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Residents throughout the Midpeninsula and Santa Cruz area agree that airplanes going to San Francisco International Airport are creating deafening noise overhead, but multiple advocacy groups have very differing views on how to fix the problem.
More than 675 people turned out in Mountain View for the meeting Wednesday night of The Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals, which is comprised of county and city officials from the San Francisco Peninsula and tasked with addressing the airplane noise issue and reviewing a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposal to change flight routes, altitude and other local flight procedures.
The Select Committee does not have any power, but it could potentially support the FAA’s Northern California Initiative Feasibility Study or provide other recommendations for cutting airplane noise. The problem of increased noise began in 2015 after the FAA rolled out its NextGen program to modernize the nation’s air-traffic system.
The FAA proposal came out of recommendations from local airplane-noise groups and incorporates recommendations the agency deems feasible. The study analyzed six categories: airspace design and airspace; adjusting arrival procedures; nighttime departure operations; developing new departure transit points for some nighttime flights; evaluating Oakland and San Francisco departures and improving management of aircraft by flight control.
Packing the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, residents told the committee about hundreds of low-flying planes and the impact the noise has daily and at all hours on their health and mental well-being. While residents from as far away as Santa Cruz and from up and down the Midpeninsula agreed that increased airplane noise has made their lives miserable, they were not united in how the problem should be fixed.
Residents from Santa Cruz and the mountains want a flight path that was moved directly overhead to shift back to where it was prior to the rollout of NextGen. Midpeninsula groups, including Palo Alto, want the flights dispersed over a wider region and at higher elevations.
A Palo Alto noise group, Sky Posse, told the committee that the FAA plan offers “zero” tangible benefits for Palo Alto, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto. The group wants alternative flight paths, mainly using the entire length of San Francisco Bay so that planes would fly over water instead of homes.
Quiet Skies Mid-Peninsula, which is comprised largely of cities that include Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Ladera, Redwood City, parts of Woodside and Portola Valley, also favors the dispersal of flight paths. That group noted that half of the flights now are “vectored,” meaning they fly in a holding pattern as they wait to land.
The Midpeninsula group also supported Palo Alto’s assertion that the FAA plan offers solutions for only some communities and not for all.
“The Bay Area is not only where we live. The Bay Area is a way of life. Noise is a priority. There should be no sacrificial noise corridors,” Quiet Skies Mid-Peninsula representative Tammy Mulcahey said.
Sky Posse and Quiet Skies Mid-Peninsula also proposed a permanent technical working group to measure noise on the ground.
But Quiet Skies NorCal, a group with a large Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz mountains contingent, does not favor dispersal at any elevation. They said that FAA must return to the previous flight path over Big Sur, which brings flights in over land farther to the south. They argued that the new path is essentially an easement in the sky over their neighborhoods — which by law is in essence a taking of property that is impacting well-being, one Santa Cruz resident noted.
The rift between the various groups was apparent in a strongly worded statement by the NorCal group. It blasted Mid-Pen’s letter, saying it is “either technically impossible or morally wrong.” The Mid-Peninsula group opposes the NorCal group’s plan to move the flight path back to Big Sur.
Quiet Skies Woodside said that the narrowing of flight paths and the oceanic arrivals between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. have disrupted their sleep. One-third of all vectored flights on the new flight path over the Santa Cruz mountains fly over Woodside, they said.
Select Committee members said they have several questions they want the FAA to answer before they can make any recommendations. Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian, the Select Committee chairman, said he wants the FAA to identify some of the problems the agency deemed not feasible and to explore solutions. He and other members supported a Sky Posse and Mid-Peninsula proposal to bring in a group of technical experts who handle SFO flights to guide the committee while it studies the FAA plan and some of the noise groups’ alternatives. He and others asked the FAA to consider a permanent committee to address the noise issues over time.
Town of Los Altos Hills Councilman Gary Waldeck asked if a 90-day trial period of any implemented plan might be possible. He and others also want the FAA to come up with ways to measure the noise on the ground.
“The (NextGen) model has never been tested against real data,” he said, noting that noise specifications the FAA used for its NextGen model were developed in the 1970s and are now considered obsolete.
“I don’t know how FAA has done that with a straight face,” he said.
He also favored a long-range approach.
“We’re not going to solve all of these problems in a six-question answer,” he said. Rather, “it’s a lot like build a little, and test a little,” he said.
City of Foster City Councilman Sam Hindi said he wants the FAA to clarify what would happen if the Santa Cruz mountains route is moved back over Big Sur.
“Obviously, our community is divided,” he said.
(The City of Palo Alto, which now has three flight paths over the city, does not have a representative as one of the 12 principal committee members. Vice Mayor Greg Scharff does sit as an alternate, however.)
So many people wanted to give their opinions at the meeting that the stack of speaker cards was more than two inches thick. Andres Diaz of Mountain View said the FAA report is written from a “big data” perspective that does not account for the individual’s experience.
“Ask yourselves whether it seems appropriate that a plan would allow flights at 1,900 feet. That’s just one example. Think of the individual as well as the entire community,” he said.
Other residents said they no longer get eight hours of sleep a night.
“Now I’m lucky if I can get 2 1/2 hours, and that’s every single friggin’ day,” a Santa Cruz area resident said.
Another complained that the flight changes had been made without residents’ input.
“To not be heard ahead of time (before FAA implemented the plan), I feel like it’s eminent domain without any compensation,” the woman added.
The Select Committee will reconvene to take stock of all of Wednesday night’s information. The first of two working meetings will take place July 15 and 22 in the afternoon at Palo Alto City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave., Palo Alto. The time has yet to be determined. The meetings will be open to the public, but because they are working meetings, the public will not be allowed to speak.
Wow! The art of NIMBY at it’s best! The airports came first, the noise comes and goes depending on the weather and there were times in the past that the noise was worse. Study the air traffic control system in the area and you will realize that it is a very complicated system. Someone will have the noise, whether it is the people who had it before, or someone new. If you people don’t like it…move! Quit the whining and spend your energy on something good such as curing diseases, helping the homeless, stopping global warming, getting some politicians into office who will fix our more serious problems, ending war and poverty around the world or something of more substance than a little airplane noise. I’ve lived with it at fairly extreme levels and just got used to it. You should get over it or move to a place without aircraft (and the convenience of airports that are close). Maybe you can live next to the train tracks!
In response to PH. We are not talking about a few backyards here. We are talking about new flight procedures abruptly changed last year that are dramatically impacting hundreds of thousands of backyards in the Bay Area. Those of us who live here have the right to fix this mess without people like you telling us to go out and cure diseases and help the homeless.
Thanks, David. Looks like “PH” commented without bothering to read the article. (“The problem of increased noise began in 2015 after the FAA rolled out its NextGen program to modernize the nation’s air-traffic system.”)
This is a nonzero-sum-game situation. It’s untrue that “Someone will have the noise, whether it is the people who had it before, or someone new.” Many more people now have aircraft noise (all around the US) than ever did before the FAA’s new “NextGen” protocols started. And FAA (explicitly) does not do ground noise measurements, instead it used a simplistic mathematical model, now discredited because it failed to predict the new levels of noise on the ground.
Those are the things the serious citizens’ groups are trying to change: Require FAA to take responsibility for actual (not theoretical) ground noise; and use existing technology to revert to lower noise levels for *everyone* without sacrificing aircraft safety or economy. Most of the citizens’ groups share a common vision: 13 local organizations in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley, and San Lorenzo Valley signed this joint letter; together, they represent the large majority of views expressed at the recent meeting (though the article doesn’t make that very clear): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7IM4aTLnXLDMkFDWmI4bExQcjA
We live in a bustling, dense and successful part of the world. Noise and commotion come as a part of that.
If I was to freak out about something myself, it would be the antiquated FAA rules which result in all the civil aviation planes still using leaded fual (avgas). They use the best of 1950’s engine technology in a world which no longer needs it. I’ll take a bit of noise overhead over lead in the air that I breathe.
The really loud whine that some planes make is Airbus Whine. It started to be audible about a year ago when they lowered all the planes down by 1000-2000 feet. So you can clearly be disturbed by the whine. But this is just
one model of plane which has these vents under the wings which get twanged by the air passing through as
the planes cruise along down low close to the ground (not a problem as they traverse at high altitudes).
So there’s this thing that was left off in the earlier models of Airbus. It’s called a vortex generator.
So these planes need to have this “muffler” put on. If all the cars were running around without mufflers,
we’d hear a lot more from them.
Congress members are deflecting responsibility. Congress passed legislation in 2012, FAA Modernization and Reform Act, that permitted the FAA to implement NextGen procedures without any regard to their impact on humans and the environment. The Wake Recategorization or Wake Recat procedure is the key to our misery. Aircraft are brought low into denser air so they can be flown slower and closer together resulting in the skies above communities near and far from airports having been taken over as arrival and departure queues. And if there are new concentrated flight paths, don’t confuse that with fewer concentrated flights paths. These concentrated flight paths are proliferating as the goals to date that Congress, the FAA, and aviation industry are primarily concerned about are more and more flights, increasing capacity endlessly, and quicker frequency of arrivals and departures, increasing efficiency. Human health and the environment are being sacrificed for the goals and for an abstract term, the economy. What economy really means with NextGen procedures is industry profits and elected officials who ensure those profits keeping their political office. What it means for citizens is committees, roundtables, task forces, noise studies, noise complaints, initiatives, reports, surveys, and so on until citizens are worn down into silence and acquiesce to the air, noise, and visual pollution of 24/7 low altitude aircraft all over our skies. Furthermore, the ultimate strategy of elected officials, FAA representatives, and this industry is to pit groups against each other, make them fight each other for non-solutions, crumbs, and discredit themselves in the process and then say, Well, sorry but we don’t seem to be able to come up with a regional solution. And yet they rig it from the start by telling different groups to come up with solutions.
Groups must stand together and not get played liked this. The industry has the money and too many officials are bought. But we have numbers and when we use the power of those numbers we can’t be stopped. This is not the last opportunity to be heard. It’s just the last of the Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals meetings which have been limited in scope and duration. It is not a solution for, in FAA speak, the NorCal Metroplex. Keep fighting, together!
Resident:
This article addresses changes to our skies owing to new airspace procedures tied to the NextGen program rollout across the U.S, officially since 2012.
What type of pollution you are more concerned about, leaded fuel rather than noise, should not sidetrack the issue this article is about. Plus, why must concern about one form of pollution, or injustice, necessitate ignoring or denigrating concern about a different form of pollution. Both are unacceptable and harmful to human health and the environment.
PH:
NIMBY, move, airports were here first, you live near an airport, etc. have no meaning when it comes to the NextGen program. 24/7 low altitude flying is happening countrywide irrespective of population density or proximity to an airport. Off point, but I’m always trying to figure out how an airport exists before the people exist, but anyways enough of this.
Nobody should suffer this air, noise, and visual pollution. Airports are nothing without the communities in which they exist and the aviation industry must cease behaving like a dictator over them with the help of Congress making such conduct legal and the FAA acting as battering ram against the justifiable resistance of communities throughout our nation.
I have been around aviation all my life and I have heard time and again about noise in high traffic areas. For over forty years I lived under the approaches to San Francisco, San Jose, San Carlos, Palo Alto and Moffett Field. It’s been noisy and not so much depending on the years and it certainly was much louder when the Navy was active at Moffett. It just gets me when people live in urban areas and complain about noise when there are many of worse sources than aircraft, such as trains, garbage trucks, leaf blowers and other things. I don’t think people understand the history of aviation in our area and don’t have a good understanding of air traffic control or noise abatement procedures already in place. The fact remains that most of us moved to an area where aircraft noise is part of life and was here before we were. Yes it seems worse but I don’t remember many complaints until Surf Air started service to local small airports. Aircraft already have to meet noise standards and most airports have rules as to noise and curfews where needed. These things will get worked out with time but it seems people need to rush to force the issue instead of letting things settle out. I still say that the airports were here first and were usually away from cities when built, but urban sprawl surrounds them followed by complaints. No one forces us to live where we are and moving to a quieter area is one choice that people should consider. Living where we do has its price and we are the only ones to blame when we choose to live in these urban areas. I did read the article, but it doesn’t change my opinion.
I think the point is precisely that we have all been around aviation all along in the Bay Area, but prior to March 2015, most of us hardly knew it.
Since then, we get stretches of time where we very much know it, once every 2 minutes
like clockwork.
Why the sudden change? That’s the question. It was negligible. Now it is oppressive.
There’s nothing selfish or gradual about it. A switch was flipped and the plane noise became 20 or more times worse for large swaths of land 20-40 miles away from SFO regarding those planes following the SERFR arrival procedure complete with 50% vectoring as opposed to the previous BIGSUR procedure which involved much less vectoring and so covered much less ground, but also subject those below the planes to much less noise. Also, the drop in altitude brought the impact of the need for Vortex Generators on older Airbus planes home to many times more people since the planes are now low enough much further away from the airport for the whine to be “Appreciated” by thousands more people.
Oh, and then in Palo Alto and Menlo Park parallel to the Bay, some people already experienced more noise as planes got lower trying to descend to 4000 feet in the last
few miles before the Menlo Waypoint. For them, the change on March of 2015 only resulted in 10 times more annoyance than before. But that’s 10 times more noise than an already
elevated level of disturbance. For them, the SERFR and BIGSUR ground track is the SAME, but the planes fly with more power and are lower and make more noise, even if they aren’t vectored in loops around that area of the arrival procedure.
I mean, 10 times more noise, you’re right, that’s hardly anything to complain about.
Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen and County Executive Isiah Leggett July 13, 2016 letter to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta is the strongest one yet. Here’s the link to the letter
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12545369/It%20doesn%27t%20have%20to%20be%20this%20way/Van_Hollen_Leggett_Ltr2Huerta-071316.pdf
We need more elected officials to step up like this… Then hopefully we’ll see more action to stop the suffering and less talk and studies and data collection ad nauseam. In short, no more stalling tactics. Do the right thing and put people before profits!
See Palo Alto Online’s article by this title which has over 200 comments:
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/06/30/advocates-sharply-disagree-on-solutions-to-airplane-noise#comment_form