Noise talks may resume soon
...but will anybody notice?

by Dean Lindberg

Things have been quieter around the airport lately, but not in a way most residents would notice. Airport activity and noise has been slowly recovering since Sept. 11th and the preceding economic slump. However, talks about noise have been muted since the airlines quit the Metropolitan Aircraft Noise Abatement Council (MASAC) 18 months ago.

Northwest Airlines led “user” or airline delegates in abandoning MASAC noise deliberations, complaining that the group had become too biased towards residents. That protest raised eyebrows among “community” delegates who counter that the committee has always had an equal number of user and community delegates throughout its 30 year history.

MASAC was launched in 1969 to serve as an advisory committee and help airport officials make informed noise policy decisions. The organization has been showered with praise as a breakthrough model of community and airport cooperation in forging noise mitigation policy. “Fanning” jets—which spreads departing flight tracks all over south Minneapolis—is one of MASAC’s golden achievements. MASAC community delegates have been ardent advocates for increasing the geographic area of the home sound insulation program that the Minnesota legislature mandated in 1996.

MASAC community delegates threw off their tradition of internecine bickering in 1999, and shortly thereafter elected community delegate and Mendota Heights Mayor Charles Mertensotto as chair of the organization. twenty/twenty hindsight now suggests the that event triggered the wave of user umbrage which crested with their MASAC walkout. By charter, MASAC cannot function without user delegates, so the airline walkout grounded the panel.

MASAC demise and investigation

Following the user walkout, Dr. John Brandl, Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs answered MAC chief Jeff Hamiel’s call to untangle the mess and make suggestions for new noise talks. Dr. Brandl interviewed dozens of MASAC user and community delegates and discovered wildly differing opinions of what they perceived as the organization’s purpose. User delegates felt community members couldn’t resist the urge to climb on the MASAC soapbox and harangue against noise pollution. But, that rhetoric didn’t convince users that community delegates were qualified to make policy decisions on what they cite as “technically complex issues with significant legal, environmental and economic implications.”

Brandl’s investigation and recommendations spawned a “Blue Ribbon Panel” to lay new ground rules for noise discussions. Three user and three citizen delegates were impaneled, with Minneapolis City Council Representative Barret Lane, Jill Smith from Mendota Heights and Jamie Verbrugge of Eagan representing community interests. The Blue RIbbon Panel is nearly done crafting recommendations intended to reduce the friction between user and community delegates by: Narrowing the scope and frequency of debate, trimming the numbers of delegates by about 60 percent, calling for civil discourse and calling the new product MANOC (MSP Airport Noise Advisory Committee).

Goodbye MASAC, hello MANOC

The MASAC membership had swelled to 39 delegates during its life span, with the city of Minneapolis represented by six delegates. The Blue Ribbon Panel favors pruning that number down to 12, with six user and six community delegates, leaving Minneapolis with one delegate. Eligibility for community representation requires being in, or touched by the airport’s Ldn 65 noise contours. That proposal may ignite protests from communities who feel significantly impacted, even though their noise levels are not high enough to qualify for membership.

User and community delegates “must be vested to represent their constituency and vote accordingly.” That recommendation seems to be a jab at Minneapolis delegates who have largely come from the ranks of noise activists and complainers recruited by city elected officials to fill vacant seats.

The coup d’ etat that landed community delegate Charles Mertensotto in the MASAC chair seems to have troubled the Blue Ribbon Panel. To thwart such political maneuvering, they favor a dual chair of the new MANOC, with one user and one community delegate sharing duties.

The Blue Ribbon Panel recommends that the new MANOC should meet bi-monthly, instead of once a month as MASAC did, and that meetings are held during “regular business hours” instead of the previous custom of meeting in the evenings. The panel deferred community outreach efforts to the MAC with the recommendation that airport officials hold quarterly “informational and general comments meetings for the general public.”

A final Blue Ribbon panel meeting is scheduled for June 18th. Assuming its recommendations are approved, the MAC Planning and Environment committee, and then the full MAC board of commissioners will give a go ahead for MANOC to take flight during the next six to eight weeks.