Hot Topic: More Airplanes Over Our Towns?

It's hard for me to care about things that have not yet happened, but I am glad other people in the area are more proactive.

People air FAA frustrations
By Neil Vigdor Greenwich Time 07/02/2008

NORWALK - Fairfield County residents vented their frustrations over aircraft noise last night to Christopher Dodd, Christopher Shays, Richard Blumenthal and other elected officials during a public hearing on the Federal Aviation Administration's controversial rerouting plan for the region.

Wilton resident Joe Farhi shook his head in disbelief when told the plan could increase the number of flights over the area by 300 to 500 per day, complaining that he can't enjoy the peace and quiet of his yard 90 percent of the time.

"I can't imagine it getting any worse than it is. It's ridiculous,"

Farhi told federal, state and local officials during the two-hour hearing at Norwalk City Hall.

The new routes are supposed to save 200,000 hours of delays per year at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York, Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey and Philadelphia airports by 2011, according to the FAA. One controversial aspect of the plan would shift arrivals for LaGuardia Airport east over Fairfield County from the current track over Westchester County.

Allan Weinstein, a Pound Ridge, N.Y., resident, told officials that he is worried about the plan's impact on quality of life.

"People move to these communities for quiet, peacefulness and to raise their children," Weinstein said.

Dodd, the state's senior U.S. senator, threatened during the hearing to cut the FAA's budget if the agency doesn't delay its controversial plan to reroute air traffic over the region.

Dodd accused the FAA of ignoring two letters he sent them more than a year ago expressing grave concerns over the plan and requesting information on the number of flights rerouted over Connecticut, their frequency, altitude and noise levels.

"That is arrogance," Dodd said. "We demand some answers to these questions."

A message seeking comment from the FAA was left with an agency spokeswoman.

A 13-town alliance that includes Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich sued the FAA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second District of New York in early November, arguing that the agency failed to take residents' noise and other environmental concerns into account when developing new flight paths.

Connecticut filed a similar lawsuit against the FAA the same day over the plan, which was adopted by the federal agency in September and could start being implemented in January 2009. The lawsuits are being consolidated into a single case.

"Let no one doubt, when the state of Connecticut files a lawsuit, we don't walk away from it," said Blumenthal, the state's attorney general and a Greenwich resident. "As your lawyer, I want to be blunt and honest with you, the FAA is no pushover."

The FAA would be forced to wait until the lawsuits are resolved before rerouting planes under an appropriations amendment that Dodd could propose later this year

If the controversial plan is allowed to go forward, "what is today an outcry, will be a revolution on your hands," Dodd said at a news conference earlier in the day.

Shays, the longtime congressman for Fairfield County, said he regularly gets complaints from constituents about aircraft noise.

"They are literally having to go inside on a Sunday and (can't)) enjoy their homes because the noise is ridiculous," Shays said.

The FAA has said that it held more than 100 public hearings before adopting the plan, including one in Stamford. That was of little consolation to Fairfield County officials, however.

"We all want to reduce delays, but this is really not the way to solve (this)," Westport First Selectman Gordon Joseloff said at a news conference earlier in the day. "Arrogance has no place in government."

Dodd questioned the fruitfulness of the hearings, saying that he was told that they were more informational.

"Welcome to the hearing that the FAA never had," Dodd said. "All they did was make us listen to them."

The 13-town Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning claims that noise levels will increase dramatically throughout much of southwestern Connecticut, quadrupling in places such as New Canaan, Wilton and Ridgefield, if the new routes are allowed to go into effect.

Darien Selectman Callie Sullivan said residents in her town are also concerned about the environmental effects of routing planes at lower altitudes over the busy Interstate 95 corridor.

"We have a tremendous amount of pollution," Sullivan said at a news conference earlier in the day.

One factor that could have a major influence on how the alliance proceeds is the upcoming release of a report on the new routing plan by the federal Government Accountability Office. The report, which is due July 31, will look at whether the FAA followed the proper process for developing the plan, as well as the environmental and economic impact of the new routes.