Los Angeles City Council did an about face last week and approved a 25-year lease extension for a helicopter company at Van Nuys Airport. Last March, council bowed to public pressure and voted against giving Bonseph Helinet the extension, which was tied to a planned $25 million redevelopment of its existing facilities at the airport. But a staff report received recently by council said turning down the lease would jeopardize about $300 million in federal grants at LAX and other airports and Mayor Karen Bass said that would endanger projects vital to keeping the basin’s airports in top shape, particularly with major events like the World Cup and Olympics coming in the next four years. “Our airports are entry points to our city for the entire world and we have to run them like it,” she said in a statement before the vote.
But a well-organized coalition of anti-airport activists say their health is at risk from exhaust fumes and the noise from the facility, the country’s busiest GA airport, is making life intolerable. Suzanne Gutierrez, co-founder of a group called Fume Fighters called council’s reversal “a real slap in the face to the community,” according to the L.A. Times. “The community is going to suffer. There is no mitigation for us. We are already suffering from the fumes.”…