Printed in the Signal 11/6/2005 Kristopher Daams Signal Staff Writer .
The Agua Dulce Airpark has split the Agua Dulce community in recent years, especially when its new owner Wayne Spears purchased it in September.
The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission set a Dec. 14 hearing date for public comments and testimony regarding the draft conditions of the airpark’s conditional use permit, said Samuel Dea, a staff member with Regional Planning who works with the airpark.
Park Overall, a four-year Agua Dulce resident, is an ardent opponent of the airpark. She said while planes are entitled to fly 800 feet above her home, some pilots have engaged in “swooping” close to it, making her livestock run.
Swooping is when a pilot flies extremely close to the ground, what some think is a form of showing off.
“I have become the flight path,” Overall said, adding that a pilot once swooped her home at 5 a.m.
Overall said she has documented proof — “that will blow your mind” — of planes swooping and doing barrels not just above her home but around the town of 25 square miles with 4,000 people about 17 miles northeast of Santa Clarita.
Overall said Spears is a billionaire, and likens the fight between the airpark’s opponents and him as one of a classic political fight between a well-connected, rich and powerful individual and average folks.
“The other side is a billionaire. Now I have nothing against billionaires unless they try to affect my life,” Overall said.
Spears did not return phone calls made by The Signal. Spears’ representative, Mark Armbruster, an attorney and lobbyist with the Westwood-based land-use firm Armbruster & Goldsmith, did not return phone calls as well.
Overall said the Federal Aviation Authority has been wholly unresponsive to her and other community members’ concerns regarding the airpark, and that it took nearly two years to get the county to hit the airpark with violations, adding that the airpark has been slapped with about a dozen violations in the past two years.
“I don’t know why the airport hasn’t been shut down,” Overall said.
Donn Walker, a spokesman for the FAA at its regional office near LAX, said airports have no responsibility when it comes to the activities of pilots. Complaints about belligerent pilots are made after the fact, and it can be difficult to find out who they are so the FAA can levy sanctions on them. No sanctions can be levied on the airpark.
“We can’t shut the airport down. We have no authority to do that whatsoever,” Walker said.
Agua Dulce Town Council President Andrew Fried said the council voted unanimously last summer to remain neutral concerning the airpark, citing its contentious nature.
“The issue is so divisive that we didn’t feel we could properly represent all of the constituency without doing a really thorough study and analysis, which would have included a community-wide survey,” Fried said.
Fried said Spears has lived in Agua Dulce for “quite a while,” and that he understands the community’s concerns to maintain the town’s rural atmosphere.
The draft conditions for the airpark’s special permit No. 1404-(5), which have yet to be approved, state that any of the airpark’s walls or structures must be free from extraneous signs except for seasonal ones.
Within 30 days of approval the conditions state that the permittee must submit any plans for signs, landscaping, lighting, the use of existing buildings and all airport improvements for runways and hangars.
Only four special events like air shows would be permitted every year, subject to a preliminary review by the ADTC.
Specifics for the airpark, such as the number and size of hangars, as well as the weight of the planes that use it, have yet to be worked out. Planes must be propellar-driven and the property, which cannot sell alcoholic beverages and can only be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Sunday, cannot be used as a private recreational facility.