Moving the southernmost runway at Los Angeles International Airport 55 feet for safety reasons will expose nearby residents to increased cancer risk and noise over an eight-month period during construction, according to an environmental impact report to be released today.
Closing the runway during the work will force officials to redistribute flights among LAX's three other runways, requiring aircraft to taxi greater distances and idle longer -- increasing harmful emissions, according to the 1,370-page study.
Changing landing and takeoff patterns will also subject residents in Los Angeles, Inglewood and Westchester to more noise, classroom disturbances and sleep disruptions, concluded the report, completed by an architectural and engineering firm for the city's airport agency.
Traffic generated by construction isn't expected to markedly affect communities, the study said, because trucks will operate during off-peak hours and be directed away from residential streets to freeways.
The study, required under state law, provides an early look at problems to be faced by communities that surround LAX. Shifting the runway south -- scheduled to start next year and take 26 months -- is the first in a series of major projects planned to update the aging facility in the next decade.
Repositioning the 11,096-foot runway and building a new taxiway is a massive undertaking that will require workers to remove the old runway and install 600,000 square yards of 19-inch thick concrete -- enough to build more than 40 miles of two-lane road.
It will also require contractors to haul 225 million tons of dirt from the site.
Airport officials have argued for years that they must move the runway closer to tiny El Segundo and install a taxiway in between the two runways on the airport's south side to reduce the possibility of collisions between aircraft.
About 80% of runway safety violations at LAX occur on those runways, because pilots who land on the southernmost one must traverse a series of taxiways and cross another runway before they reach the terminal.
"This project is about increasing the margin of safety for everyone using the airport, as well as the airport's neighbors," Paul Haney, a spokesman for Los Angeles World Airports, the city's airport agency, said Sunday.
"There is no way to gain the needed increase in the margin of safety without construction activity. We're committed to do everything feasible to compress the length of the construction project and to mitigate its impacts."
