Cove Neighbors Press Tweed On Quality Of Life, Air

Morris Cove resident Lisa Bassani was cleaning her bedroom windows recently when she noticed a layer of black soot lining the inside — residue from operations at nearby Tweed-New Haven Airport (HVN).

“This is what we live with,” she said in her comments during the airport’s annual community meeting, held Tuesday at Nathan Hale School just down the road from where Bassani lives.

“I have two kids, and I just had that thought: Oh my god, we have to get out of here.”

Bassani’s two children — one a student at Nathan Hale School and the other in high school — are among those directly affected by the airport’s impact on the neighborhood air quality. ​“The pollution just hangs in the air,” Bassani said. ​“We tell you this all the time, but it largely goes unaddressed. What happens, in fact, is you just keep increasing the number of flights.”

Her story joined those of her neighbors at Tuesday’s latest annual Ward 18 Community Meeting, where more than 75 residents gathered in the K‑8 school auditorium on Townsend Avenue to speak directly with Tweed airport officials, city representatives, and members of the airport’s management team, Avports. 

The discussion centered on concerns about increased traffic, air and noise pollution, and the broader effects of the airport’s expansion on the surrounding neighborhoods.

The meeting was part of Tweed’s ongoing community engagement efforts amidst its expansion plans, including extending the existing runway and constructing a new larger terminal on the East Haven side of the property.

In the opening presentation, HVN Director of Community Engagement, Marketing, and Communications Tom Cavaliere emphasized the airport’s growing contribution to the regional economy. Officials project that, by 2030, Tweed could generate over $100 million of construction-related economic impact in New Haven County while creating over 2,000 jobs.

Morris Cove neighbors stressed that Tweed’s expansion plans come at the expense of their comfort, health, and safety. Tuesday’s meeting offered an opportunity for many residents to demand greater accountability from airport and city officials, call for increased transparency, and offer their perspectives on — and potential solutions to — the same problems they have been experiencing for decades.

Beyond noise and air quality concerns, residents are increasingly frustrated by traffic congestion and growing issues with parking near the airport. Several residents reported incidents with airport travelers who park on residential streets for days at a time, then take Ubers to the terminal, occupying spaces meant for neighborhood residents. While police ticket violators, they said, city law requires a 72-hour window before a vehicle can be towed.

“I think what people are asking for is, enforce the law! I’m very happy to have someone get ticketed and towed quickly so that people know that you in the city and at the airport care about the people who are living with this,” Toni Criscuolo, who lives just a few streets down from Tweed on Mansion Street, said of the consistent problems with airport-related traffic and parking. ​“I don’t think that they’re asking for something ridiculous — a lot of these issues that people have should be answerable.”

Mayor Justin Elicker acknowledged the issue but offered little in the way of immediate solutions, noting that any change to the city’s towing policy would have to be evaluated across all neighborhoods. That explanation did little to ease frustration among residents, who stated that enforcement is uneven at best — and they’re the ones paying the price. Some neighbors reported being ticketed outside their own homes, while others said visiting family members struggle to find parking, especially during holidays. 

Update: On Wednesday, Elicker told the Independent that he spoke over the course of the meeting about a number of different efforts by the city to mitigate traffic concerns around the airport. He pointed to the new traffic circle at Burr and Dean, the addition of a new TSA lane that will help people get through the airport faster, a new crossing guard at Nathan Hale School, new parking enforcement officers included in the budget, as well as City Engineer Giovanni Zinn’s meetings with leadership at Nathan Hale to talk about additional raised crosswalks.

“It’s our concern too that flights and traffic continue to increase,” Avsports spokesperson Andrew King said to the Independent Tuesday. ​“We have already spent millions of dollars in the permitting process, the designing process to get to a point where we can move the traffic. We’ll make systematic and fundamental changes that will forever remove the traffic and forever reduce the concerns you heard tonight, including the electrification of all of our ground operations.”

In the meantime, Tweed is rolling out a new Residential Indoor Air program, planning on distributing free medical-grade air purifiers to nearly 500 homes closest to the airport, aiming for a late July or early August rollout. The program comes as a direct response to concerns expressed at last year’s community meeting — although officials noted that a 2023 FAA evaluation of the airport expansion ​“issued a finding of no significant impact” and air quality monitors around the airport show very little difference from those placed elsewhere around the city.

Resident Lisa Ventura-McHugh, who lives directly across from the airport, has an entirely different experience.

“I’ve never been so sick with breathing issues,” Ventura-McHugh said. ​“Putting in an air purifier isn’t going to help us, because the fumes with the windows closed are in my living room and in my kitchen.” She also pointed to the lines of cars idling outside her home, waiting to drop passengers off or pick travellers up.

As Tweed presses forward with construction, the divide between its economic ambitions and the residents’ experiences living in the airport’s shadow remain evident. Tuesday’s meeting made one thing clear: as expansion continues, so too will the calls for accountability and a better balance between growth and quality of life.