F-35s pose threat to affordable housing near airport
Madison leaders are at odds with airport officials who are asking the city to restrict future development of low-income housing because of F-35 noise. Madison leaders are at odds with airport officials who are asking the city to restrict future development of low-income housing near where the F-35 military fighter jets' intense noise is prevalent. Some Alders and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway argue this is not a feasible solution as the city struggles to address a major housing shortage. The airport has suggested wide-ranging plans for the future, including limiting airport runways and shifting where the loudest impacts are felt. The study found that due to the arrival of 20 F-5A fighter jets to Truax Field in 2023, there will be five times as many people living with an average sound level of 65 decibels in 2027 over the course of a day as there were in 2022. The city has already approved $1.7 million in tax incremental financing to build 192 units of affordable housing at 808 Melvin Court.
Publicado : hace un mes por andrew bahl, allison garfield, Allison Garfield and Andrew Bahl en Travel
Madison leaders are at odds with airport officials who are asking the city to restrict future development of low-income housing nearby where noise from the F-35 military fighter jets is most intense.
To some alders and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, restricting development is not a feasible solution while the city struggles to address a major housing shortage. The implications are being felt across the city — from renters, to homeowners, to the homeless population — and affordable housing is key to solving the shortage.
Making some territory off limits to future development is not an answer, Rhodes-Conway said.
“In light of the housing crisis, the idea of a complete moratorium on residential development in one of the fastest-growing parts of the Madison region seems not just unrealistic but also damaging to low-income residents and our community,” the mayor said in a statement to the Cap Times. “I wish that the report spent more time exploring ways to remediate noise impacts, rather than trying to dictate land-use policies that affect the entire Madison metro region.”
When the Dane County Regional Airport wrapped up a years-long process determining sound impact from the jets in February, airport officials suggested wide-ranging plans for the future, from tweaking the airport runways to shifting where the loudest impacts are felt to asking the city of Madison to restrict future development of low-income housing nearby.
The noise study found that, thanks to the arrival of 20 F-35A fighter jets to Truax Field in the spring of 2023, there will be five times as many people living with an average sound level of 65 decibels in 2027 over the course of a day as there were in 2022. Critics of the planes are concerned they will cause hearing problems and health issues for those closest to the airport in the long term.
Perhaps for that reason, the study considers all residential land use incompatible within the 65-decibel range of aircraft noise exposure — and the airport is asking the city and county to ensure future low-income and residential developments are not built in those areas.
The city has already called this an obstacle at their last meeting on March 19, where the City Council overwhelmingly approved $1.7 million in tax incremental financing to build 192 units of affordable housing at 808 Melvin Court.
The project on the 3100 block of East Washington Avenue already received land-use approval from both the Urban Design and Plan Commissions in February. Residents at those meetings raised concerns about the location on the periphery of the 2027 projection for 65 to 75 decibel contour.
“Do you think the city should be promoting and funding affordable housing in an area where there are identified significant and adverse health impacts for children and residents who are low income? That's the question I think is before you,” Ald. Marsha Rummel, District 6, asked the council at the meeting. “It's an environmental justice question…people are in pain. It hurts, you can't go outside.
“It's only going to get worse, and the money to fix things is way, way, way, way out there.”
Living in the Carpenter Ridgeway neighborhood, Nick and Anna Haines are familiar with that pain. Their 2-year-old son has become a plane spotter, enjoying the regular commercial planes that touch down to the north at Dane County Regional Airport.
Not every plane delights him — namely the F-35 fighter jets.
“He holds his hands over his ears,” Nick Haines said.
Noise concerns have been commonplace in neighborhoods around the airport, which has suggested ideas to help the Haines’ and others nearby like extending one runway and shifting another so that it moves the noise of both the F-35s and commercial jets north of the airport, where fewer people live.
They also are asking the FAA to shift flight paths to avoid as much direct exposure for local schools, including Sherman Middle School, Malcolm Shabazz City High School and Isthmus Montessori directly west of the airport and Lowell Elementary in the Atwood neighborhood, about three miles away.
The neighborhoods immediately surrounding the airport are both poorer and have more residents of color than the city as a whole. That has long led to fears that they would bear the brunt of any noise burdens.
Already, residents of the Oak Park Terrace mobile home park on the border of the airport are being denied help to combat noisy airport traffic, even though other apartments and homes nearby could be eligible for soundproofing help.
Longstanding federal policy requires agencies to take into account environmental justice — that marginalized communities are most harmed by pollution and are the least likely to reap any benefits from potentially harmful policies — when making decisions.
But the FAA-mandated noise study rejects the concept of environmental justice, the document says, and airport officials said the federal agency wants them to reduce the noise burden for everyone, rather than move the harm from one community to another.
“Whether it's the fighter wing, or the airport, there's nobody advocating for noise, we're all advocating for minimizing the impact on the community as much as possible,” said Michael Riechers, a spokesperson for the Dane County Regional Airport.
Consultation with the city was a core part of the noise study, he said, to avoid future development in areas where the airport might want to, say, ask the FAA to move a flight path directly over a currently undeveloped area. But some alders seemed unaware of noise concerns when discussing the 808 Melvin Court development.
“I haven’t heard this concern before. I don’t have much context regarding this,” said Ald. MGR Govindarajan at the March 19 council meeting. “I am generally concerned about the fighter jets and the increased sound and everything nearby there. I am concerned if the county declares that a nonresidential area.”
A handful of proposals for housing projects in the airport area, including some explicitly marketed as affordable housing, are making their way through the development process. They’re not necessarily eligible for noise mitigation funding unless they are in the 65-70 decibel zone, and most are not.
To Steve Klafka, an advocate from Safe Skies, Clean Water, a group opposing the F-35s, the issue of low-income housing near the airport is a “skeleton in the closet.”
“We know that we've got all this low-income housing next to the airport and we're building more,” he said. “We just don't want to talk about it.”
Weighing the need for affordable housing
Though the City Council was approving only the TIF financing for the development at 808 Melvin Court, it is the first housing project near the airport to go to the body since the noise study was released. Alders had mixed opinions on how to balance the question of environmental justice with the dire need for affordable housing.
Council President Jael Currie, District 16, said she felt comfortable supporting the measure because Kenosha-based Bear Development assured the council that some of the TIF funding will go toward sound mitigation measures, like insulating the framing, windows, walls and doors in the apartment complex.
“Not that there isn’t concern about putting housing within this flight zone but (we) also understand that these will be affordable units,” Currie said. “Our housing crisis — and affordable housing crisis — (is) so terrible that some folks who are in desperate situations would make that choice knowing that they are in a flight zone with the noise.”
Ald. Tag Evers, District 13, said the question of environmental justice was wrestled with in the past and that committees and task forces were unable to find a legal way to prevent housing in the area.
“We decided the best route we could take was trying to encourage sound mitigation. And while I share the concerns about people who are negatively impacted by the airport, the fact of the matter is there are people who are choosing to live there now and we can’t exclude that portion of our city and say that those individuals don't have any place to be there,” Evers said. “We will have to, as a city and as a county, deal with this issue moving forward.”
But to Rummel the solution moving forward is clear, if not challenging.
“The answer, I think, is to ask the 115th (Fighter Wing) to change its mission,” Rummel said of the Wisconsin Air National Guard base that oversees the F-35s. “I know there's not the social will or the political will to make that happen, but that's really the answer.”
“You're going to say, ‘Oh, we don't have that power. We need housing,’” she added. “I guess that's your decision.”
The motion to add the TIF funding to the project passed, with 15 in support and only Rummel voting no.
Temas: Social Issues