COMM00-224B (19 x 00)

COMMENTS OF THE REGIONAL COMMISSION ON AIRPORT AFFAIRS

ON “AVIATION NOISE ABATEMENT POLICY 2000”,

ISSUED BY THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION,

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (14 July 2000)

Part I.  Introduction

            A.  Subject matter.  These are the comments of the Regional Commission on Airport Affairs ("RCAA") on the document titled “Aviation Noise Abatement Policy 2000”, recently issued by the Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, and published at 65 Federal Register (no. 136) 43803 - 43825 (14 July 2000).  The document is also known as FAA Docket 30109.

            B.  Identity and interest of commenter.  The Regional Commission on Airport Affairs (RCAA) is a Washington not-for-profit corporation, organized in 1992.  RCAA is a citizens’ coalition of individuals and organizations having an interest in aviation activities as they impact our communities.  Our mission statement includes such items as:

     To achieve a long-term integrated plan for air and surface transportation to meet the competitive needs of Washington State

     To achieve immediate and permanent reduction in noise and other adverse environmental impacts from commercial aircraft in the Puget Sound Region

     Insure economic vitality of the Airport community [meaning, the area closest to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport]

Our members, our communities, are severely impacted by aviation noise.  Our interest is focussed on the Central Puget Sound subregion of Washington, which includes King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap Counties.  This subregion has the largest population concentration in our State, in the four-jurisdiction Pacific Northwest region, the largest concentration of population in the U.S.A. North of San Francisco and West of Minneapolis-St. Paul.  In King County alone, with its population of 1.6 million and growing, there are three airports, all located within densely-settled urban areas, all with expansion plans, all seeking to increase our already excessive noise burden.  Those airports are Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ("Sea-Tac"), located in the City of SeaTac;  King County International Airport ("KCIA" or Boeing Field), located in Seattle & Tukwila, and Renton Municipal Airport, located at Renton.  Aviation-related noise matters to us.

Four community groups are currently affiliated with RCAA, two of which have numerous neighborhood associations as members of their individual coalitions.

As an organization, we have been active since 1992 in every public process involving expansion of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ("Sea-Tac").  As an organization or through our individual members, we have been active in all local efforts to cope with aviation-related noise, including the "Part 150" study just now winding down at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.  Either as an organization, or through our organizational members, or through individual members, we have been or now are active in such other aviation-related issues as the work of the Washington Air Transportation Commission, the pending "Part 150" study at King County International Airport, the pending but long-delayed Master Plan Update at King County International Airport, the issue of expanding helicopter traffic, other helicopter concerns, and potential expansion of Renton Municipal Airport.  Individuals and groups now associated with us participated in such pre-1992 aviation-noise activities as the Sea-Tac Overflight Committee and the Sea-Tac Noise Mediation Process.  We work as closely as possible with all other airport-concern groups in our State, providing various forms of technical & logistical support where appropriate.  We attempt to follow developments at the federal level.  We subscribe to various trade papers and aviation-related e-lists, to keep abreast of aviation issues relevant to our interests. In 1998, we submitted comments to FAA on its docket 29231 (exclusionary retroactive zoning).  Early this year, we submitted comments on FAA docket 29797 (3000-foot no-impact rule, under NEPA).  In mid-year, we provided support to groups commenting on FAA docket 30086 (helicopter overflights in cities).  We maintain an extensive print library of relevant documents, tracing back into the 1950s.  We maintain a website with many relevant documents available on line, and links to numerous official websites and websites of airport-concern groups world-wide.  We publish a quarterly newsletter, with a circulation of more than 25,000.  The organization, in short, has built up a considerable body of expertise in these matters.

            C.  Structure of comments.  These comments address various issues in the Policy in roughly the order of their importance, from our perspective.  At the start of each comment reference is made, in parentheses, to the page or pages (per the Federal Register) and caption in the Policy where the issue appears.  Part II comprises our comments on substantive issues, and Part III, our comments on procedural matters, including the underlying process, the public-involvement process, and the outmoded method permitted for submitting comments and reviewing the comments of others.

            D.  Conclusion.  The Policy should be withdrawn.  The task of setting a Federal policy for aviation-related noise should be undertaken by competent legislative authority, not by mid-level bureaucrats.  The proposed Policy is not much more than a restatement of the same old failed FAA policies of the past, proposed by the very agency most responsible for creating the present problem, the agency that has done least to solve it.  The aviation-related noise issue needs much more public input than this almost secret exercise can produce.

Part II.  Substantive comments

            1.  It is an error to continue to use the 65-LDN, A-weighted, noise metric as the sole statistical determinant of the existence of intrusive aviation-related noise.

            (43803 – Sec. 1:  Introduction)

            (43818 – Sec. 4.1 Assessing Aviation Noise:  Foundations)

            (43819 – Sec. 4.2 Assessment Methodologies)

            1.1  Flawed metric.  FAA's continued use of the A-weighted, computer-created, 65 LDN contour as the sole objective measure to define who is and who is not seriously impacted by overflight noise and other aviation-related noise is a mistake.  This is the single most-critical substantive issue raised by the Policy.  Until meaningful metrics, instead of 65 LDN, are employed, FAA will never be able to report accurate numbers on populations adversely impacted by aviation-related noise.

            It is claimed in the new policy (p. 48303, first column) that only 500,000 people in the U.S.A. are now seriously impacted (“exposed to significant levels of aircraft noise”).  This is of course absurd.  If it were true, then there would not be the wave of airport-concern activity all over the U.S.A., with new groups forming, it seems, almost weekly. 

            LDN, even when accurately mapped, simply does not report on the intrusive aspects of aircraft noise.  The impact of aviation-related noise on human activities, including sleep, is not related to the hypothetical 65 LDN contours.

            1.2  Wrong scale.  Even if LDN were determinative, the FAA deliberately chooses to use the A-weighted scale for its calculations, knowing that that scale does not capture significant elements of the noise spectrum, elements that are particularly intrusive when considering aviation-related noise, which are captured by the to-be-preferred C-weighted scale.

            1.3  Computer models used in preference to accurate measurements.  Further, the FAA, and the handful of consultants who work so closely with the FAA in local noise studies, typically rely on computer simulations to produce noise contour maps.  Inadequate actual noise measurements are used to adjust these simulations to match reality.  When (in our experience) those computer-generated models are randomly compared against real-world monitoring results, the modeling results typically predict less noise than what is actually measured.

            If computer models are to be used – and their use seems inevitable – then they need to be more rigorously checked against the results of on-site real-world monitoring, by truly independent experts. 

            The FAA's 65 LDN contours in most places deliberately exclude other noise imposed on the communities.  This is particularly troublesome in areas (like ours) that have multiple airports.  Noise-remedy programs, including those resulting from "Part 150" studies, rely on the official 65 LDN maps, and yet those maps do not show a consolidated contour that takes into account all overflight noise.  The FAA insists on dealing with noise, and measuring noise by the LDN method, on an airport-by-airport basis.  Where there are multiple airports, this makes no sense at all.  Whatever noise metrics are used, whatever system for drawing lines on maps is used, the noise from all airports should be included (and preferably noise from all other sources as well). 

            In the pending "Part 150" study at KCIA for the first time that we know of, FAA has permitted maps to be drawn showing noise from that airport and the one next door (Sea-Tac) on the same sheet.  The two-airport 65 LDN contour, as mapped, is much larger than either the KCIA or Sea-Tac 65 LDN contour standing alone.  Attached as Exhibits 1 and 2 are copies of Ref. 9 and Ref. 10 from a "Part 150" report recently issued by KCIA.  Exhibit 1 shows the LDN contours from 55 through 75 as computer-mapped for KCIA noise alone, and Exhibit 2 shows the same contour intervals with computer-mapped noise from both airports taken into account.  Exhibit 3 is a recent LDN-contour map, with the same intervals, prepared for the present Sea-Tac Airport "Part 150" study, with only noise from that facility taken into account (the "1998 base case".  (Exhibit 3 includes only the northern part of the original map, to facilitate comparison with Exhibits 1 & 2.)  To those familiar with the area, the differences are striking.  It is clear that both airports have greatly underestimated overflight noise in the past, as the result of the one-airport-at-a-time approach.

            1.4  Accurate LDN metric still the wrong tool.  Even if the FAA and the consultants were to use real-world measurements to compute 65 LDN contours, and even if those contours were reported on the basis of C-weighted scale measurements (in place of, or in addition to, A-weighted measurements), and even if noise from all sources (or, all aviation sources) were included, the resulting contours would not be determinative of significant impact, for the underlying premise is faulty;  the premise is that averages tell the tale.  But the truth is that no-one is annoyed by an annual average of aviation-related noise;  human tolerance for these intrusive noises does not extend to 365 days, at the end of which a conclusion is reached by the observer.  Rather, it is the individual event, and the repetition of individual events, that matter, minute by minute, this day – not a year from now, or even 24 hours from now.

            1.5  Weighting of averages questionable.  Another problem with the LDN metric is precisely its "weighting".  The metric assumes that night-time noise is significantly more intrusive in all circumstances for all people than day-time noise.  It assumes, in effect, that all people sleep at night and not in the day-time, and that all people, in all dwelling units, are affected in their sleep in identical manner.  Unfortunately, scientific research has not caught up with aviation technology, so the extent of sleep disturbance from jet overflights is relatively unexamined.  Undeniably, many people sleep at night (that is, work the day shift) – but not all.  Undeniably, sleep disturbance is significant for some night-time sleepers – but not for all.  More importantly, the LDN metric assumes that day-time disturbances are not important.  What citizens have learned in our area since the major airport (Sea-Tac) became so busy is that jet overflights in the numbers experienced since about 1989 are greatly intrusive in homes and businesses during normal waking hours.  In the "Part 150" study just winding down at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, an enormous body of anectodal, and persuasive, evidence was adduced to the effect that the present flight corridors into and out of that Airport create great disruptions of people's day-time activities in their own homes, in their places of business, in public parks, and so on.  This only confirmed the substantial body of evidence to the same effect that was memorialized in affidavits in the early 1990s during the controversy surrounding the imposition of the FAA's "four-post" for Sea-Tac (without an environmental impact statement).

            The result of reliance on the LDN weighting is that removal from an airport's fleet mix of a handful of Stage II aircraft operating at night will produce a specious but almost meaningless reduction in the reported average sound level.  Some people disturbed at night have been benefited, at the same time that thousands of other people are experiencing sharp increases in day-time intrusive noise.  In terms of actual measurements and computer simulations, the virtual elimination of Stage II aircraft at Sea-Tac was determined by the Airport's noise consultant (Paul Dunholter) to have resulted in a reduction of between 2.5 and 3 dB (LDN).  Proceedings of the PSRC Expert Arbitration Panel, 22 February 1996, p. 48.  While this plots out nicely on a map, it means very little to the perceptions of those on the ground.  The exclusive use of the weighted average helps to explain why Sea-Tac Airport and the FAA can claim that fewer people are affected by Sea-Tac related noise while at the same time the number of people (and groups) actively and persistently complaining has gone up sharply, and the complaints come from ever-more widespread areas.

            It is clear to us that the DNL weighting does not correspond to actual experience of people on the ground in our area.  Night-time intrusions are not the principal source of problems for the people and groups active on this issue here.  At the very least, if maps are to be produced with the weighting factor, then maps also need to be produced that do not use the weighting factor.

            2.  The "Schultz curve” (based on the 65 LDN contour) is not a reliable predictor of who is and who is not seriously impacted by overflight noise, & continued reliance on the “Schultz curve” is a mistake.

            (43819 – Sec. 4.2 Assessment Methodologies)

            2.1  The curve is at best a blunt tool.  The continued reliance on the "Schultz curve" to predict who will be "highly annoyed" by aviation-related noise is misplaced.

            In the first place, as Dr Sanford Fidell has pointed out, "there is no evidence that it's a causal predictor, merely just a correlate."

            In the second place, the "Schultz curve", as is well known, is not the result of field research amongst people who find aviation-related noise to be an unwanted & intrusive phenomenon.  It is, instead, the result of lumping together a large number of unrelated studies, most of them not having to do with commercial jet-plane overflights.

            The version of the curve presented in the Policy is so inaccurate as to be actively misleading.  The original plotting of data does not present the smooth curve that appears at 65 F.Reg. 43820.  Rather, the data points are all over the chart.  See Exhibit 4 to these comments – a copy of Fig. 1, p. 6, "Social Survey of Community Response to Noise Exposure near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport", BBN Technical Report 8070, 18 April 1995.  The BBN report was submitted to the Expert Arbitration Panel of the Puget Sound Regional Council.  The figure is a summary of the data plots from more than 400 communities world-wide.  It is from such data that the "Schultz curve" is derived.  Readers are invited to compare that plot with the figure in the Federal Register previously cited.  It is really very questionable to concerned citizens and civic groups whether the curve reports anything at all;  noise experts speak of it as a "meat ax" "the best we have", and so on.  But such experts do not believe that it is the be-all and end-all of tools for analysis of community noise impacts.

            2.2  Actual independent research – a better way.  To measure the likelihood that people on the ground will perceive themselves as significantly impacted by aviation-related noise, one needs first of all to conduct actual research with affected people.  It would be useful to plot noise hotline complainants on the map, and to plot other data reflecting expressions of noise intrusion (letters to the editor, attendance at "Part 150" hearings and open-houses, membership in groups working to reduce overflight noise, &c). 

            RCAA is of opinion that actual surveys would produce results showing serious intrusions on people's personal and business lives far, far outside the 65 LDN contours, and unrelated to the "Schultz curve".  We are confirmed in that opinion by our observation of how strenuously the Port of Seattle resisted all efforts to draw conclusions from one such study during the Expert Arbitration Panel proceedings (part of the approval process for the current Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Master Plan Update)—see November 1995 proceedings of the Panel-- and the Port's resistance to having further such studies done after the conclusion of the Expert Arbitration Panel process

            2.3  "Schultz curves" NOT based on LDN?  We do not say that a "curve" based on actual surveys of people intruded upon by aviation-related noise would be valueless.  Quite the contrary:  such a curve, or a series of such curves, produced by independent and qualified experts (not by Federal bureaucrats), on the basis of extended and serious field work, relying on all available noise metrics, could be quite useful in predicting intrusive impacts from further airport expansion.

            People active in anti-noise activities in our area regard the TA and SEL metrics as being much more predictive than the 65 LDN metric upon which the existing "Schultz curve" is based.  This is no surprise, given that the LDN metric was developed to assess impacts from relatively steady noise sources (freeways), rather than episodic and high-peak noise sources, such as commercial jet aircraft. 

            Therefore, we suggest that FAA policy should mandate development of curves based on 65 dB (without the DNL weighting), and on such other metrics as SEL, TA, and Leq.

            3.  Expulsion of civilian populations is not a good way to deal with increasing aviation-related noise.

            (43804 – Sec. 2;  subsec. 2.1 Aviation Noise Goals, Goal 3

            3.1  Traffic growth will overtake benefits.  Removal of people from airports' perimeters (Goal 3) is a losing proposition, for as traffic and noise increase at the existing airports, the noise perimeter will continue to expand.  This will be true even after the elimination of Stage 2 aircraft, for traffic increases will overtake that limited benefit.  This problem will become exacerbated as interested citizens, groups, and municipalities apply SEL, TA, and Leq measurements to their noise problems, which will increase the areas that can be identified as seriously impacted.

            In this regard, there is a serious disconnect between the stated goals of the Policy here reviewed and the apparent long-term plans of the FAA for airport expansion.  During last Summer's "delay" crisis, it became obvious that the FAA's plan for dealing with delays caused by capacity overloads is to proceed ahead with long-standing plans to add a runway (or two) to each of the 25 or so busiest airports in the U.S.  Most of these runways will require new land acquisition, for in most instances there simply is not room on existing campuses to squeeze in another runway.  Most of the projects will bring flight corridors over new areas (as, e.g., the new runway at Minneapolis – St. Paul, or Seattle-Tacoma).  Is it not evident that if campuses expand and new flight corridors are created (or existing ones expanded), there will be new populations exposed to noise, who in their turn must be expelled from their homes?  This simply creates again the problem that is supposedly to be solved by expelling people from the (old) 65 LDN zones.  As a general principle, applicable here, one rarely solves a problem by re-creating the circumstances that caused the problem in the first instance.  Is there any end in sight for such a process?

            3.2  Expulsion unfairly permits FAA and airports to "externalise their costs".  In addition, this policy puts the burden of dealing with an airport's noise problem squarely on the backs of innocent by-standers, individuals and communities alike. 

                        -- Unfair impacts on families.  What social principle mandates that airport operators and the FAA should be able to externalize the costs of their noise-creating activities by expulsion of the people who suffer most from that noise?  What justice is achieved by such a technique?  It may be argued that FAA will require the airport operator to compensate the displaced residents, but we can assure the FAA that such compensation is never adequate.  How does one value the loss of a long-cherished retirement home?  the loss of a lifetime's plantings and unique improvements?  the loss of one's friends, neighbors, relations, neighborhood, local businesses?

            And where are the expelled residents to relocate?  The airport operator will say that it has only to pay the depreciated value of homes whose market worth has been sharply diminished by the airport's noise and fumes.  Where, then, with fewer-than-expected dollars in hand does an elderly displaced couple remove? 

            In the largest & most populous county in the Central Puget Sound subregion (King County), a rigorous urban growth boundary prevents construction outside the existing cities of new, single-family homes with the ordinary yards found in the immediate Sea-Tac area -- except for the very wealthy, who can buy multi-acre lots.  Within those cities, very little land is available for new single-family construction.  So, the removal of population either forces the residents to relocate into another county, State, or country, or (very much against their wishes), into apartment buildings in the cities.

                          -- Unfair impacts on local government.  How does FAA propose to reimburse local governments for partial destruction of their tax bases?  We assume that the situation is the same in other jurisdictions as it is here.  All large airports are owned by governmental entities that are exempt from real-estate tax.  The real-estate tax is the fundamental revenue source for county, city, and school-district governments, and is an important revenue source for the central State government.  As airports expand their holdings by buying out and zoning out the present residents and small, non-airport-related business near-by, the airports take more and more land off the tax rolls, and visibly diminish the tax revenues of the near-by governments.  This is especially onerous when the real-estate tax is the sole source from which those governments can retire bonded indebtedness (the ordinary situation in our jurisdiction, especially for school districts).  This is even more onerous when the only source for increased current revenues is a levy on real estate (a short-term additional property tax used for current expenses).  It is such levies that pay for a great part of the maintenance, upkeep, upgrading, and reconstruction of the public schools in this jurisdiction.  And when, as in the case of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, the airport creates noise problems – learning problems -- inside classrooms, forcing a school district to extraordinary expense to overcome the impacts of the airport, there is a "double whammy":  costs go up and the means to pay those costs go down. 

            In many instances where the Federal government takes private property off the tax rolls, a system of compensating payments comes into play, designed to balance out the lost revenue.  But we are unable to see that any such measures are proposed in the Policy.  So, the FAA and the Airport place the economic burden of their noise-generating activities on other government bodies.

            If the Port simply condemned parcels of real property of a local school district, water district, sewer district, city or county, the law would require full compensation to be paid, even to the extent of replacement value (rather than market value).  Highline School District v. Port of Seattle, 87 Wash.2d 6, 548 Pac.2d 1085 (1976);  PUD 2 v. State, 58 Wash.2d 873, 875, 365 Pac.2d 22 (1961).  But no provision under our law exists to require a condemnor to compensate other governmental agencies for lost tax revenues.  Would FAA fund (reimburse) such payments by an airport operator, were they to be mandated by the Legislature?

                        -- Purpose of re-zoning mis-stated.  While the Policy presents re-zoning and acquisition as noise-mitigation measures, we perceive them as something else.  While the expelled residents no longer experience noise at their former locations, the noise continues.  What actually happens is that the airport operator acquires a lot of new real property at other people's expense, and the operator then converts that property into additional inventory in its commercial-real-estate business (which competes, free of real-estate tax, with other commercial-realty businesses in the private sector).  In the guise of helping people, this Policy inflicts real, irreparable harm on the displaced folks and rewards the airport with another subsidy. 

            3.3  Inappropriate rôle for FAA.  It is not the Federal government's rôle to tell localities to drive out their populations in order to create clear zones for growing airports, nor is it realistic to expect most cities affected by airport operations to agree to self-destruct. 

            3.4  Remedy of dubious effiacy.  No-one can reliably predict whether exclusionary zoning can or will be imposed on airport communities by other entities in their respective States, or whether any airport community will agree to partial dismemberment.  Therefore, as a noise remedy, Federally-suggested rezones do not seem to be a particularly reliable tool

            3.5  Zoning remedy not helpful when attempted.  Our area has had experience with zoning as a prospective remedy for future aviation-related noise.  It has not worked.  Decisions to enact such zoning require the active participation of FAA and the airport owner to provide guidance to the zoning authorities.  If zoning is undertaken as the result of that guidance, the beneficial effects are only as good as the reliability of the information from FAA and the airport owner.  Where the zoning is undertaken as the result of a joint study, which was the case in south-west King County in the 1970s, the result is very like a contract:  the zoning authorities say, in effect, we will permit this and this, and forbid that and that, in reliance on the assurances that we have been given by you, the airport owner, and you, the FAA, (1) that this will actually work, and (2) that your plans for the future are consistent with what you are asking us to do.  In the instant case, the FAA and the airport assured the zoning authorities that there were no plans in the foreseeable future for physical expansion.  Zoning was enacted on the basis of those assurances, enormous investments in real property were permitted, community plans were developed in detail, school buildings were kept in service, to list but a few of the actions that were undertaken in reliance on the word of the FAA and the Airport.  What was the result?  The zoning authorities lived up to their end of the bargain, but the FAA and airport operator did not.  Less than 20 years later – a very short time indeed, in community planning, or in the useful life of homes and business structures, or streets, or  utilities -- FAA and the airport started to plan for expansion.  They now have laid out, have approved, & have begun to implement, plans for a huge expansion, including:  a third, 8500-foot runway;  acquisition of hundreds of acres of land;  displacement of many hundreds of residents;  demolition of over 400 single-family homes; displacement of businesses;  institution of new flight corridors;  a prospect of more noise and noise in new locations.

            The zoning remedy is only as good as the good faith of the people on the aviation side of the bargain.  The South-West King County experience should serve as a warning to all other communities that are unwise enough to rely on the representations of airport operators and FAA.

            4.  The most effective noise-abatement policy from FAA would be one supporting construction of new remote airports in preference to expansion of in-city airports.

            (43805 – Policy Element 1:  Aircraft Source Noise Reduction)

            The Policy touts reduction of aviation noise "at the source" as its most important policy element.  "At the source" in this context means redesigning jet engines so that they run less noisily.  While we agree that this is both useful & necessary, we disagree that this is the most important tool available for reducing noise impacts on civilian populations.

            We are skeptical of the good faith of the FAA in the design-down endeavor.  FAA is an agency of the U.S. federal government, which is the principal opponent of phase-out of hushkitted Stage 3 aircraft, which is the principal government dragging its feet in the effort to develop Stage 4 standards.  We are well aware of what European governments are trying to achieve, and how antagonistic to those reasonable goals the FAA is.  Putting one's hopes into Stage 4 aircraft coming into operations soon as the result of the FAA's efforts would be naïve.  We note that the Policy implies that FAA will create Stage 4 standards unilaterally, without co-operation with the European Union and outside the framework of the ICAO.  ("The FAA plans to set new standards by early in the next century.")  We also note that "early in the next century" is, at best, 100 years away. 

            Stage 4 aircraft promise no relief in the foreseeable future – perhaps that is the reason for the FAA's illusory support for Stage 4.  There is no time-table for creating the new standard, no time-table for requiring phase-in of the new standard, no time-table for mandatory phase-out of real Stage 3 and Stage 2/3 aircraft.  The experience with the Stage 2 phase-out is not encouraging.  As of this date, numerous Stage 2 aircraft still fly routinely in the U.S. and Europe.  True, these Stage 2 aircraft are supposedly hushkitted to Stage 3 standards, but they are still flying, still spreading their noise far & wide.  The public perceives, & perceives correctly, that hushkitted Stage 2 aircraft are still unendurably noisy.  Furthermore, we are not aware of any timetable for retiring them from the fleets of U.S. carriers.  Assuming that agreement were reached on Stage 4 standards at some far distant future time, how long will Stage 3 aircraft continue to be operated in the U.S.?  The Policy gives us no guidance.  But experience, & economic common sense, suggest that Stage 3 aircraft will operate until they are entirely worn out.

            Industry sources continue to point out, with considerable justice, that enormous sums of money are tied up in Stage 2/3 aircraft that still – but for noise – have many years of useful life remaining to them.  Therefore, the industry protests, mandatory phase-out of 2/3 aircraft would be an economic disaster for airlines now operating such craft.  Will we not hear virtually identical arguments when the issue is Stage 3 aircraft, minimally, & nominally, hushkitted to rock-bottom Stage 4 standards?  And will not the investments in Stage 3 aircraft be far greater than the investments in the smaller Stage 2 aircraft of years gone by?  We see nothing in the Policy that would offer the slightest inducement to any commercial operator to phase out either existing 2/3 aircraft or the 3/4 aircraft of the future.

            It is noteworthy that the Policy (unaccompanied as it is by an environmental impact statement) proffers no guidance as to the measured-noise reductions to be expected if/when FAA unilaterally creates a U.S.-only Stage 4 standard.  Instead, we are given really very dubious goals (p. 43806, 'Stage 3 Transition'), for big noise reduction on the basis of undefined, unknown (imaginary?) future technology.  This would be marvellous if it were true.  But -- the Policy tells us that this program "is to identify noise reduction technology to reduce the community noise impacts of future subsonic airplanes by 10 dB (relative to 1992 technology) by the year 2001."  It is not clear whether the technology is to be identified by 2001, or whether the reduction is to achieved by 2001.  No such reduction is in prospect.  This is written in October 2000 – we have yet to hear that any of this future technology has been "identified".  If "identified", we see no time-table for introducing it, or for mandating it, or for removing non-complying aircraft from the fleet mix.  This is not a policy that offers any short-term relief, that offers no time-table for achieving any relief at all.  This cannot be described as a serious noise-abatement policy.

            We also note that the Policy (p. 43806, 3rd column) proposes to legitimize supersonic aircraft in the U.S., operating (forever?) to existing Stage 3 standards, not to hypothetical future Stage 4 standards.  In other words, if the Policy is not changed, the FAA will exempt future supersonic aircraft from future Stage 4 noise restrictions.  What does the FAA suppose that the fleet mix of the future will be with such an exemption in place?

            For the foregoing reasons, and others, we strongly support a different principal policy element as the one having the greatest potential beneficial impact – a major change in the FAA's policies for airport expansion. 

            In our view, the "source" of aviation-related noise is really two-fold – (1) the airports, and (2) the overflights.  However quite, however noisy, a jet engine, for most people it is not a problem till it is mounted in an aircraft that flies near enough them to be an intrusive noise source.  The problem, then, is a problem of the location of flight corridors.  By this we mean the approaches and take-off patterns – where jet planes are flying at, say, 6000 to 7000 feet or lower, low enough that their noise intrudes on land occupants below.

            Minor adjustments to flight corridors and to flight procedures are feasible, and in some instances afford some temporary relief from overflight noise.  No permanent, important relief can be achieved with these measures, however:  the aircraft still fly, noisily, over the surrounding cities.  Only where an airport has open deep water, mountains, (or, very rarely, undeveloped land) to one side or another that can be used as the site of all take-offs can a flight corridor change grant long-lasting relief.  These circumstances are hard to find.

            Flight corridors must begin or end at an airport.  So the location of airports is at the root of the problem.  Most of the busier airports in the U.S. are located in the midst of dense conurbations.  Sea-Tac's conurbation extends over five spacious counties, and it is by no means the biggest.  Most major airports have outgrown their campuses, have outgrown their runways, and in some instances, have outgrown their supporting infrastructure.  Most of these airports are generating increasing volumes of intrusive noise, which in turn is producing the growth of airport-concern groups in the major metropolitan areas (representing populations greatly in excess of the 500,000 mentioned earlier).  So long as these airports are allowed, encouraged, and subsidized to continue to expand, whether physically, operationally, or both, the aviation noise problem will grow. 

            Thus we hold that new remote airports on the Denver model are to be preferred to expansion of in-city airports.  This applies to at least to Chicago, St Louis, Boston, and Sea-Tac, and may well be the case in many other locations.  Sooner or later, the country will need big airports to accommodate the big planes of the future.  These airports ought to be located far enough from existing dense settlement, with well-designed campuses, so that airport and community will not (again) grow to each other's boundaries.  Tinkering with flight corridors, expulsion of residents, long-term (& 'iffy')  redesign of jet engines and hypothetical 'new technology', very long-term phase-outs of obsolete aircraft -- all these measures offer no relief in the foreseeable future, and each and all run the severe risk of being more than offset by growth in air traffic.

            This is not a new position for our organization.  In 1998, in response to the FAA's published proposal to become the agency that would tell land-use planning agencies what to do, we wrote on 21 June 1998, in part:

      Our conclusion is that the aviation noise problem would be best addressed by a reversal of FAA's present policy of encouraging & enabling great increases in air traffic at existing urban and suburban airports.   FAA should not subsidize increases in capacity at airports whose operations impact existing built-up residential communities.  FAA should urgently encourage, support, and even direct the expansion of rural airports.  Tinkering with Federal housing programs, attempting to secure rezoning of built-up communities now coming under flight corridors, and meddling with local sovereignty over land use, will not do much to reduce impacts.  It is not practical to relocate whole cities to accommodate growth in aviation. It is much more realistic to direct airport (aviation) growth to more appropriate sites.

            Nothing has occurred to change our view on this subject.  The FAA's best noise-abatement policy would be, should be, to curtail growth of noise at the source, at the airports, and to work vigorously to direct aviation growth to new, better, remote locations.

            5.  The stated goal of using of new technologies to mitigate noise impacts is not consistent with the physical realities.

            (43805 – Goal 2)

            The talk in the new policy (Goal 2) about using GPS and other advanced technologies is not consistent with the realities of airport geography.  The underlying assumption that GPS technologies will permit the use of new, no-population flight corridors, for example, is questionable in many locations:  the airports in many places are in the middle of large conurbations, and no such flight corridors can be defined, as was argued in Point 4, above, in a slightly different context. 

            In favored locations, where runways are well separated from the perimeter of the airport, it is possible that new avigational technologies will permit a tighter flight corridor above the airport itself, and immediately adjacent.  We suggest that site-by-site analysis needs to be done, with mathematical rigor, and with appropriate noise metrics, before anyone puts much hope into these new technologies as noise-reduction measures.  For the 25 or 20 busiest airports, our understanding is that no significant noise reduction is possible with new technology, unless that technology is used to disperse flights in a major way.

            In the "Part 150" study now winding down at Sea-Tac Airport, the steering committee worked diligently and persistently to find ways to disperse flights.  The committee, and the most heavily-impacted neighborhoods, understood this simple premise:  "The more flights, the more intrusive noise events".  The underlying premise with regard to new avigational technology seems to be to concentrate flights.  Concentration increases the frequency of intrusive noise events, while dispersal reduces the frequency.  Concentration makes a bad problem worse. 

            If new technology could be used, were used, to concentrate flights over noise-abatement corridors that really did not intrude on land occupants, then there might be real noise relief.  However, even in Seattle, where there are large bodies of water not so far from Sea-Tac Airport, it is really not possible to find any corridor, however complex its shape, that does not have serious undesireable impacts.  The best such corridor here would significantly increase noise in two neighborhoods (Georgetown and South Park) that clearly fall under the protection of Executive Order 12898.  No program has been proposed locally, or in the Policy, that would or could protect such neighborhoods or would provide a reasonable acquisition & relocation program for the residents (who do not want to move, anyway).

            6.  Goal to redesign air-traffic routes and corridors is unrealistic and is not compatible with actual practice.

            (43805 – Goal 4)

            The talk (Goal 4) about re-routing to avoid population where settlement patterns would permit is mostly mere talk, for as is argued in Sections 4 and 5 above, in most major metropolitan areas geography does not provide areas for noise-abatement corridors.  (The Policy mistakenly assumes that only 'patterns of settlement' are relevant – while it is the case in the District of Columbia, it is not the case elsewhere:  many parts of the U.S. have mountains.  It is not good to create flight corridors for large jet aircraft that bring them into mountainous terrain.)

            In places where geography may permit flight corridors to be located over open water (North New Jersey, for example), the stated Goal is not consistent with what local FAA offices are doing, and those office certainly act with the knowledge & support of the central administration.  In North New Jersey, it took about a decade just to get the local FAA folks to agree to sit down with the local authorities.  If it takes 10 years to get to the table, how long will it take to get to an agreement?  In the case of Sea-Tac flight corridors impacting the City of Federal Way, the City and FAA have in fact been meeting – for ten years.  And those meetings have taken place only because of the remarkable persistence of successive U.S. Representatives, and the City.  We are told FAA has yet to make a constructive suggestion during these discussions. 

            If Goal 4 is to become official policy, the central administration of FAA will need to take a much more aggressive rôle in compelling its local people to follow the policy.

            We note the use of the phrase "local consensus" as an absolute condition of changes under Goal 4.  As anyone knows who has participated in these exercises, consensus is not possible, and FAA has no mechanism to measure consensus, no meaningful public-involvement processes.  If Goal 4 is put forward with sincerity, "local consensus" needs to be removed from it.  Where else does FAA put its actions to the veto of "local consensus"? 

            7.  Missing element:  A change in the FAA's in-house rules for environmental reivw is long overdue.

            (43808 -- -- Noise Abatement in the Airport Environs)         

            Noticeably absent from the action elements in the Policy is a long-overdue change in the FAA's self-exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act for its actions and inactions in airspace above 3000 feet.  A glancing reference to this problem is found in column 3, p. 43808, where it is argued that procedures above 3000 feet "normally do not significantly influence the noise environment", while it is conceded in the very next sentence that some of these actions "can be highly controversial on environmental grounds".

            We do not understand how the FAA can know the impacts of its actions and inactions above 3000 feet, when it conducts no environmental review of them, and has so far as we know has conducted no such review at any time since NEPA came into effect.  Nor can any analysis be valid if it relies on the 65 LDN A-weighted computer-generated contour as the sole descriptor of adversely-impacted areas and people. 

            Flight procedures are controversial precisely because they bring overflight noise above land occupants.  If there were no discernible noise, there would be no significant protests.  And yet these protests continue, despite the unanimous support of the Federal appellate courts for the FAA's self-exemption.  That should send a signal!

            If there ever were any validity to the exemption, it has long since vanished, as jet aircraft have become universal in the fleets of scheduled passenger airlines, and as the number of overflights has so dramatically grown.  The FAA should now bring itself fully within the law, and conduct full environmental reviews on all its operational changes.

            The FAA should also take a look at the problem of incremental changes.  The existing policies allow all airports and all airlines to grow without restraint.  Such policies have now been shown to be responsible for huge increases in experienced overflight noise – real noise, not 65 LDN "noise".  Those policies should have been subjected to environmental scrutiny.  The FAA needs to find a way to create a "bright line" between non-impacting incremental growth and the sort of growth seen at Sea-Tac, for example, and the FAA needs to find a way to re-examine the present noise-promoting policies in place at major urban airports.  Perhaps all the existing policies should be given "sunset" dates.

Part III   Flaws in the Process

            1.  The public-involvement and public-notification process for this Policy was terrible.

The FAA needs a thorough re-examination of its methods for involving the interested public in its policy work.  The present process, as exemplified in this proceeding, is entirely inadequate.

            1.1  Local groups not notified.  As the FAA well knows, there are scores & scores of local airport-concern groups all over the U.S.  So far as we know, the FAA made no effort to communicate with any of these groups to advise them that this major policy pronouncement was about to issue.  We would be interested to know if FAA claims that it notified each of the following airport-concern groups in our area:

            Regional Commission on Airport Affairs (we received nothing from FAA)

            Airport Communities Coalition

            Seattle Council on Airport Affairs

            Citizens Against Sea-Tac Expansion

            CANE

            ECAAN (Eastside Citizens Against Air Noise)

            NSET

            ANAC

            We would like to hear from FAA whether it maintains lists of local airport-concern groups, where it publishes those lists, how they are updated, and why they are not used for notification on matters of this sort?

            1.2  Coalitions not notified.  So far as we know, FAA did not notify any of the wide-area coalitions interested in noise issues about this Policy.  We would be interested to know if FAA claims that it notified each of the following:

            U.S. Citizens Aviation Watch

            Noise Pollution Clearing House

            N.O.I.S.E.

            National Helicopter Noise Coalition

            We would like to hear from FAA whether it maintains lists of wide-area coalitions airport-concern groups and noise groups, where it publishes those lists, how they are updated, and why they are not used for notification on matters of this sort?

            1.3  Local governments not notified.  There is no indication that the FAA has made the slightest effort to discuss removal of populations with the many cities, towns, and villages that would be impacted by this Policy, in advance of promulgation of the policy, or to notify any of them that the Policy had been published.

            The very short period (initially) allowed for public response almost guarantees that impacted municipalities would not be able to respond.  The FAA likely will proclaim that silence from the municipalities should be taken as meaning that they agree – but that will not be the case.

            1.4  Notification to press.  While we learned about this proceeding, as usual NOT from FAA but from commercial newsletters, we gather that the newsletters in turn had to scan the Federal Register to learn about it – resulting in a delay in the word reaching out to the rest of the world

            We would be particularly interested to receive a copy of the press-notification plan for this proceeding, a list of the news media notified, and an indication of the method(s) of notification.  We suspect that if FAA can notify a few news outlets it can with no significant additional effort or cost notify a much wider group of interested parties.

            1.5  No public involvement in the process until the end.  To the best of our knowledge, FAA made no effort involve the public at large, interest groups of any sort, local or State governments, or anyone else who would be harmed by this Policy in the drafting of it.  The FAA just went off on its own, worked the whole thing out, and then announced it to an unsuspecting world.  How does this comport with the idea of "active, early, and continuous public involvement", which at one time was supposedly a component of the FAA's Community Involvement Policy?  We attach as Exhibit 5 a copy of what at one time was held out as the FAA "Community Involvement Policy Statement", as found in our files.  (Unfortunately, our copy is undated, and not on letterhead.  We believe that David R. Hinson is no longer the Administrator, so perhaps these policies have been abandoned or replaced.  We would like to hear in reply to these comments what the present community involvement policies are.

            The opportunity to comment on very short, VERY poor notice on a policy already cast in concrete is not much of an opportunity to become involved either early or actively.

            2.  FAA's announced comment periods are ludicrously short.  In this proceeding, as in all the others in which we have participated, the initially-announced comment periods are ludicrously short.  FAA announced not one but two major noise policies in the Summer this year.  Summer is when most neighborhood groups are in hiatus, at least in this jurisdiction.  At best, neighborhood groups meet monthly.  The announced comment periods typically are just about a month, but of course the neighborhoods DON'T KNOW about the policy at the start of the comment period – it takes weeks for the word to reach those who need it.  The difficulties for all-volunteer groups in responding on such short & poor notice to a complex Policy, containing much that is irrelevant to community concerns, are very severe.

            Groups hear that they have only a few days to craft a response and give up in despair.  They never hear in a timely way about the later extension.  Why not give the extension at the start?  Why not consider that matters involving neighborhoods cannot be dealt with by neighborhood groups in the middle of Summer or during the Winter holidays?

            These short comment periods even disable local governments.  In the instant proceeding, this organization made an effort to induce the municipal members of Airport Communities Coalition to take an interest.  They did not have the time.  If they had learned of the last-minute extension, they still would not have had the time, of course.  If it takes more than 30 days to do something, there is no gain from being told that one has 30 days for the task, and then to be told on the 29th day that one now has 30 days to do the task.  One needs to hear the real deadline at the start.  Summer is always a bad time in small governmental units.

            3.  Methods of response are antiquated.  The FAA's permissible methods for lodging comments are hopelessly antiquated.  May we remind you of what our affiliate organization, Seattle Council on Airport Affairs, wrote on this subject as part of its comments on the helicopters docket?

     In closing, we would like to express our concern about the very poor public-involvement process employed by the FAA in this matter. 

     First, we are stunned that the FAA does not recognize any of the technological advancements in communication made since Benjamin Franklin was postmaster of the British North American colonies.  Why not allow submission by facsimile (the modern equivalent of the telegram)?  Why not allow submission by e-mail?  Why require triplicate copies?  Most agencies, most businesses, and even many private citizens have copying machines these days;  perhaps the FAA should consider looking into acquiring this type of equipment.

     Second, the FAA should follow the lead of other public agencies and accept that a document is timely filed if it bears a postmark on or before the end of the comment period.  Even the US IRS allows for that.

            It is a mystery to us why FAA expects the public to bear the burden of making the copies of documents that FAA needs for its internal purposes.  Even appellate courts, about as hidebound a set of institutions as exist, have changed their rules to allow for filing of one original brief, which the court staff then copies as needed, & distributes appropriately.  Why not FAA?  There must be copying machines in your offices:  we cannot suppose that FAA can get through its daily business with no copying machines.

            We are now aware that some parts of the FAA actually do have access to e-mail now.  Why not allow commenters to avail themselves of this useful tool? 

            FAA is literally two centuries behind the rest of American society with respect to how it allows people to communicate their comments on its major policy pronouncements.

            And, as an aside, may we mention that if you can gear up to receive comments by e-mail (which will require no more work than a change in your standard paragraph in your published notices), then you can easily gear up to giving e-mail notices to interested parties.

            4.  Methods for public review of responses need to be more helpful.  We read in the official announcement that the one way to review the responses in this matter is to travel in person to Washington, D.C., and call on one of your offices there during restricted hours.  This is not very helpful – for us to be able to review other responses, someone have to make a round-trip journey of 6000 miles.  And we are a lot closer to Washington, D.C., than other places within the jurisdiction of the United States.  As an added inconvenience, there do not seem to be any copying machines in that office, so we would be expected to take hand-written notes on what we read, rather than have access to xerocopies.  How antiquated! 

            Why are these responses not published and available in print?  Why are they not routinely distributed in print to federal document depositories (major University libraries)?  Why are they not posted on the World Wide Web?  FAA may not be 'up to speed' on the use of the World Wide Web, but we know that the federal Government Printing Office is;  perhaps there could be some consultations back & forth between the two agencies? 

            And, as an aside, may we mention that if FAA were to gear up to receive comments by e-mail, they would come (in most instances) in a format that would permit ready posting on a website.

x x x