Apr 18, 2008
AIRSPACE FIGHT
FAA frustrating towns’ officials
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The Federal Aviation Administration’s lack of presence at Monday night’s community forum at the Greenwich Town Hall fueled an already blazing fire under lawmakers representing the region who vowed to stand together and continue their fight against the agency’s proposed airspace redesign, which shifts airplane traffic over Fairfield County.
“This meeting was very beneficial and very educational,” First Selectman Evonne Klein told
The Darien Times on Wednesday. “It brought people up to speed about where we are. If this proposed redesign goes through, it will have devastating effects not only on Fairfield County but on the entire state.”
Klein also said the town will be getting a DVD of the meeting to broadcast on Darien TV 79.
Many, including state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, cited last week’s defeat by the New York Department of State of the Broadwater Energy liquefied natural gas project as proof that a united front can work when fighting the federal government for a cause.
Broadwater had planned to put a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound in New York waters, east of the Iroquois pipeline. While approved, with conditions, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the project failed to show New York
officials that it is consistent with the state’s coastal zone policies.
Blumenthal said similar to the fight against the FAA, the Broadwater fight started with few participants and increased in size. He added the two causes are analogous in that each situation has better alternatives not being considered and each plan has shown “inadequate consideration of environmental impact.”
The redesign, according to FAA reports, is expected to reduce delays, fuel consumption, aircraft emissions and noise. However, some opponents say with the change in flight patterns, noise will actually increase in their neighborhoods.
Ellen Ivens, an environmental scientist with Anderson Mulholland & Associates, said Monday that there are “significant health issues that need to be raised,” and that Fairfield County is an area where sound could be doubled.
“This is not a political issue. It transcends party affiliation,” Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi told Monday’s crowd, which included close to 100 people, many of whom were politicians and their aides. “This is something that will impact all of us for years and years to come.”
“If we don’t grab a seat at the table now, if we don’t fight aggressively to be sure that the FAA does their due diligence, we will forever lose any say in this issue at all,” he added.
Robert Sturgell, acting administrator for the FAA, had been invited to Monday’s forum, sponsored by the Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning, but didn’t respond, according to New Canaan’s former first selectman Judy Neville, chief operating officer of the group.
The alliance, which formed last year in opposition to the FAA’s plan because, its members say, it will increase air traffic and amplify noise pollution in the area, comprises political leaders from local towns and cities. Included among its members are First Selectman Peter Tesei of Greenwich, Marconi (chairman), First Selectman Woody Bliss of Weston (co-vice chairman) and Klein (co-vice chairman). Other members represent Bridgewater, Danbury, New Canaan, New Milford, Norwalk, Redding, Stamford, Westport, Wilton and Pound Ridge, N.Y.
The purpose of Monday’s forum was to allow an open discussion of the issue at hand: a plan to change flight patterns in the New York-New Jersey-Philadephia region. The plan is scheduled to be implemented starting in January 2009.
“The FAA says it is implementing the new flight plan to ease air traffic congestion at New York area airports — a plan that will cause hundreds of additional flights flying low over Fairfield County, thereby increasing both pollution and noise,” a press release about Monday’s event said.
One resident questioned the alliance’s reach to the public, saying the general population needs more knowledge about what’s going on.
Educating the public is part of the alliance’s three-pronged approach to fighting the FAA. Filing a lawsuit against the federal agency and lobbying state and federal legislators to help it are other parts of the alliance’s plan.
“This is a knock-down, drag-out fight,” U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-4th) said. “There’s nothing pretty about it.”
Shays said he’s 100 percent in support of the efforts to amend the FAA’s redesign.
“We are going to have to work overtime, Republicans and Democrats, Connecticut and New York,” he added, saying the task is both a legislative and legal undertaking.
“We need to deal with this on all fronts.”
Shays suggested starting watch groups in affected towns to tally information about flights flying overhead, at what times and how low, so that the data can be compiled and relayed to the FAA in exchange for answers.
“Whatever we see now, it’s only going to get worse,” he said, emphasizing that the redesign is not yet in place.
Shays also suggested considering congestion pricing for airlines, in the hopes of lessening heavy air traffic during peak times.
For future requests, he said the alliance and those in Washington, D.C., will have to better coordinate, as he and his colleagues are not part of a lawsuit and have every right to receive information from a federal agency.
“Having Shays and Blumenthal and our state representatives there to talk about the issue and explain what the state legislature is doing was very helpful,” Klein said on Wednesday. “It’s critical for the state to fund this initiative. Although we are the most congested part of the state, this redesign will effect the entire state.
“This is an issue that is recognized on many levels, not only on the local level, but on the state and federal levels as well.”
Klein noted that Selectman Seth Morton was the only other Darien elected official at the meeting.
Since FAA officials approved its regional airspace redesign last September, the alliance and the state of Connecticut have filed suit to stop implementation of the plan. Officials in New Jersey and Pennsylvania have also sued. A resolution urging the FAA to reconsider its plan, introduced by state Sen. Bob Duff of Norwalk, who represents most of Darien, is currently waiting for consideration by members of the Connecticut General Assembly.
The Government Accountability Office is also examining the FAA’s redesign, and will release a report investigating the plan’s environmental impacts on the region and determining whether the agency followed appropriate procedures in redesigning the airspace. The report is due by July 31, Shays said.
“The redesign will require aircraft to fly longer distances producing air noise and fuel burn impact. There is nothing to suggest that the redesign will reduce delays,” Neville said. “In order to reduce delays, you either have to decrease demand or increase capacity.”
She added that the alliance has filed five requests for information from the FAA through the Freedom of Information Act, and the only response has been a notice of when plan implementation will begin. Information requested centers on the number of flights that will go in and out of area airports, the altitudes at which they’ll fly and the types of aircraft that will fly in the area.
Marconi said the FAA’s continuous and consistent “lack of willingness” to provide altitude and noise information has intensified the alliance’s frustrations.
“That perhaps has generated more the pessimism and concern that we all have,” he said.
Shays agreed that the agency’s lack of communication is not left to citizens alone.
“The FAA, the way they treat the general public, trust me, is the way they treat the members of Congress,” he said. “The company culture of the FAA is simply to not respond in any way to the public via its elected officials.
“We need the FAA to have an obligation to care about quality of life issues and an obligation to listen to the general public.”
Although not present due to prior commitments in the nation’s capital, Connecticut’s U.S. Sens. Christopher Dodd and Joseph Lieberman voiced their support via letters read by their aides. Dodd said he has also been road-blocked by the FAA on more than one occasion, and said the redesign had been developed in an “opaque manner.”
Lieberman said he looks forward to reviewing the GAO’s study, and while pleased that the FAA was looking at bettering the airspace, he was not content with the impact it would have on the area.
Klein said on Wednesday that at this point the group will be focusing on educating the public and continuing with its legal action against the FAA.
“We would like to hold forums like this in other parts of the region so people can become more educated,” Klein said. “We still need support. We are doing all that we can as elected officials right now, but we still need the support of the communities.
This is very important for people to know. We are doing everything we can, but we also need you to support our efforts.”
More information about the Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning, including how to donate to the cause, is available at sensibleairspace.org. Information about the redesign is also available at Faa.gov.
Additional reporting by Darien Times reporter Austin Amoroso.
E-mail Darien Times reporter Austin Amoroso at aamoroso@darientimes.com.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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