A Brief History of Airport Noise in Somerville

[tom-champion.livejournal.com]

Hello, Ladies and Gents of the DSLJ

I note the airplane noise discussion got ginned up again over the weekend (understandably so, since noise levels were noticeably higher than usual).

I’m going to try once more, as briefly as I can, to provide some crucial historical background, since DSLJ debate on this topic usually resolves so quickly into a match among the “this-is-a-fact-of-life-in-an-urban-environment-and-we-all-need-the-airport” forces, the “my-quality-of-life-my-sanity-my-ability-to-work-are-all-being-destroyed-by-constant-jet-noise” forces and – perhaps most numerous – the “why-discuss-it-when-nothing-ever-happens?” forces.  I am not trying to prolong the discussion, and everyone is entitled to her/his opinion, but it's really important to know the history.

If you lived in Somerville before 2007, your ears do not deceive you: there’s been a sharp increase in jet noise.   The FAA and Massport COULD bring the noise back to past levels with very little change in airfield throughput or on-time performance.  They WON’T, because appealing the most recent court ruling just isn’t cost-effective, so Somerville is unable to carry on the fight.  Policy at the FAA is still largely in the hands of Bush-area appointees, and even Obama appointees don’t like setting precedents that might constrain the authority of the FAA to do whatever it deems necessary to manage air traffic.

So it is what it is.

Here are some key bits of information that  often go missing from these discussions:

1.    Even though commercial jet aircraft are, on the whole, much quieter today than then they were in the ’70s and ’80s, it really IS a lot noisier today in Somerville’s skies than it was five, ten or twenty years ago.  The added noise cannot be explained by changes in wind patterns or in  the number of takeoffs and landings.  
2.    We know to a fair degree of certainty why this change has occurred:  In November 2006, Logan opened a new runway (14/32) that has become part of a favored reconfiguration of how the entire airfield is used by the FAA’s air traffic controllers.  In the new configuration, takeoffs from Runway 33L have nearly tripled – and almost all the aircraft using the runway are so-called “heavies,” i.e., the biggest jets.
3.    In seeking environmental permissions to build the new runway, Massport officials promised back in the late '90's and early '00s that the added capacity would not result in a “significant change” in Logan’s overall noise envelope or in the use of any particular runway.
4.    In June 2009, the City of Somerville brought suit to reopen the settlement of the environmental case against Massport (Massport v. City of Boston et al., 2004) on the grounds that Massport and Logan were no longer in compliance with the terms of the settlement that cleared the way for the construction of 14/32.  (The City of Boston did not join in the request to reopen the case, in part because the noise Somerville experiences today used to be heard over the skies over Dorchester and Jamaica Plain.)
5.    Judge Stephen Neel refused to reopen the case, saying that Somerville wasn’t part of the area of major impact covered by the original agreement (the area in which jet noise regularly exceeds 60 dB) and it’s impossible to determine whether it is now.  There’s a real Catch-22 here, since the noise monitoring equipment needed to verify current levels is expensive and, unlike communities like East Boston or Revere, Somerville would have to pay for it itself and collect data for at least a year before claiming that it should receive protection under the original settlement.
    
So there you have it.  Speaking as someone who worked for Massport from 1983 to 1995 and for the City of Somerville from 2005 to the start of 2010, I can only restate my personal belief that more could and should be done to mitigate the impacts of the sharp increase in airport noise over Somerville in the past four years.  I also readily acknowledge that there is little likelihood that anything will ever be done.

As Rabelais has it, “What cannot be remedied must be endured.”

    

Comments

[ron_newman]

Thank you for posting this.

One question -- you say that "The FAA and Massport COULD bring the noise back to past levels with very little change in airfield throughput". Can they do this without increasing noise somewhere else (such as JP and Dorchester)?

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

That's my question, too. This has been one of the most informative and informed posts on the topic, and extremely helpful. But in the reduction of the basic arguments, the last one that comes up a lot is something along the lines of "if-not-over-our-backyards-then-over-whose?" which I find a valid and compelling question.

I *do* notice the increase, having lived in this particular house for 12 years, and in Somerville off and on since the eighties, and I don't like it, or how I'm more or less stuck with it as a home-owner and committed community member. But there's a part of me that feels like if I'm going to argue for S'ville's rights to a Green Line based on the transportation-equality and justice issues, than I should be prepared for my share of the airport noise *if* the increase of noise over my house indicates a more equitable burden-sharing with neighboring communities.

I do also feel that just as we as a society need to figure out how to drive automobiles less often for our ecological and economic security, we also need to figure out how to fly less. Airplane noises are the least of our worries when you look at the carbon-footprint of jet. That's a story for another day, though.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the informative post, Tom.

And miss_chance has managed to describe some of my issues, as far as transportation justice etc.

This really sounds like an opportunity for, eg, environmental engineering folks at a local university to engage in some kind of evidence gathering. Independent research is fun!

[bombardiette.livejournal.com]

This is a beautiful argument. Frankly, when this issue began way back in the 1990's, the plan was to heave some of the increased air traffic over to Hanscom Field in Bedford. But back then, Somerville was just another working class city and the communities surrounding Hanscom Field pulled their money and political weight together to successfully lobby against this, even though the proposal showed minimal increased noise for the residential areas around the field (I work here, my office is ON the flightline, and it's quieter here with constant small plane traffic than it is over my home a few miles from Logan).

While there would have been an increase in noise, it wouldn't have been as substantial as people feared - and it would have eased the burden of several urban areas that were highly impacted.

My sense about this, then as now, was that it was wholly unfair for Eastie, Chelsea, and the neighborhoods that would have seen some immediate relief. It would have alleviated some airport traffic, some noise, and generally spread the benefits as well as downfalls of having an active airport serving a metro area across all manner of users.

FWIW: I'm not bothered by the noise. I don't even notice MILAIR when they're around because I'm used to it. But similarly, I do feel that eastie and the areas closest Logan have had too much for too long and it's time to share their pain if we want to keep a viable urban center as an international point for travel - for both business and leisure.

[tom-champion.livejournal.com]

Good point, Ron. Noise is essentially a "zero-sum" game. However, significant relief for Somerville (say, reducing 33L takeoffs as a share of Logan's total T/Os from 18% to, say, 10 or 12%) would in all probability still leave the big winners under the current scheme well below the levels of noise they used to encounter. The problem is that the changes wrought by the adoption of the new runway usage have produced BIG winners Dorchester, JP and points south) and BIG losers (Somerville, Chelsea, Everett, Medford, Arlington) -- which is not only unfair, but also expressly forbidden by the terms of the 2004 settlement that cleared the way for construction of Runway 14/32. Unfortunately, Judge Neel didn't see it that way.
Margot Botsford, the judge who originally tried the case and wrote the original settlement, was elevated by Governor Patrick to the SJC in 2007. It's a great appointment, but she's no longer available to interpret her own ruling. More's the pity.