LAX EXPANSION HITS A TINY SNAG; SHRIMP FOUND NEAR RUNWAYS MAY BE RELOCATED.

Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer

Everybody knows the players in the proposed Los Angeles International Airport expansion: the backers of the $12 billion enterprise vs. a regional alliance of local governments and agencies.

Now, enter the fairy shrimp.

Hidden in the soil and pools of water at the southwestern end of the runways, these federally listed endangered Riverside fairy shrimp, also known as Streptocephalus woottoni, have quietly become a force to be reckoned with.

With eggs, or cysts, so small that researchers working on the LAX master plan's environmental impact report had to use an electron microscope to positively identify them, the fairy shrimp probably will have to be relocated if the expansion moves forward, said Philip Depoian, Los Angeles World Airports deputy executive director.

Estimated moving bill: about $300,000.

Such do the best laid plans of shrimp and men sometimes go awry.

``What we're trying to do is to eliminate this problem so it doesn't get caught up formally in the master plan process. Then the FAA would have to jump through a whole other series of hurdles,'' said Depoian.

Planning could get even more scrambled, complex and expensive if the Los Angeles World Airports, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Federal Aviation Administration don't come to an agreement soon on where their future home should be.

That's because if the shrimp manage to officially squirm into the environmental impact report, due out at the end of the year, a whole new layer of federal laws dealing with endangered species will automatically kick in.

Backed by the federal Endangered Species Act passed in the 1970s, with its civil and criminal penalty provisions, Fish and Wildlife Service officials said the fairy shrimp create a considerable challenge for LAX.

``They do have a problem and they should take it very seriously,'' said John Bradley, Fish and Wildlife Service biologist.

Federal scientists noticed the shrimp habitat early last year while examining another endangered species' habitat, that of the El Segundo blue butterfly, located in the nearby dunes.

What caught their attention was a series of vernal pools, or indentations that fill with rainwater but then dry out for much of the year. The fairy shrimp cysts hatch in the water, grow to about the size of a fingernail, lay their eggs and then die when the pools dry up.

Once a common feature of the Los Angeles Basin, the vernal pools have largely been destroyed by development, Bradley said.

Federal biologists would prefer that the airport leave the shrimp where they are, but ultimately might agree to their transport elsewhere in the county - the closer to their existing home, the better.

``They need to look at avoidance first,'' Bradley said. ``If that's totally impossible, and they have to have good reasons that they can explain to the public, then the next thing is to try to restore some existing, but degraded habitat elsewhere.''

Depoian said the LAX vernal pools have to go, because they serve as feeders for birds - the nemesis of jetliners and small aircraft. He said a recent slight increase in plane-bird collisions at LAX has the airport and the FAA concerned.

But Bradley said he doesn't buy the bird theory.

``There are vernal pools around other airports,'' he said. ``I think its a specious argument.''

Depoian said the shrimp cyst-filled earth could be moved to other fairy shrimp preserves in Riverside and Orange counties.

But Bradley said that would defeat the goal of ``biodiversity,'' or the spreading out of species, and that therefore a habitat in Los Angeles County would be preferred.

The fairy shrimp are among eight shrimp species listed by either the state or federal governments as threatened or endangered; in other words, facing possible extinction.

LAX officials, who are behind schedule on the master plan largely because of new air quality regulations, said they'll do whatever it takes to take care of the shrimp.

``They are an endangered species,'' Depoian said. ``They don't have to have a face; they don't have to be cute and fuzzy.''