night jet takeoffs could adversely affect airport businesses, officials say.

A proposal by homeowners to reduce noise at Van Nuys Airport would be dramatically effective but would leave the airport open to lawsuits by airport tenants whose businesses would suffer, according to a study by the Los Angeles Department of Airports.

Drafted by Homeowners of Encino, which has long been critical of airport operations, the proposal would impose a noise limit throughout the day and prohibit all jet takeoffs at night, except for emergency flights.

The plan will be discussed in two weeks by the Van Nuys Airport Part 150 Committee, a panel of residents, pilots and airport officials studying ways to reduce airport noise. The committee is named after a section of Federal Aviation Administration rules dealing with community participation in airport noise studies.

The airport department’s staff earlier offered 10 noise-reduction scenarios for the panel to consider. But the homeowner group did not like any of them and submitted its own proposal to the panel.

Airport noise that often exceeds 65 decibels now reaches 3,263 people living in 1,445 homes around the airport. But under the homeowners’ proposal, that number would shrink within five years to 12 people in four single-family houses, according to the city study.

Implementing the plan, however, would be costly to the city and to airport businesses and litigation against the city would be “highly probable,” according to the study.

Wanda Williams, a planning associate for the Department of Airports, said the potential for litigation would be high because the proposed noise limit would force some pilots and aviation-related businesses at the airport to relocate, go out of business or spend money on quieter new planes to replace the older jets that would violate the proposed noise limit.

The nighttime jet takeoff ban would also bring litigation because the FAA has ruled that an airport can only ban aircraft based on performance--not based on type, said Dennis Quilliam, a city planner for the Department of Airports.

The city based the potential for liability on analyses provided by city attorneys and by studying the experiences of the Santa Monica Airport and other airports in the region where similar noise restrictions were adopted, Williams said.

Williams said the homeowners’ plan would also be costly because the city would be forced to maintain and monitor noise equipment to ensure that pilots abide by the regulation.

Gerald A. Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, defended the proposal, saying that if the plan is rejected the city will face lawsuits from residents who are exposed to an increasing level of noise.

“Every penny spent on a quieter airport is a penny saved for homeowners who are living with the noise,” he said.

The homeowners’ proposal has the backing of Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Los Angeles), who represents the area just south of the airport. Friedman wrote to the Part 150 Committee expressing his support for it, saying that “residents must be our first priority.”

The daytime noise limit proposed by the homeowner group would ban those jets classed by the FAA as generating 74 or more decibels of noise on takeoff. Silver has said that airport studies indicate that the restriction would affect no propeller planes and would effect about 25% of jet operations at the airport.

Don Schultz, president of Ban Airport Noise and a member of the Part 150 panel, said he supports the nighttime ban on jet takeoffs but believes it is unlikely that the panel will support a 74-decibel daytime limit.

But, he said, the homeowners’ proposal “comes closest to remedying the problem” of airport noise. He added: “If the suits are going to come, let’s wait and see if they do.”

The panel has already given tentative support to one of the 10 scenarios that would require pilots to ease up on thrust during takeoffs, and would expand by one hour a nighttime ban on departures by planes generating 74 or more decibels of noise on takeoff. The current noise curfew extends from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. The proposal would begin the curfew at 10 p.m.