Demanding a healthy urban environment

Any time you complain about unusual overflights in Minneapolis, unfortunate city, state and federal policies turn overflight complaints into noise complaints. Can air pollution or dangerously low or erratic flights be mollified by sound insulation? If you are complaining about an extra-loud overflight every night around 10 PM, you do not qualify for sound insulation. The disturbing noises you hear now only qualify for yhe MAC Sound Mitigation program if MAC models the exposure as 63 DNL, This usually means  by being overflown about 1,000 times a month for three years running, with the average flight's overflight noise intensity ~at 95 decibels peak and over 65 dbA for 8 seconds as typically modeled. 
Why is Minneapolis accepting this?  The same reason the City supported MSP Expansion in 1996: the people wanted something done about noise and the business interests wanted to travel easily (not really possible anymore due to TSA) and attract visitors to stadia and convention centers. 
As a bonus, the sound-insulation program provided good constuction jobs, fixed up homes and increased income tax, sales tax and propety tax revenues.
But you know, don't you, that: Quiet skies can be the "blanket" skies that increase climate change. Quiet skies are not necessarily clean skies, Quiet skies are not automatically safe skies, but the more skies are congested the less safe they are.
Skies are, however, being made noiser, more polluting and probably less safe by the FAA "eficiency" policy, a safety-risk-added, high airport cost and not-yet-ready high-tech program (Next Gen) so far badly missing  all its promised security, cost and deployment schedule goals near any urban airport, and you indirectly pay for the costs in your airfare. Also, you or your insurer or the State pay the incremental health care costs caused by pollution and climate changes due to more, lower, or less-efficient overflights.  
If you don't like it, help SMAAC. --And don't vote for candidates that support the airline-airport self-serving policies and high-profits. 

Showing 2 reactions

  • Smaac Forum Panel
    commented 2019-08-05 14:51:06 -0500
    The MAC Planning, Development and Environment Standing Committee met today and heard from staff about MSP being rated at the second-level for carbon-footprint reduction at (on) MSP, due to various laudable things such as electric vehicles, cleaner fuels, and energy-efficient buildings. But the consultant said that a higher rating is far off.
    And SMAAC mentioned that more sub-micron particulate, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and some organic aerosols were likely released from a single additional MD-90 take-off than from a month of using diesal tractors at MSP.

    We think the idea that neither the MAC, the FAA or he State of Minnesota makes an effort to reduce fuel consumpion per flight because of air pollution and global warming. Certainly more exoensive and more pollutng-per-flight operations at MSP are not “ecnomically needed” — or reasonably justified —when more passengers and operations re readily available without increasing safety risks by scheduling no more than 100 operations per hour peak (94 ops X 18 hours X 365 days is moe than 624,000 ops/year and a 20% increase in boarded passengers would be only 80 seats per operation, well below the 2018 averge gauge used at MSP, which is increasing by plan now.
  • Smaac Forum Panel
    published this page in News 2019-06-21 12:08:46 -0500