By Delilah Brumer, Correspondent
Throughout their 33 years of calling “the pocket” home, Bill Jackson and Linda Jackson have seen air shows, summer picnics and many friendly neighbors come and go.
Living in the group of houses immediately west of the Van Nuys Airport, they’ve felt, smelled and heard the effects of worsening air and noise pollution — but the Jacksons say they aren’t going anywhere.
“We’re constantly aware of the fumes, and sometimes it’s just stifling,” said Bill Jackson, who is retired. “It’s sort of a combination of that and the noise being so constant. But we bought this house to live in forever and it’s a great neighborhood. I don’t want to walk away from that.”
The Van Nuys Airport is one of the busiest general aviation airports in the world, with more than 280,000 flight operations conducted in 2022. Unlike commercial airports, the vast majority of flights at Van Nuys Airport are private or chartered. They can fly at any time, day or night, and passengers are not screened by the Transportation Security Administration.
The growing charter flights have increasingly disrupted Lake Balboa and the areas around it, residents say, yet the most recent environmental report about the airport’s impact on communities in San Fernando Valley was conducted 18 years ago.
“There’s an increased noise [level],” said Karen Fritschi, who lives only a few hundred feet from the airport. “It used to just be very small jets and planes with propellers. Now it’s bigger planes and when they take off at night, they wake people up.”
Sue Steinberg, who has lived only a couple hundred feet away from the Van Nuys Airport for 20 years, said, “I use this analogy of, like if you live next to a skate park and it’s fine, but then some people with a lot of money come in and want a monster truck park. That’s what it’s been like living next to the airport.”
Run by Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), the airport is in the process…
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