Aviation Lawyer & Attorney : Chevalier Allen & Lichman Law Firm : Airport Development, Environmental Law

On March 12, 2008, Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) published the Notice of Preparation (NOP) of a Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) Specific Plan Amendment Study (SPAS) for public comment.

In early 2005, Chevalier Allen & Lichman, LLP (CA&L) participated in a legal challenge to LAWA’s approval of the LAX Master Plan, which proposed major changes to runways, taxiways and terminals at LAX. The challenge resulted in a Stipulated Settlement Agreement, under which LAWA agreed to, among other things, proceed with a SPAS to identify potential alternative designs, technologies and configurations at LAX. The Settlement Agreement also established the LAX SPAS Advisory Committee, on which CA&L’s clients, the Cities of Inglewood and Culver City, sit as members.

The NOP identifies five options for reconfiguring the North Airfield Complex at LAX. One of those options, moving Runway 6R/24L 340 feet to the north, has the potential in our view to adversely impact communities surrounding LAX. It is our further view that the runway movement 340 feet north has the clear potential to increase capacity (and, therefore, noise, air quality and surface traffic impacts) by allowing triple simultaneous arrivals on the north and south runways. The NOP does not comprehensively evaluate the potential for these impacts, nor does it evaluate the runway project in relation to the other Master Plan projects currently ongoing at LAX, such as construction of a mid-field terminal, with numerous additional aircraft gates. CA&L believes that this project could have impacts which are, at minimum, different from and potentially more intense than those projected to arise out of the previous project.

For these and other reasons, CA&L will submit comments on the proposed scope and content of the DEIR on behalf of its clients. We recommend that other interested parties submit their comments no later than June 18, 2008.

The LAX Master Plan, LAX Specific Plan and the Stipulated Settlement are available at http://www.laxmasterplan.org.

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When the FAA sought approval of the "STAAV4" or "Right Turn" Departure Procedure at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada, it opined that the new route would decrease delays dramatically at McCarran.  Indeed, the FAA stated that reduction of delays was one of the primary purposes of instituting the departure procedure, which routes aircraft over thousands more people than the old departure route.

It has now been a year since the FAA first implemented the departure procedure.  And the results are?  Judging from the statistics that the FAA keeps and makes available to the public on its "OPSNET" system, the new departure procedure is a flop:

• Total number of delays at McCarran increased by 1,083 in the year since implementation of the procedure, representing a 7.0% increase over the prior year;
• Over the year since implementation, aircraft spent an additional 101,934 minutes in delay, representing a 23.3% increase over the prior year;

(For a complete comparison of the numbers click here).  The explanation for an increase in delays cannot be that there was a large increase in operations, since operations increased by only 1,868, which represents a 0.3% increase in operations. Nor can bad weather explain the increase in delays, since weather related delays dropped by 808 during the year.  About the only bright spot for the FAA was a decrease in "runway" delays of 155 (a decrease of 1.65%).  But this is more than offset by whopping increases in "terminal volume" delays of 1,565 (an increase of 327%) and "Other" delays of 545 (a 229% increase).

If there was no decrease in delays, why was a procedure instituted that routed aircraft over thousands more people than before, subjecting them to an increase in noise and air pollution?

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In both the Record of Decision (ROD) and the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia Airspace Redesign, the FAA states that there will be a decrease in emissions from aircraft as a result of the airspace redesign because the aircraft will burn less fuel.  To support this theory, the FAA relies upon a cobbled-together "Fuel Burn Analysis" that is nowhere to be found in any of the FAA's orders or procedures.

However, even with the ginned-up fuel burn analysis, it is now becoming apparent that there may be no savings in fuel to be derived from instituting the Airspace Redesign's preferred alternative.  Using the information provided in the Appendix R of the Final Environmental Impact Statement and the TAAM output files that were included in the Administrative Record as document 9285, Clean Air Act consultant Dan Meszler, of Meszler Engineering Services, concluded that the "Preferred Alternative" would seemingly increase fuel consumption.

On the following page is an excerpt from Mr. Meszler's Report, along with a table showing the differences between fuel consumption reported in the FEIS and fuel consumption based on the TAAM data that was included in the Administrative Record.

Continue Reading...

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On January 8, 2008, the United States Environmental Protection Agency published its proposed revisions to the General Conformity Rules.  Under the Clean Air Act, a State develops a State Implementation Plan (SIP), which is the State’s plan for bringing sections of the state which do not comply with the Clean Air Act into compliance. Before any Federal agency takes or funds any action, it must ensure that the project will not interfere with the SIP – that is, it must assure that the Federal action is in “conformity” with the SIP. The General Conformity regulations are the regulations, promulgated by the EPA, implementing the Clean Air Act's "conformity provision.

The General Conformity regulations have become critical to communities around airports because the FAA’s conformity determination is often the only analysis that the FAA will perform with respect to how its projects will affect the air quality in the area around the airport. Thus, we have sought to keep these regulations strong so that Federal agencies, such as the FAA, have to provide the communities around airports with information about the effect their projects have on air quality and ensure that the actions of the Federal agencies dop not adversely impact air quality in the communities.

The EPA’s proposed revisions, the way we read them, weaken those principles in the following ways:

• By allowing Federal agencies, in certain instances, to shift the burden of proving that the project conforms to the SIP onto “third parties” (that is, the communities) and the EPA.
• By allowing the Federal agencies to obtain permission to emit air pollutants without any connection to a particular project thereby eliminating the need for them to analyze air quality when they undertake projects. Thus, emission increases are effectively hidden in the SIP, unseen and unanalyzed by the communities.
• By allowing the Federal agencies to unilaterally  decide when an analysis is necessary, rather than requiring them to perform an analysis every time.

Comments on the proposed revisions are due April 14, 2008, one month after a public hearing held in Washington D.C. on March 14, 2008.  We will post our comments as soon as they are submitted to the EPA.

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