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The Port of Seattle proposes to start
a $3.6 million home-insulation program for 98 single-family
residences in the cities of
Des Moines and Burien, to
mitigate possible future noise impacts from the third-runway
project. The program is eligible for federal grants of
up to 80 percent of total costs, from two different funds
administered by the FAA. Eligible homes are predicted to
experience an increase of 1.5 dB noise or more, with the
proposed third runway in operation, in year 2010. The noise,
as usual, is based on the widely-criticized DNL metric,
a measure of average noise, as calculated by a computer
model.
In Des Moines, the program will be limited to homes built
before 3 December 1986. In a tract that was rural King
County but has recently been annexed to Burien, the program
will be limited to homes built before 6 September 1987.
It is unusual for the Port to
start any noise-insulation program before new noise is
created. An RCAA spokesperson
commented, "This may simply be another piece of the
Port's
propaganda game, designed to create an impression that
the runway will inevitably happen. Or perhaps it's a way
to keep some of their staff on the payroll (with mostly
federal money) during a period of relative inactivity. Certainly,
if the runway gets built, far more than 98 homes will suffer
from hundreds of new overflights a week, and will need
major noise insulation."
The Port has not publicly identified any of the properties
that would be eligible for the program. An examination
of previously published maps of future noise contours shows
that new noise above 1.5 dB is projected for a narrow strip,
2-3 blocks wide, running from approximately So. 227th in
Des Moines up to roughly So. 135th, lying west
of a meandering line west of 16th So. Curiously,
at least half of this zone is south of the southerly end
of the proposed runway. This seems inconsistent with the
Port and FAA statements that the runway would hardly ever
be used for take-offs to the south.
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