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O`HARE SUBURBS UNDER FIRE

The suburbs around O`Hare International Airport share the blame for jet noise that was the subject last week of a $13 million lawsuit that Du Page County filed against the City of Chicago, urban planners say.

Warnings of the noise problems that would plague O`Hare and the area around it came as early as 1955 but were ignored, according to experts. Instead, suburban politicians allowed wide-open growth to sprawl almost to O`Hare`s doorstep.

”It wasn`t that people in aviation didn`t know,” said Eugene Kirchherre, an urban geographer who, in 1956, wrote his doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University on land use planning at Chicago`s airports.

”There was discussion of noise. But it was difficult to get public officials to recognize these things.”

More than half of the public and private schools that are now shaken daily by unhealthy levels of noise-62 of 104-were built around the airport in 1955 or later, according to figures from the Federal Aviation Administration

(FAA).

It was in 1955 that the first of six runways of 8,000 feet or longer was constructed at O`Hare. That was also the year that the first scheduled flights began at the airport, and it was the year that United Airlines, the dominant air carrier in the Chicago market, became the first airline to order jets for its domestic service.

It was also the era when the city-suburban tug-of-war over O`Hare began.

Chicago wanted to annex the 10-square-mile airport, originally known as Douglas Field, a military practice field that the federal government had donated to the city following World War II.

To do that, the city needed to annex a land bridge to connect the western border of Chicago with the eastern border of the airport property, but the suburbs wouldn`t cooperate. Because of that, Kirchherre said, the only way the city could reach the airport was to annex roads that began in the city.

”It was the beginning of many problems,” said Kirchherre, now at Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo.

”There should have been a master plan,” said John Paige, director of Planning Service for the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission (NIPC).

”Now they`re doing one.”

Paige was referring to a plan, now being drafted, that will detail present and future land use around the airport. The FAA is requiring airports across the country to prepare such plans, known as Part 150 Studies, before they can receive federal funds for noise control.

If done years ago, such a land-use plan could have resulted in zoning practices in nearby suburbs that could have limited the aggravation caused by noise from the airport.

It also could have been a sort of treaty to avert the war that Du Page County State`s Attorney James E. Ryan declared last week with his lawsuit to force the city and the airlines to pay to soundproof 22 schools.

But the FAA has only begun ordering such studies in recent years. And though other major airports have done them, those who attend committee meetings to write O`Hare`s version have spent more time posturing than working.

The suburbs fear that completion of such a study will make it harder for some property owners to sue for damages when they think jet noise has diminished their property values.

And the suburbs also are suspicious of the ultimate goal of the FAA, fearing that the plan might be used to secure federal dollars to buy out homeowners and create space buffers around the airport, as has been done elsewhere in the nation.

For its part, the city fears a loss of control and influence if it grants the suburbs any say over O`Hare.

The transition of O`Hare from a sleepy military field to a major international airport took place quickly, fulfilling the forecasts of planners in the mid-1950s.

In 1955, planners were saying that the title ”world`s busiest airport”

would soon pass to O`Hare from landlocked Midway Airport, which could not build runways long enough to handle jet traffic. And that`s what happened in 1961.

When American Airlines, the No. 2 carrier in the Chicago market, inaugurated the first coast-to-coast jet service in 1959, a record 9.7 million air travelers passed through Midway Airport. O`Hare`s passenger load was 2.1 million that year, according to the Air Transport Association in Washington.

By 1961, the figures had flip-flopped. O`Hare`s passenger traffic had grown to 9.5 million while Midway`s had plummeted to 3.2 million with no hope of recovery, ATA figures show.

Last year, O`Hare handled 58.9 million passengers to Midway`s 7.5 million, according to city officials.

In the last five years, the FAA has paid for soundproofing at 21 of 26 schools directly under O`Hare flight paths. That money was provided, even though the land-use plan hasn`t been completed, because of the critically high levels of noise at those schools.

In such cases, the FAA pays 80 percent of the cost-anywhere from $500,000 for a small elementary school to $5 million for a large high school-with the airlines paying 10 percent and the school district contributing the remaining 10 percent.

”We are going to make progress when it begins to be costly for the city and the airlines not to do anything,” said Marty Butler, mayor of Park Ridge and chairman of the Suburban O`Hare Commission, which represents the suburbs on O`Hare matters.

He was talking about the leverage that the suburbs hope to get out of Ryan`s suit. It asserts that O`Hare is a nuisance, that takeoff noise from the airport robs students of their constitutional right to an education, and that lost property values violate owners` rights.

”Other cities have been sued and have recognized their responsibility,” said Joseph Karaganis, attorney for the Suburban O`Hare Commission.

”The Archdiocese of Los Angeles sued LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) on behalf of Los Angeles County schools. Rather than litigate, they settled for $22 million,” he said.

Of the five remaining schools that the FAA has pledged to soundproof, four are plaintiffs in Ryan`s suit. The fifth, West Leyden High School, is not included because it lies in the suburban Cook County village of Franklin Park. But it is within a mile of the tip of one of the world`s busiest runways, subjected daily to noise levels that exceed 70 decibels averaged over 24 hours-15 decibels above what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says is acceptable.

”If you work here, you learn to deal with it,” said assistant principal James MacIntyre. ”Teachers stop lessons. Students stop. It`s about a 15-second pause, and when the planes are coming over there can be one every minute.”

And jet noise can cause peculiar problems.

Referees, for example, call time out when jets roar overhead during West Leyden High School football games.

”The kids can`t hear in the huddle, and they can`t hear the quarterback at the line of scrimmage,” MacIntyre explains. ”Officials are told to call official timeouts. I`ve never heard of that anywhere else.”