RCAA ON-LINE LIBRARY
Schools
Issues in Brief: Impact of Sea-Tac Airport on local schools is a huge problem. Classroom learning is seriously affected by overflight noise wherever airports have grown up near schools, & the area closest to Sea-Tac Airport is no exception. Most seriously affected are the elementary, junior high, & high-school buildings of the Highline School District, 34 of them. Noise impacts in those buildings have recently been well investigated. Overflight noise in other school districts near-by the (Seattle, Tukwila, Federal Way, Tacoma districts) has not been studied.
The suggested flight corridors for the third runway would bring new noise over some of the Highline Schools, as well as schools in Seattle, both public & parochial.
Insulating schools is effective if done right, but it is always a complicated retrofit, in buildings not up to current code standards. In our climate, effective insulation makes radical changes in classroom temperatures, almost mandating whole new heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems.
Recently, Highline Schools negotiated a major mitigation program for second-runway noise. The Port of Seattle is contributing only a quarter of the funding for this program, & the Port Commissioners raised local real-property taxes to cover that cost, rather than charging it to its airport line of business. No negotiations are underway for mitigation of third-runway noise in any school district or with any private schools. Noise impacts on schools was ignored in the third-runway EISes.
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