HMMH/MacFarland Johnson
The blue line of this chart represents the area currently subjected to 65 or more decibels of airplane noise from Tweed. The purple line represents the area that is projected to experience 65 or more decibels of noise by 2040 under the expansion plan.
Noise consultant Kate Larson at Wednesday night’s virtual community meeting.
Here’s the plan: The pandemic lifts. Air traffic comes roaring back. New Haven’s airport reaps the benefits with a longer runway.
Neighbors heard the plan and asked: Will that wreck the environment? Did the pandemic wreck the industry? And what about the noise at Wendy Guglietti’s house?
Neighbors raised those questions — and for the most part objected — Wednesday night at a virtual community meeting held by Tweed New Haven Airport.
The airport is selling its new plan to expand its main runway by 1,035 feet to allow for longer-distance flights; and to move its front entrance to the East Haven side of the facility. Read all about that new master plan here.
Airport Executive Director Sean Scanlon hosted the meeting. An aviation noise specialist named Kate Larson of HMMH Aviation Services joined him. She laid out the projected sonic consequences of Tweed airport’s proposed expansion, with the help of a map. The map showed the area surrounding the airport that would be subjected to 65 decibels of noise from now-bigger airplanes. That’s a critical number: According to Yale’s Environmental Health and Safety Department, 65 decibels is about the level of noise associated with an office environment or a “normal conversation.” That level is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s threshold for what would qualify as a “significant noise impact” coming from an airplane.
Wendy Guglietti was one of the neighbors present at the meeting. Guglietti lives on Dodge Avenue. Her street is not currently in the 65-decible range.
The map Larson presented showed it within the range by 2040 under the expansion plan.
“What does this mean for my home in the future?” Guglietti asked in the Zoom chat after Larson’s presentation.
“Homes that are inside the 65 decibel factor are deemed incompatible,” Larson responded. “Steps would need to be taken,” she added, although as a consultant on the project, she could not identify what those steps would be.
Tweed Executive Director Sean Scanlon interfacing with neighbors Wednesday night
Scanlon pointed to the airport’s program to mitigate sound impacts on homes within the 65 decibel range. The Residential Sound Insulation Program offers insulation, ventilation, and window and door quality improvements for residents who live within a certain range of the airport.
Project Manager Jeff Wood assured Guglietti that the airport plans to study noise and air quality as it moves forward in the plan review process.
The next morning, Guglietti remained unconvinced.
Tweed has already soundproofed her home, she said in an interview. “I was kind of hoping they were gonna say they were gonna buy my house.”
Tweed bought two houses next to hers, she said.
Guglietti said she bought her home 25 years ago.
“I’ve been there a long time, 25 years. My children have grown up there. It wasn’t the way it is now: there were more houses on the street, there were more trees — it’s traffic and noise and people. …
“It’s gotten louder, more fumes, more traffic. My house is better since they’ve upgraded it, but you can still hear [the noise]. The little private planes aren’t that bad. It’s the bigger jets, when they take off — it shakes my house.”
Neighbors Question Environmental Impact, Funding
Guglietti’s concern was one of several environmental critiques of the airport expansion raised on Wednesday night.
Two attendees voiced their support for the project. A dozen others took the public meeting as an opportunity to raise questions and concerns.
A member of the local environmental advocacy organization Save the Sound wrote in the meeting’s chat section that in the airport’s vicinity, “the surrounding area is marshland, flood mitigation for surrounding communities.” The writer noted that locally, sea levels are projected to rise by nearly two feet over the course of the next three decades. Save the Sound pressed the airport on whether an environmental impact assessment of the project has been completed.
The expansion’s effect on the environment will be assessed in the project’s next stage, Scanlon answered. “It’s important for us to look at the changing climate, but we also have to look at so many more things beyond that,” he added.
Other residents questioned how the project would be financed.
According to Scanlon and Wood, the runway construction would be funded by the FAA using revenue from taxes on plane tickets. The next phase of the project — the terminal construction — might be funded by a private investor, Scanlon proposed.
A participant who identified herself as Katha suggested that the suburbs of Guilford and Branford, which Scanlon serves as a state representative, should contribute funds to the expansion. “Why is the burden of getting to a bigger and better Tweed always on the backs of New Haven taxpayers, a community that has been on the losing end of PILOT payments for years?” she asked in the chat.
Scanlon said he agrees that the airport’s expansion should not fall disproportionately on New Haven’s shoulders. The airport receives an annual subsidy from the city, he said, which Mayor Justin Elicker has hoped to end.
“We will be financially independent if we’re able to do the things in this master plan,” Scanlon said, “and we’ll no longer have to rely on the city.”
When an anonymous participant asked whether Yale has offered to contribute funds towards the project, Scanlon replied that the university has not. “But I do know they’re interested in this expansion,” Scanlon said.
What Will A Post-Pandemic Airport Look Like?
Attendees also scrutinized the airport’s projected flight estimates for the coming years, arguing that Tweed is underestimating the pandemic’s devastating effects on the airline industry.
As Covid-19 has severely slowed the demand for air travel, the airport adjusted its original expectations for the frequency of flights in and out of New Haven in future years. Tweed anticipated a 50 percent decline in 2021, a 25 percent decline in 2022, and a 5 percent decline in 2024. The airport now predicts seeing 76,737 flights in 2024, a revised number from its original projection of 80,776 flights that year.
These estimates have been approved by the FAA. Wood argued that they are in fact conservative predictions. Airlines have been preparing for a more substantial post-pandemic bounce-back, he said.
Not everyone agreed.
East Haven resident Steve Haddon said he believes the pandemic has caused a lasting plummet in business travel, predicting that businesses will adopt virtual means of convening for meetings and conferences. He said his own workplace, a telecom company, has informed employees to prepare for such a shift away from travel after the pandemic.
“There’s no question that we are figuring this out on the fly in terms of where businesses go from here,” Scanlon said. In order to reduce risk, the airport is planning to invest in a mixture of business and leisure travel.
Haddon conceded that the future of air travel may not be uniformly gloomy.
“There is no doubt in my mind that America will throw a party in the air this summer,” he said.
The plan shows a pretty clear reduction in the number of homes that would be subject to noise. Perhaps this is associated with a change of the terminal to the East Haven end of the shorter runway, where there are fewer houses?