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Dear Friends,
Welcome to new subscribers and BIG THANKS to all who report noise!
Palo Alto’s City Attorney Molly Stump is retiring and a professional search process is underway to find the City’s new Attorney. A major part of the City Council’s effectiveness to address aircraft noise over Palo Alto is the City Attorney’s leadership to implement the City’s policy for legal oversight of airspace procedures affecting Palo Alto. Please stay tuned for opportunities to weigh in on this crucial organizational element for the City to make progress to reduce aircraft noise.
In May, we asked the Mayor and City Council for public outreach and for the City to address San Francisco’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR). The City responded to San Francisco’s DEIR on deadline and subsequently also sent a letter with a correction, and reiterating the City's concerns: “Aircraft overflights related to SFO operations continue to have significant effects on the Palo Alto community, particularly with respect to noise exposure and air quality impacts that the DEIR has not adequately addressed. Our request remains that the environmental analysis include a more expansive geographic scope and incorporate additional health-protective metrics that reflect the actual experience of impacted communities.” The City correspondence is here. We also recommended that SFO add regional impacts; at a minimum to consider the top five areas with the highest number of complaints.
The SFO DEIR ignored the efforts of three Congressional districts working with the FAA to identify SFO Arrivals noise reduction solutions --including two consensus initiatives to address Night Time noise for MidPeninsula cities, which are needed for ALL routes converging over Palo Alto. During the Select Committee on South Bay Arrivals, the FAA proposed a longer term option 1) to build nighttime noise abatement procedures for MidPen, or what the FAA calls new infrastructure that the FAA routinely does for airlines, and 2) for the FAA to be a party to voluntary agreements with airlines and airports to address nighttime flights. Together, these options could eliminate night time noise over MidPen.
As SFO continues to push aggressively for operations growth, our City must be on the frontlines to ensure that the City is protected and that serious noise reduction solutions are achieved first. Results rely on City actions and leadership - from crafting agreements and following up on legal and quasi legal processes to having standardized and effective ways to monitor results. The City’s stated 2025 priority is to “Continue engagement with San Francisco Airport on SFO's Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) project and other potential opportunities to decrease SFO noise impacts on Palo Alto.” There has been no post-implementation review of the GBAS; SFO’s public outreach simply dropped after promoting the program in the press as a way to reduce complaints. We need transparency and a comprehensive approach to track noise reduction initiatives.
In August we responded to new Administration changes in the FAA’s aviation noise guidance to observe the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) which airports and SFO use when conducting local environmental reviews, and largely to accommodate airlines. Please see our letter regarding five tests for FAA's 1050.1G Order: Legal questions; the Government Accountability Office’s recommendations; Community expectations; scientific validity (problems with how SFO quantifies noise exposure); and Transparency. We also address the conflicts of interest when FAA prioritizes industry, and we shared “The Woodside request - the many hands in flight path development” to illustrate how unchecked SFO and airlines flight path projects bring deleterious concentration and levels of noise increases for Palo Alto and neighbors. It is unreasonable for SFO to expand under these circumstances.
There is recent press about the City’s General Aviation airport Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Facing federal limits, Palo Alto leans on new technology to lower aircraft noise. Three things to know: 1. The City’s initiatives to address PAO’s airspace procedures are different from SFO noise; as the article states “The issues at Palo Alto Airport are different in that they pertain to smaller planes that depart from and land in the Baylands facility rather than flight paths involving SFO.” 2. The software profiled in the article monitors pilot compliance for existing noise abatement procedures. Software to assess noise exposure is different and to Councilmember Pat Burt's point that Council would like to see a “healthier” airport - health effects cannot be assessed without first assessing noise exposure from airport operations. 3.The story shows that noise abatement procedures require a structure that engages operators, and the FAA, as well as investments in active and long-term post-implementation monitoring.
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