Travelers react to latest Tweed flood.
Laura Glesby Photo
Elicker, Abdussabur offer different takeaways at Jepsen mayoral forum.
Days after a rainstorm flooded Tweed airport and left passengers temporarily stranded, mayoral candidates conveyed varying takes on the airport’s economic value and environmental impact to its neighbors.
Tweed emerged as the most contentious topic raised at a mayoral forum hosted by Democratic Party Ward Chairs in Fair Haven and the East Shore on Thursday evening.
The two-and-a-half hour “Town Hall” took place at Benjamin Jepson Magnet School and drew an audience from across the city. Javier Gonzalez Villatoro provided live headset interpretation in Spanish, and a dual-language recording streamed online.
The forum featured the four candidates seeking the Democratic mayoral nomination: two-term incumbent Justin Elicker, retired police officer and anti-violence activist Shafiq Abdussabur, former prosecutor and legal aid attorney Liam Brennan, and former McKinsey education consultant Tom Goldenberg.
Lisa Bassani poses the Tweed question at mayoral forum.
Midway through the event, Morris Cove ward Co-Chair Lisa Bassani (pictured) spoke about a flood that shut down Tweed Airport on Sunday amid a thunderstorm. She asked for the candidates’ thoughts on a plan in motion for Tweed to expand its main runway, build a new four-to-six gate terminal and garage in the East Haven portion of the property, and pave the way for more flights to come in and out of the airport (which contracts with Avelo Airlines.)
The Elicker administration and the Board of Alders have supported the airport’s expansion, arguing that more air travel will grow the city’s economy. Some East Shore neighbors and environmental activists have decried the noise and environmental pollution that more planes will bring.
“On Sunday, torrential rain hit the area. Tweed Airport flooded. The terminal was shut down for hours and chaos ensued with cars lining Burr Street, Dean Street, and side streets near the airport, and in some cases with cars blocking driveways,” Bassani stated. “With scientists predicting more frequent and more severe storms of this kind, and with this airport lying in a flood-prone basin within a neighborhood that has chronic flooding issues, does the expansion of this airport in this location make sense?”
Liam Brennan and Tom Goldenberg.
Abdussabur, Goldenberg, and Brennan criticized current expansion efforts, while stopping short of saying outright that the airport should not build a new terminal. Elicker, meanwhile, stood by his administration’s support of the airport.
Goldenberg expressed support for more flights out of Tweed, but argued that the airport’s current trajectory will not help the city’s economic growth.
“I do want to create jobs. I do think we can create 50,000 jobs in the next ten years. I would want to have business flights to New Haven,” he said. “I don’t see how flights to Florida for leisure travel are helping us economically.”
He said he would prioritize mitigating traffic congestion and parking shortages as well as advocating for more funding to noise-proof neighbors’ homes.
Abdussabur joined Brennan and Goldenberg in calling for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) of the planned expansion, a more thorough audit than the hotly contested Environmental Assessment that Tweed has put forth.
Abdussabur said he was in Morris Cove on Sunday during the floods: “I saw the people lined all over the street. People walked up further in the street with their luggage in other people’s yards. The planes were sitting there. The engines were going. You could barely breathe.”
He continued: “At the bare minimum, as your mayor, the bare minimum that I can do is file that EIS.” He said that such a document would shed light on “Who’s gonna pay those medical costs? Who’s gonna pay for your housing, for the nails coming out? These things are happening and that’s environmental injustice. … Our responsibility as leaders is to always put you first over profits.”
Brennan similarly highlighted concerns about air pollution and runoff associated with the airport. Citing “the air contamination that we’re experiencing from outside the country,” alluding to smoke from Canadian wildfires, he said, “we need to do all that we can to protect our air quality inside our local area.”
“There may be a way” for him to support Tweed’s expansion, Brennan said, but he cast doubt on the promised economic benefits of the airport’s growth. “Long-term, there is economic benefit from travel. But Tweed is never gonna be the travel hub that is gonna bring economic benefit here to New Haven. The best way to develop economically is making a place a nice place to live.”
Brennan said that instead, he’s inclined to support strengthening transportation options to and from Hartford’s Bradley airport.
“Bradley does hold a lot of potential for travel that can bring in economic activity here in New Haven. It is bigger. We will never be that size. We don’t want it to be that size,” he said. “If we can make it easier to get to Bradley — or if the flights coming out of New Haven were more to hubs rather than vacation spots — that would make a much bigger difference.”
Elicker suggested that the other candidates were hedging their responses to Bassani’s question.
“I think you deserve a direct answer. Not like, ‘We should engage the community more; we should have an EIS,’ ” he said. “Do the candidates want Avelo at the airport or not? There’s a lot of dancing around this issue. I’ve tried to be really direct.”
His administration has met with Tweed’s leadership twice since Sunday about the flooding incident, he said. “Avelo could have canceled the flights earlier” or set up “another staging area for people” waiting for delayed flights. (On Sunday, passengers “didn’t even have access to a bathroom,” he said.)
Elicker reframed the flooding as “the very reason that we need to move the terminal to the East side.” Currently, he said, “The airport serves as a bowl. When there’s serious rain events and high tide, there’s nowhere for that water to go except for the airport. When we expand… there will be more places for that water to go and less flooding in neighborhoods.” He pointed out that future terminal will be elevated out of the floodplain.
Elicker : climate change is real and is caused by burning fossil fuels.
Also Elicker : more air travel will grow the city's economy.
Tweed : don't worry about parking, try our new ferry service