City Officials Blame Continental Airlines For FAA Influence

A group of New Canaan, CT city officials met on October 16 to approve an agreement that would allow financing a lawsuit appealing a recent airspace design by the Federal Aviation Administration.

New Canaan will join other cities in the region that are concerned that new air traffic routing and will lower property values due to noise pollution and are concerned about environmental, and safety issues.

As ANN reported, the FAA approved a plan in September that would allow planes on descent to La Guardia Airport to be redirected over Southern Fairfield County.

New Canaan city officials feel that Continental Airlines has been fighting for another corridor into Newark Airport for over 10 years... and that the FAA has shifted aircraft easterly to accommodate their request, according to a story in the New Canaan Advertiser.

Voters in the town will have to approve an appropriation of $75,000 on October 24, New Canaan's portion of a legal fee schedule, and a contingency fee of $10,000 to join in the challenge.

The FAA says it did extensive analysis and held more than 120 public meetings in five states throughout the environmental process.

The airspace redesign involved a 31,000-square-mile area over New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Connecticut with a population of 29 million residents. Twenty-one airports were included in the study.

Several other cities in the region have joined in the appeal. Along with New Canaan, Darien, Greenwich, Stamford, Wilton, Norwalk, Redding, Weston, Westport, Ridgefield, and Pound Ridge, NY have joined combined forces into an action group called the Alliance for Sensible Airspace Planning.

The group plans to split the legal costs of the court challenge 50/50 by allocation, and by population. Joining the suit are New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania Counties, according to the Advertiser.

New Canaan First Selectman Judy Neville thinks that an appeals court will bundle the suits from the three states. "The most important issue is that assuming that these cases are bundled, and there is a 'win,' meaning it is sent back to the FAA for further review, revisions, or compromise, Fairfield County -- the State of Connecticut -- cannot be missing at the table," Neville said. "At that time it is critical that Fairfield County and or the State be present so that we have future options."

The Alliance hopes to use information from a report produced by the Southwest Regional Planning Association, which includes details that the FAA's environmental impact statement has flawed noise level data.

The Planning Association says that the FAA's original draft proposal contained noise levels at 41.8 decibels, and the new airspace redesign could elevate to 45 decibels.

The group says that the FAA applied the use of newer aircraft's lower decibel levels to all aircraft flying in the airspace.

The SWRPA report projects that jet noise will elevate to between 60 and 70 decibels by 2011.

The Alliance is working with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who indicated that he was still undecided which legal options to use.

"The critical question at this hour, of course, is we need to take on litigation before a 60-day clock expires, and that clock began on September 7," Michael Freimuth, Stamford Director of Economic Development, told the city's Advocate newspaper earlier this month.

FMI: www.faa.gov