MONTEREY PARK >> In its ongoing battle against noise from airplanes flying overhead, the city might be gearing up for a legal fight against Los Angeles World Airports.
A proposed nuisance ordinance introduced last week by the City Council states that airplanes flying over Monterey Park must fly no lower than 6,000 ft. above sea level and prohibits flying over the city from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. every day.
A revised version of the ordinance will come before the City Council for approval at its Sept. 6 meeting.
The bad news for residents is that the ordinance can’t exactly be enforced: The Federal Aviation Administration holds jurisdiction over the nation’s airspace, City Attorney Mark Hensley said at Wednesday’s City Council meeting. Monterey Park can’t simply issue airlines fines when their planes don’t adhere to the restrictions.
What the ordinance does is give residents a standard by which they can file nuisance claims against the airlines flying overhead. Should those claims go unanswered, residents could sue the airlines. Mayor Teresa Real Sebastian said it would even be possible for the city to represent residents in those lawsuits,
“Will we have enforcement capability?” she said. “We may or may not. But what this ordinance means is we’re putting the airlines on notice, and they’re going to start noticing.”
For a little more than a year, city leaders have been participating in the LAX Community Noise Roundtable — an association of local communities, Los Angeles World Airports, the FAA and airline industry representatives — to try to convince members not to allow so many planes fly over Monterey Park and to get them to fly higher when they do.
Little has come from the meetings, Real Sebastian said.
“We’re being extremely vocal, but the LAX Roundtable is controlled by the airport,” Real Sebastian said.
Why plane noise is such a problem
Since the late 1990s, planes landing at LAX have flown over Monterey Park when they’re forced to circle due to weather or airplane traffic backups at the airport. On what’s called the “extended downwind approach” over Monterey Park, planes dip in height as they turn and head back toward LAX.
Real Sebastian said the city’s hilly topography amplifies the airplane noise — those on top of hills are rattled because they’re even closer to the planes, but those living in valleys, as she does, suffer worse because the sound reverberates between the hills.
One night this summer, Real Sebastian said she noticed that the flights stopped at 11:40 p.m. and resumed before 5 a.m. the next morning.
“When the planes turn, you can feel the vibrations throughout the house,” she said. “It’s mental torture at times.”
Former City Council candidate and mechanical engineer Margaret Leung lives on a hill near Brightwood Elementary School. By her calculation using data from the LAX Internet Flight Tracking System, planes often fly over her house at 2,200 feet above sea level. But with her hill elevated up to 700 ft. above sea level, that means planes could be flying just 1,500 ft., or about the length of four football fields, above her home, she said.
“No one from FAA nor LAX seem to care,” Leung said.
A legal battle on the horizon?
Monterey Park wouldn’t be the first city to sue the FAA over airplane noise as it relates to flight paths should the matter end up in the courts. In the past year, Culver City, Newport Beach and Orange County have filed lawsuits against the FAA, challenging the agency’s ruling that new flight paths over the cities had no significant impact.
The parties are in “confidential, court-ordered mediation under the auspices of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,” said Ian Gregor, public affairs manager for the FAA Pacific Division.
“The FAA is focused on identifying and exploring common ground that may address the petitioners’ concerns, while being mindful that airspace and air traffic procedures are highly dependent upon each other within the National Airspace System, and must be evaluated collectively to ensure safety and efficiency,” Gregor said in an email.
Monterey Park did not file a lawsuit before the new flight paths took effect November 2016, so it can’t sue on the same grounds. However, as Real Sebastian said Wednesday, the city could represent residents in their lawsuits against airlines for the nuisance their planes create.
City Manager Ron Bow cautioned the City Council that before getting involved with litigation, the city would have to be certain residents document the nuisances in great detail.
Nick Ragus lived in Monterey Park for 48 years before moving to the East Coast for work. Having been one of the few people who tried to fight the airplane noise in the early 2000s, Ragus, who works in commercial aviation operations, said he’s glad to see the city finally taking up the fight with the ordinance, especially because he intends to move back to Monterey Park in a year.
“It’s a first step,” Ragus said. “Until the local government is behind the fight, it’s going nowhere.”
