By Jorge Casuso
August 21 -- Residents
near Santa Monica Airport
are revving up to protest
a federal aviation proposal
that would install safety
measures on the local runway
without reducing its length.
The proposal by Federal Aviation
Administration officials --
which is scheduled to be taken
up by the City Council on
August 28 -- would install
155-foot safety areas at either
end of the 5,000-foot runway.
But residents and City officials
would like to see 1,000 feet
of safety area, as mandated
by FAA standards, but exempted
at Santa Monica Airport, which
was built long before the
regulations took effect.
“We are tired of the
FAA playing ‘runway
roulette’ with our lives,”
said a statement issued Monday
by Friends of Sunset Park,
a neighborhood group that
represents residents near
the airport. “We deserve
to have standards-based safety
measures immediately.
“Sub-standard safety
measures, such as those the
FAA is now proposing, are
unacceptable -- particularly
in light of the unique proximity
of homes to
both ends of the runway,”
the statement read.
Santa Monica Airport manager
Robert Trimborn believes the
federal proposal falls short
of the safety standards City
officials would like to see.
“This latest proposal
seems a little bit extreme
in many ways,” said
Trimborn, who has been dealing
with airport safety issue
for five years. “It
doesn’t really address
the larger and faster aircraft.
“It seems like they’re
more concerned with access
and preserving access than
with safety enhancement,”
he said. “We want to
implement appropriate safety
areas for the airport.”
Trimborm believes that installing
155-foot safety areas that
include 130 feet of light
concrete beds to arrest speeding
aircraft is not enough to
accommodate the larger D-2
aircraft that are increasingly
flying in and out of the general
aviation airport established
in 1946.
“The FAA requires 1,000
feet of safety area,”
Trimborn said. “We don’t
have it, and they say we don’t
need it.” He added that
the FAA believes the existing
area “is grandfathered
in.”
But the FAA contends that
installing the compact engineered
arresting system (EMAS) safety
enhancements, which do nor
require shortening the runway,
is an adequate safety measure.
“No system can guarantee
that there will never be an
incident of some kind, however,
and we believe that reducing
runway length further to protect
against an increasingly narrow
set of conceivable circumstances
is not warranted,” D.
Kirk Shaffer, the FAA’s
associate administrator for
airports wrote in a letter
to Trimborn dated July 31.
“We believe that with
feasible grading, an EMAS
bed can be installed at each
end of the runway with a total
reduction of runway length
of less than 150 feet,”
Shaffer wrote.
“For aircraft heavy
enough to benefit from the
EMAS, the EMAS itself provides
a system that meets FAA performance
specifications, and the impact
of operations that would result
from further shortening of
the runway through declared
distances is not necessary.”
Santa Monica and West Los
Angeles residents who live
near the airport plan to stage
a rally on the front steps
of City Hall before the August
28 council meeting. The rally
organized by Concerned Residents
Against Airport Pollution
(CRAAP) will take place between
5:30 and 6:30 p.m.
“CRAAP is recommending
that the City Council reject
the FAA runway safety proposal
as inadequate,” read
a statement issued by the
organization.
