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.