LAX planners hit another legal snag

Editorial Focus: Another major legal barrier has been erected on the Los Angeles International Airport runway that could stymie LAX expansion plans for years. Palmdale still is the answer to future airport development.

LAX officials want to hire a firm to oversee the next phase of the LAX mega-project. But last week, city lawyers advised postponement on the bidding process.

Officials abruptly agree to halt progress on the grandiose plan indefinitely.

The lawyers told city officials that they may not be allowed to hire any consultants who have worked on preparing the airport expansion environmental analysis. That might exclude such experienced firms as Bechtel, which just finished an airport project in Hong Kong.

The problem would arise if a firm advising airport officials about the ramifications of expanding the airport would also be assured a follow-on contract overseeing the next phase of the project.

The lawyers wisely are worried that the firm would be unlikely to highlight negative environmental aspects of expansion if the same company were under contract to oversee the construction program.

In the meantime, in Orange County, proponents of converting the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into a commercial airport and business complex are back-peddling on their extravagant plans.

The pro-airport crowd is attempting to downgrade the plans so that they will be more acceptable to airport opponents.

(This is a distant echo of the local three-decade saga that brought about the name changes from Palmdale Intercontinental to International to Regional Airport.)

So let's review the bidding:

The plan to spend up to $12 billion on expanding the capacity of LAX from 60 million passengers a year to has come to a complete stop at the gate.

The proposal to convert El Toro to a commercial airfield is meeting with such strong opposition that the proponents are having to downsize their original upscale plans.

Burbank Airport has been stymied for years in attempting to build a new terminal on the property where Lockheed built airplanes in the past.

Van Nuys airport is under fire from nearby residents every time someone mentions adding more fixed-wing airplane or helicopter flights from there.

Ontario International Airport is expanding but urban encroachment will limit its future capacity.

The only place in Southern California that is not suffering the slings and arrows of airport opponents is Palmdale.

With the 17,700 acres acquired by Los Angeles World Airports plus the adjacent 5,700 acres embraced by Air Force Plant 42, plus the buffer zoning around these desert spreads, local residents will not rise up to scream against the sound of jet engines.

After examining the entire Southern California region in the 1960s, L.A. Department of Airports officials determined that Palmdale was the obvious location for the Southland's next major airport.

Contracts were let in 1969 for a large hangar and a terminal building at the new airfield but the project was halted when the Sierra Club and seven local homeowners filed a lawsuit, demanding a more comprehensive Environmental Impact Report for the property.

That EIR was completed and the suit was declare moot.

Palmdale has no real obstacles comparable to the monumental airport problems we are witnessing in the L.A. basin.

When will the airport officials ever learn what their predecessors understood perfectly more than 30 years ago?