'80 deal with LAX shatters schools' hope for silence

[question everything]

'80 deal with LAX shatters schools' hope for silence

The airport wants to help Lennox and Inglewood soundproof campuses. But an act of Congress is needed.
By Doug Irving
DAILY BREEZE
UThursday, October 12, 2006

A few old signatures have come back to haunt school districts near Los Angeles International Airport hoping for millions of dollars to seal their classrooms against the shriek of incoming jets. The agency that runs LAX had pledged the money in recent years as it sought neighborhood approval for its modernization plans. But an agreement signed more than 20 years ago by the agency and the school districts appears to preclude such payments.

It may take an act of Congress to get the schools, in Inglewood and Lennox, the money they've been waiting for. On Wednesday, Rep. Jane Harman, D-El Segundo, stood on the blacktopped school yard at Felton Elementary in Lennox to announce that she had authored a bill to do just that. Behind her, kids playing dodgeball and tetherball didn't even look up at the jetliners that swooped low overhead and interrupted her press conference every few minutes.

(snip)

The school districts in Inglewood and Lennox hope to collect close to $230 million from Los Angeles World Airports under the terms of agreements and legal settlements signed in recent years. The money would pay for extra-thick doors, triple-paned windows and other measures to insulate classrooms against the noise of aircraft. At some schools, the new windows would open up classrooms walled over in the early 1980s to dull the sound of jet engines. The money also would replace dozens of windowless portable classrooms with well-insulated, permanent buildings.

By all accounts, the airport agency and the school districts have united behind the idea of soundproofing classrooms. But their plan has stumbled nonetheless on the agreement they signed in 1980. That agreement provided the school districts millions of dollars at the time to insulate their classrooms against jet noise. But in return, they signed special easements to allow flights over their property -- foregoing any future claims to soundproofing money.

(snip)

But the airport agency needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration before it can spend its aviation-generated revenue. And the FAA reads that old agreement as making the school district land ineligible for soundproofing projects paid for with those funds.

(snip)

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[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

1. suck it up!

LAX has been there since 1928 and it is quiter there today than at any time since the begining of world war two. They should consider themselves fortunate they didn't face the same fate as Playa Del Rey.

This is just a racket to get the airport authority to pay for things that the state isn't willing or able to. I am all for funding public education - but I don't believe extorting money from an airport is the way to do it. What does LAX have to do with the fact there are "trailer park" classrooms at nearby schools?

If there is one thing that will destroy California it is NIMBY, it is a wonder we have built anything in this state since 1960.

[Solo_in_MD]

2. Concur

The deal was made mostly due to the noise of the engines of the 707/DC-8 which really did whine. Starting in the late 70s, those where phased out and everything since is much quieter. I remember seeing the noise monitors near what is now SW of Law in Inglewood (was an engineering school then ).

They need to live with what they signed up to, Inglewood and Lennox should not be looking to LAX as the sugar daddy to rework their old buildings that were desperately in need of replacement even then.

[question everything]

3. Interesting. In the past 20 years there have been several

studies showing the effect of noise, including airport noise, on school kids, on their ability to learn and on physiological stress factors.

One of the first one was about LAX noise but, as I went back and looked at it, it was published in 1980, meaning the studies were conducted during the 70s.

More recent studies were conducted in the middle and late 90s but not around LAX.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

4. that won't stop them,

Unfortunately the expansion of LAX is going to be the worse public purse feeding frenzy since the Big Dig in Boston that saw the federal government paying for the installation of air conditioning in million dollar condos - that obviously were to be built with AC anyway and the replacement of privately owned infrastructure miles away from the affected area.

There are going to be idiots in San Diego and Palm Springs with their hands out.