Month: June 2025

SANER Lawsuit against the City of Long Beach

🚨✈️⚖️FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANER GROUP FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST CITY OF LONG BEACH OVER FAILURE TO ENFORCE LONG BEACH AIRPORT NOISE ORDINANCE

Community Demands Action as Flight School Noise Disrupts Quality of Life

Long Beach, CA — [June 25, 2025] — The Long Beach SANER Group — also known as the Long Beach Small Aircraft Noise Reduction Group has filed a lawsuit against the City of Long Beach for failing to enforce its own airport noise ordinance. This legal action comes after over two years of resident complaints regarding excessive and unlawful noise caused by flight school training operations often continuing well past the hours permitted by law.

The lawsuit, filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, is merely asking the City of Long Beach to enforce the airport noise ordinance that has been in place since 1995. That ordinance clearly prohibits training operations:

  • Monday through Friday: No training from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM
  • Saturday and Sunday: No training from 3:00 PM to 8:00 AM

Despite these longstanding restrictions, flight schools have been conducting operations during prohibited hours under the guise of “taxi-backs” a practice which airport officials themselves have admitted is a loophole exploited by the flight schools and pilots. The result: sleepless nights, loss of peaceful outdoor use, and a significant decline in quality of life for surrounding residents.

“Our community has had enough,” said Lisa Dunn, founder of the Long Beach SANER Group. “The City is turning a blind eye to blatant violations of an ordinance that was specifically designed to protect residents from exactly this kind of disruption.”

To represent them in this legal action, SANER has retained Steven Taber of Leech Tishman Nelson & Hardiman, a highly experienced attorney in environmental & aviation law. Mr. Taber previously served as an attorney for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and brings decades of legal expertise in aviation-related issues.

The group insists that no changes to the existing ordinance are necessary only that the City enforce the rules already in place. “The City doesn’t need to rewrite the law,” Dunn continued. “They just need to enforce it. The ordinance was created for a reason to protect residents from late night training over the communities and right now it’s being ignored.”

This lawsuit is the latest step in a growing community movement to restore peace and livability in Long Beach neighborhoods. The SANER Group, supported by hundreds of residents, continues to call for transparency, accountability, and immediate action to stop these unauthorized training operations.

Contact:
Lisa Dunn
Founder, Long Beach SANER Group
Email: LBSANERGROUP@gmail.com

To view the document please go here.

Call for Donations!

🚨 CALL TO ACTION – HELP FUND OUR LEGAL FIGHT 🚨

Big news: SANER Group has officially filed our lawsuit in Long Beach court. This is a major step forward in holding our city accountable and protecting our neighborhoods. We’ll share the complaint as soon as we’re cleared to post it.

But right now, we need your support.

We’ve received a large legal bill, and we’re asking everyone to donate whatever they can.

✅ SANER is a nonprofit organization

✅ Your donation is 100% tax-deductible

✅ Every dollar goes directly to our legal fund

Our community is worth fighting for our peace, our quality of life, and our home values are on the line.

If you can make your donation an automatic monthly payment, that would be fantastic. This type of auto donation helps SANER admin better able to direct our legal team and to make sure they are paid in a timely manner. This legal action to secure our peace of mind in the neighborhoods is expensive (and forced upon us by the City of Long Beach where they count on residents NOT taking on this type of action at their own expense.)

If you support SANER’s effort to ask the City of Long Beach to enforce the Noise Ordinance and it’s original intention to protect neighborhoods from constant air traffic noise, please make a donation to our legal fund.

We want to thank everyone who showed up at the recent Community Conversations event at the Expo. Thanks to all the SANER volunteers for their help in set-up, tear-down and manning our community table.
A BIG thank you to Lisa Dunn for speaking and taking questions from the audience.
Thank you to Citizens About Responsible Planning (CARP) for funding the event and to all the neighborhood groups who had tables representing their organizations. We appreciate you!

Major Legal Announcement Soon!!

We will have details regarding the SANER lawsuit available very soon. Filings have been made and we will post the details as soon as our legal team updates us.

Again, we want to thank everyone who has and continues to DONATE to the SANER legal fund. This is a long and expensive road we have been forced to travel down but SANER and our legal team are committed to persevering!

In the meantime, stay informed, join the Facebook Saner Group, and attend the Community Conversation event coming up June 19th at the Expo Center.

ACTION ITEM!

PROTECT OUR NOISE ORDINANCE!

Neighbors: Time is of the essence. BEFORE THIS BILL HITS THE FLOOR we are asking everyone to join SANER in taking action on this by contacting our Assembly Member Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal. (Contact link below).

https://a69.asmdc.org/contact

-AB431 has language that says this bill supersedes ANY local ordinances. We are very concerned this may include our noise ordinance.

Please write Josh and ask him to specifically protect our noise ordinance.

This bill is problematic on a multitude of levels, including unrestricted growth in low-flying helicopter taxis. So throw that in also if you like.

BUT PROTECT THE NOISE ORDINANCE. That’s critical.

The Mayor has decided that the City supports this on OUR BEHALF.