Storm Passes; Flooding Lessons Sought

Just last night, Mayor Elicker and Airport Director Sean Scanlon presented the plan on paving 1,000 feet of runway and constructing new terminal and additional paving in the Tweed bowl.

The more they pave, the more the streets and residential homes will flood.

Unchecked climate disorder will only make this worse in time.

It's time to stop building on wetlands. Mother Nature is calling us out.

Welcome to global warming. Record breaking days of heat, days of severe storms and increased hurricane/tropical storm impacts like flooding and wind.
The solution? Plant more trees, use less fossil fuels.

Last night I too sat in on the zoom meeting on Tweed, which I came across last minute on Facebook.
Over 100 people were signed in to discuss plans that had been released 24 hours before.
If you think Tweed is an issue that only affects the immediate neighborhood there, you are wrong. It affects Fair Haven and Fair Haven Heights, wildlife habitats and our water sheds.

My one rental property is across from Tweed, I just got back from setting up an additional pump because the basement was flooding.

Patricia, Connecticut is a densely populated state. Building another airport would be extremely costly and catastrophic to whatever large state forest you would have to cut down to build it.

The plans for Tweed will have no impact on the surrounding environment, and in fact will help make the surrounding area much more resilient to climate change, including by being less susceptible to flooding.

Having that kind of high-quality environmental infrastructure in the East Shore area will cause property values in that area to double, though. Perhaps Tweed should contribute to an affordable housing fund so that city cops and teachers can continue to afford homes in that part of the city?

Decibel app to measure overhead noise? Do you mean the incessant sound of fireworks and sirens and motor vehicle exhaust systems? Given the choice I'd welcome the sound of jet engines as an improvement.

@anonymous: Please don't try to gas light me.
@browntowne: all the noise you cite violates the current Noise Ordinance which I researched years ago. Let's add the emergency vehicles to the list of noise invaders. Surely there must be alternatives.
But as for your list, the NHPD now has meters. Enforcement is the issue.
Why have a law on the books if you aren't going to enforce it?

So, did the runway flood, or just the terminal area?

Lived in CT all my life. Storms come and go. Not buying into the warming hysteria. It's called weather.

@brownetowne PREACH! I can hear the racing on Rt.80 every weekend. If it's not Rt.80, then up I-91. Trains, planes and automobiles. It's the planes I hear the least. Sitting outside in the evening here in Foxon; I hear sirens continually. It's like one ambulance pulls into the ER just in time for another to go on a call so there's no break. Additionally, there is the police NOT chasing the ATVs, motorcycles or racers and firetrucks going to accidents or other calls. The occasional plane flying overhead (low enough so I can read letters under the planes as they fly over) would be a blessing compared to the cacophony I have to deal with on a regular basis.

The lesser of two evils is still evil. Those who think they will prefer more and bigger planes overhead ( and the occasional deadly crash) to the constant noise of cars/bikes/illegal mufflers/PD/FD/EMT will rue the day they made that wish.

The airport will disturb many people with noise and pollution but what will disturb them more is the bill that NH is gonna stick to us. Why are we bonding for Tweed when someone else is supposed to manage it for 43 years? Is this just a smokescreen to allow public payment for a few big shots who want the airport and are hiding behind a few more suckers who want some direct flights somewhere?

So much for the "renovation" that solved the water issue-- yeah those floodgates and diversion of the creek really worked for Tweed today.

Like I Said Before.

posted by: THREEFIFTHS on May 7, 2021 1:08pm

For those of you who own houses near here.I hope you are ready to deal with this.

Queens neighborhoods top the list in the first analysis of homes on the market with excessive airplane noise.

If you're looking to rent or buy in Queens, you have a one in 10 chance of landing somewhere you'll hear a near-constant roar of low-flying planes, according to a first of its kind analysis by real estate search platform Localize.city

> Brookville, Howard Beach and Flushing had the highest percentage of homes for rent and for sale (96 percent, 88 percent and 66 percent, respectively) that suffer from excessive airplane noise

It can be hard to escape the roar of low-flying airplanes in many neighborhoods throughout New York City.

"We can't sleep. Our kids can't study," said Janet McEneaney, Bayside resident and activist with a group called Queens Quiet Skies. "If you've ever had a really bad earache or toothache, that's what it feels like. While it's happening, you can't think about anything else and you just want it to go away."

Such noise has indeed been linked to cardiovascular disease, anxiety, sleep disorders and impaired learning ability, studies have found.

https://www.localize.city/blog/queens-neighborhoods-top-the-list-in-the-first-analysis-of-homes-on-the-market-with-excessive-airplane-noise/

Noise from planes flying over my building 'tortured' me: suit

A Queens woman who lives near Kennedy Airport claims she's been "tortured" by the airplanes screaming over her building.

Lora Jones, who lives in the 13-story Dayton Towers in the Rockaways, says she was unable to study for her certified public accounting exam or watch television because of hundreds of flights a day.

https://nypost.com/2017/09/30/noise-from-planes-flying-over-my-building-tortured-me-suit/

Michael22, I gather you did not see that last month was the hottest June in North America for the period that records have been kept, which goes back to the late 19h century. https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/north-america-just-experienced-the-hottest-june-ever-recorded/976546 Globally, all ten of the hottest years during this period have occurred since 2000. https://www.noaa.gov/news/2020-was-earth-s-2nd-hottest-year-just-behind-2016. We still have weather, but this is climate change.

Heather, reducing fossil fuel use and planting trees are key elements in addressing climate change. To do the former, we will need to put a price on carbon, through emission limits or a carbon tax. This will hit poorer people harder, proportionately, than richer people. There are ways of mitigating this hit, but not eliminating it.

Kevin McCarthy- I'm not a fan of carbon tax, because it impacts the poor and lower middle class disproportionately. The rich corporations will just buy their way to continue polluting. Our federal government should be subsidizing and enforcing the phasing in conversion of all transportation to electric/hybrid energy, and requiring solar panels and rain water collection systems on rooftops of most commercial, industrial and government buildings, and require the planting of trees and other green plants for carbon capture and cooling the planet, and reducing hard scaling like paved areas such as surface parking lots and mitigating storm runoff and flooding with green spaces that double as public parks. If we don't do something drastic and soon, we will be unable to stem a cataclysmic extinction level event of most of earth's species, including humans and their food sources.

This is a joke, right ??

Com'on people - it's common sense that the more rural/wild areas you eliminate and replace with concrete or asphalt man made construction in the name of so called progress, the more problems you will have down the road with things like flooding !!

This months National Geographic has an amazing article on the positive effects of having trees in urban areas, something that goes against everything this rotten state is about - since every time I turn around, it seems that yet another area with trees is being clear cut for G-d knows why....

While I don't believe in an eternal torture chamber, maybe hell is watching from the beyond your children's children suffer on earth for the horrible decisions we are making now in the name of progress and comfort.

The Rev. Mr. Samuel T. Ross-Lee

Three of the areas that flooded during this "tropical storm" • The Lombard and Humphrey RR (Rail Road) underpass in Fair Haven.• Middletown Ave RR underpass near the I-91 exit ramp and • Quinnipiac Ave RR underpass, have been spots prone to backed-up storm drains for many years, even with just moderate rainfall. The city has disregarded the flooding issue at these locations for way too long. They paint lines for parking spaces and bike lanes along these underpasses, yet don't address the need to redesign the drainage systems, or even to simply clean and maintain tbe current drains. It's not just climate change, but lack of addressing critical infrastructure issues, while spending many millions building grand, politically connected, trophy projects such as the Orange St connector and the white elephant that is the Canal Dock Boat House. The city needs to wake up address critical needs and not frivolous wants.

Dear Concerned4NewHAven-- Canal Dock Boat House? You mean Yale Dock Boat House. Orange St. Connector? You mean Yale Nursing School/Hospital/University Connector. Yale wants things and the City pays for them. Infrastructure? NH is just building more units on top of aging water/sewer/etc and making a few patches. How long will it last???
Of course, if an unsightly telephone pole is placed near a trendy area like Wooster St; the neighbors rise up in anger. Do I sense a double standard?

People should be joining East Shore and East Haven residents to fight a needless waste of money and destruction of wetlands, rather than playing class warfare. Our own infrastructure is old all over the city. We don't need more apartments; we need to fix what we have and make it beautiful and useful again.

Connecticut is already a leader in carbon free electric power generation. Millstone provided the equivalent of over 50% of the state's power. Imagine if we had one more such nuclear power plant, and a bit of off shore wind - and our state could become the US vanguard for a near zero carbon future. We already have the technological know-how to both maintain our energy consumption habits and save the planet.

Heather, I'm all for providing subsidies to promote sustainability. FWIW, I helped develop the state's Clean Energy Fund and the GreenBank, which finances solar panels among other things.

And you are right that a carbon tax is regressive. But the most effective way of getting people to consume less fossil fuels is to make them more expensive. You can do this directly, via a carbon tax. Other approaches, such as a cap and trade system or government mandates, do the same thing indirectly.

Addressing climate change will be disruptive and expensive. Failing to do so will be even more painful.

CityYankee: The Canal Dock boathouse contains pieces of the George Augustus Adee boathouse, used by Yale from 1911 to 1923, when Yale moved its crew to Derby, where it is still located today. In the 1980's it was renovated as beautiful office space, but was razed to make room for the new Pearl Harbor Memorial/Q Bridge.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/realestate/boathouse-built-for-the-bulldogs-is-soon-to-bow-out.html
Yale has nothing to do with the program. It's run by a Southern alumna and New Haven native. https://www.canaldock.org
As for the Orange Street Connector, it's anti-Yale, anti YNHH, and anti-suburbanite, making it more difficult for Yale employees to commute and more difficult for suburbanites to patronize New Haven's restaurants, stores, and theater., as well as lengthening the time ambulances must take to reach the hospital from the interstates.

Lived in CT all my life. Storms hit harder. Not buying into the fake news from oil corporations. It's called climate change, and it's backed by sCiEnCe.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!!!!!...... unless I want a convenient flight to Florida... hypocrites!!!

Remember Liberals and "No Nukes" thus many Nuclear Power Plants were canceled. Remember Global Cooling and the Ice Age is coming. Remember Global Warming and the Ozone Layer. Now the net is cast wider and it is Climate Change.
Somehow the past 150 years of data is reliable in determining our future when the actual data set is Millions of Years. You can continuously fool the masses in order to enact your plans and taxes. Remember $45,000 in Covid Relief per taxpayer and only $6,000 went directly to the taxpayers. Now the big push is towards electric vehicles which requires ravaging the planet again again with mining and battery disposal or is it simply to get ICE engines off the road and control people even more. Remember 150 years does not make a trend when the actual data set is millions of years.

Thank you Good Old Days and City Yankee. Today our weather is all political and big time money making. Weather is cyclical. We all know it's about control and the money grab. Not buying the radical agenda. Never did, Never will. Let me know the weather cycles going back millions of years. Not just what is convenient.

LoveNH, I'm agnostic on nuclear power generally. But a new nuclear plant is not going to be built in New England for two reasons. The first is that electric demand is declining - regional annual electric demand is about 10% less than it was 20 years ago. Peak demand has been more or less flat, but nuclear plants are ill-suited to follow load. This is a matter of physics, not politics.

The second reason is that states across New England and the Northeast have deregulated the power generation industry. (Full disclosure, I was at the table when CT did so.) Nuclear power plants cost billions of dollars, and there is no reasonable likelihood, much less a guarantee, that investors would get their money back for plants in deregulated states. Existing nuclear technologies are not cost-competitive with wind or natural gas on a levelized cost of electricity basis.

@ RHeerema " Scanlon presented the plan on paving 1,000 feet of runway and constructing new terminal and additional paving in the Tweed bowl." The new plan will increase the area of wetlands, it's listed in the just released article.
@Patricia Kane."The most sensible comment of the evening was to build an airport inland where there would be fewer disruptions on the quality of life in an urban area with profound ecological issues." Tweed is an existing airport and try to find 400-500 acres of flat land near the interstates. "Weight limitations will be eliminated, making more commercial flights." 737 passenger or freighter have similar weight. No jumbo or wide body planes will fly at at Tweed.
@Big George W "This is a joke, right ? Com'on people - it's common sense that the more rural/wild areas you eliminate and replace with concrete or asphalt man made construction in the name of so called progress, the more problems you will have down the road with things like flooding !!." Thank you Big George. Some get an idea that's sounds good to them, those with no knowledge of the complex plans make statements that don't line up in the real world. One stated that the rail line from New Haven to New York should be straightened to allow higher speeds. That land is some of the most populated, congested and expensive land in the country, but just do it because it sounds good.
CityYankee. I know you dislike Yale but think of what New Haven would be like minus Yale, Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Britain, etc.
Soon Avelo will start service, withhold your judgments till the flights have been running for a while then make an informed comment. I remember when United announced it was coming to Tweed. More predictions of doom and gloom, so called armchair experts making wild claims and in the end all worked out just fine. The average noise time window for landings and takeoffs is 30-40 seconds. This will also show if Tweed has a market for air travel.