$8.2M grant to aid noise abatement

The Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) will receive an $8.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to help insulate homes from airport noise in the areas most affected by recent airport expansion. The grant, approved at the urging of U.S. Congressman Martin Olav Sabo (DFL-Minneapolis), is about two-thirds of the original $12.2 million that MAC requested.

Many Southeast Minneapolis residents who live under airplane flight paths have long lobbied for noise mitigation for their homes, and formed two grass-roots organizations, ROAR (Residents Opposed to Airport Racket) and SMAAC (South Metro Airport Action Council) to do so. Noise mitigation efforts so far have focused on the so-called “65 DNL contour”—the area most directly under the flight paths, where the day-night noise level is above 65 decibels.

Government agencies have already paid for insulation for more than 7,000 homes in the 65 DNL contour at a cost of more than $200 million, according to SMAAC board member Dick Saunders. He said the $8.2 million should finish the job of insulating all the homes in that area.

“I won’t say this is a drop in the bucket—it’s significant—but this money is to finish up,” Saunders said. “Then the big controversy takes place, which is whether the homes outside that area will be insulated—the 64-60 zone.”

Saunders said the airlines, especially Northwest Airlines, have long opposed any noise mitigation projects, believing them unnecessary.

“We would be the first airport in America to proceed with insulation in the 64-60 zone if the commission votes in favor of doing so, and we expect that in the next 30-60 days,” Saunders said.

The 1996 noise contour is based on a Part 150 study, which is done by an airport operator to describe or predict aircraft noise exposure. According to the City of Bloomington government website, the study report includes a Noise Exposure Map or “noise contour” and a Noise Compatibility Program, two essential parts which must be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The day-night noise level is calculated in decibels, on the scale of which 0 dB is the softest sound audible to a human, and 120 dB is the loudest he or she can hear without pain. The study used average noise levels over a 24-hour period.

A list of actions the airport proprietor and the FAA proposed to take to minimize noise “non-compatibility” is the Noise Compatibility Program. Mainly, the MAC has agreed to install noise insulation in homes within the noise contour.

But Jim Spensley, president of the South Metro Airport Action Council, writes in a March, 2003 article in the Southside Pride that MAC hasn’t followed through on the commissions own plans for noise mitigation. Travelers and environmentalists have the common enemy, he writes, of “a state government and an airport commission so intimately entangled with Northwest Airlines that most airport operations and projects benefit Northwest and the other major airlines rather than the state of Minnesota or the citizens.”

Indeed, Northwest seemed to have its own interests in mind when it lobbied Republican politicians to insert language into a Congressional aviation reauthorization bill that contains a provision limiting federal funding for noise abatement. A fourth runway is scheduled for completion at MSP in late 2005, and residents and politicians want the noise abatement program extended to the several thousand homes that would be affected by jet noise, according to an article in the Star Tribune.

U.S. Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) told the Tribune that he was “‘enraged’ at what he called a ‘back-door attempt’ by Northwest to keep the [MAC] from expanding its…program.” Northwest’s share of the cost of the extension would be $56 million, however, the Pioneer Press reported that the airline has said in its distressed financial condition, it prefers to spend its money on operations. Northwest also issued a statement last year in which they said funds should be spent on the more pressing issue of the safety and security of passengers.

Residents believe that the airline is using the events of September 11th, and the subsequent call for greater security as an excuse to avoid its commitments. In the same Pioneer Press article, South Minneapolis resident Susan Taylor said that her house shakes and her windows break when airliners fly over. She had bought the house six years ago with the understanding that it would be insulated against the noise as part of the MAC's noise abatement program.

Funds for noise mitigation efforts have come from two sources; grants from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), like this one, or from a surcharge placed on airlines using the airport, called a passenger facility charge.

After MAC applied for $12.2 million for the grant, Sabo wrote to U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and FAA Administrator Marion Blakey expressing his strong support.

“Full funding of the pending grant application will allow MAC to honor its commitment to complete noise mitigation for all homes in the 1996 65 DNL noise contour, including 241 single family homes and nearly 600 units in 38 multi-family residential buildings,” wrote Sabo in a May 13 letter to Mineta.