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Home My WebLink About10-21-2014 ph2 ForbesKremke, Kate From: Mejia, Anthony Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2014 2:11 PM To: Kremke, Kate Subject: FW: SLO Airport ALUC override -- Please do NOT override Attachments: PA Weekly article.pdf Agenda Correspondence for 10/21/14 PH2 Anthony J. Mejia, MMC I City Clerk City of San Luis Obispo 990 Palm Street San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 tel 1 805.781.7102 OCT 30 2014 AGENDA CORRESPONDENCE Date / -/ `Item# P /� a- - - - -- Original Message---- - From: Bert Forbes [mailto:bforbes488 @gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2014 11:08 AM To: Ashbaugh, John; Carpenter, Dan; Christianson, Carlyn; Codron, Michael; Dietrick, Christine; Lichtig, Katie; Marx, Jan; Smith, Kathy; Mejia, Anthony Cc: Kevin Bumen Subject: SLO Airport ALUC override -- Please do NOT override Dear City Council and staff, Before you reconsider overriding the Airport Land Use Commission, please read the attached copy from the Palo Alto Weekly about the noise issues and the large public outcry about it at the Palo Alto City Council. While SLO doesn't have the airliner traffic that is the main point of the article, the side bar "Living under the belly of a 'beast "' on Surf Air is much more directly applicable to SLO and our commuter airline traffic. The issue will only get worse if you surround the airport with houses. Note that the Surf Air complaints are about "it's often lower than 1500 feet" and that's higher than what the traffic areas above your override area would be. You're asking for community trouble and constant problems for the airport. The Surf Air complaints are from Palo Alto, which is quite a ways south of the San Carlos airport where those aircraft take off and land, not right next door like your proposed housing. The current and future city councils will have to bear the brunt of the community's complaints. I strongly urge you to take Robert Teftt up on his offer to negotiate that appeared in today's Tribune. Thanks, Bert Forbes www.PaIoA Ito OnIinexom "'J, Vol. XXXVI, Number 3 a October 24, 2014 Project Safety Net: City wants more from school district Page 5 ¢ E &. e �tP s .i _., fA` Jrk. wi. Otis . �,ba$t ; ... � � �_ ywYYiile n.,..Lw �$'uG•, .. il�Y.' r , .... _ ft.,. .,.. � - ._ -� `•�':.. ..Qb „a,a�.l.owaL:•_y :, .... ... <eJwi1.,.H......_.:.._ t .:.. _- :_:�.�_..�,_caeLa..... ...:.,. ...... J Some residents on Amherst Street in Palo Alto are concerned with the level of airplane noise affecting their neighborhood. The red circle in the middle denotes Palo Alto. About the cover: A Surf Air Pilatus PC -12 plane comes in for a landing at the San Carlos Airport on Oct. 17 Photograph by Veronica Weber. a t a gathering in the Hol- Air Transportation System, or brook - Palmer Park Pavil- NextGen, the plan switches air - ion in Atherton last month traffic control from a round- g as a resident began to speak about based system to a satellite -based the incessant and loud airplane one, which the FAA claims will noise' blanketing his neighbor- 'allow it to guide and track planes hood, 150 other attendees from more precisely and facilitate an Atherton, Menlo Park, Portola. expected growth in air traffic. Valley and: Palo Alto suddenly As part of NextGen, commer- looked skyward. cial jetliners fly within a narrow - As if on 'cue, a large, aircraft er band of airspace than before. rumbled overhead. They also descend using a con - "I can't hear you," the resident tinuous decrease in altitude rather quipped. than following a stepped descent, The crowd applauded approv- as previously done — but that in- ingly, but residents say that air- creases noise as engines throttle plane noise over their neighbor- for the decline, residents say. hoods is no laughing matter. In The NextGen changes have the 14 years, since U.S. Rep. Anna alarmed communities across the Eshoo and then -Palo Alto Mayor nation where the program has Gary Fazzino secured an agree- rolled out. Starting in June 2012 ment with San Francisco Inter- over Queens; New York, planes national Airport (SFO) to reduce began flying at low altitudes ev- plane noise by 41 percent, the 70 eiy 20 seconds to a minute from daily flights over Palo Alto have 6 a.m. to midnight, said Janet ballooned to as many as 200, ac- MacEneaney, president of Queens cording to charts on online flight- Quiet Skies. MacEneaney lives track maps. about 10 miles away from La- Residents say the skies are Guardia Airport. turning into an,aeronautic super- "For the past 2.5 years, we've „ highway over Midpeninsula cit- had an egregious amount of ies and that federal levels for ac- noise," she said. ceptable noise, which date to the Now, from Palo Alto to Bris- 1970s, are obsolete and need to be bane, the issue is heating up. updated — pronto. More than 900 Woodside, Por- Compounding the issue, the tola Valley and Ladera residents Federal Aviation Administration signed a petition and letter to the (FAA) is currently rolling out FAA regarding the noise. Four a plan in the Bay Area to make Portola Valley and Woodside resi- the airspace more efficient — a dents filed a petition with the U.S. _ plan that residents say is making Court of Appeals for the Ninth the noise problem earsplittingly worse. Called Next Generation (continued on page 28) www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 24, 2014 • Page 27 Cover Story Stewart Carl, a Palo Alto resident, presents information about commercial - airline High the over the Bay Area during a meeting of local residents on Oct. 16. Unfriendly skies (continued from page 27) Circuit on Sept. 26 challenging the FAA's finding that its plans for optimizing future use of the Bay Area's airspace won't have any significant impact. What's more, residents say, the fledgling Surf Air commuter line of propeller planes, which uses San Carlos Airport, is adding a layer of smaller, allegedly noisier commercial aircraft over neigh- borhood rooftops. Citizens' groups are springing up along the Midpeninsula with the support of their city govern- ments: Sky Posse Palo Alto; CalmTheSkies in Atherton and Menlo Park; and the Ad Hoc Citizens Committee on Airplane Noise Abatement for the South Bay in Portola Valley and Wood- side. The City of Palo Alto has sought to become a member of the SFO Community Roundtable — which addresses airport noise issues and represents every major city in San Mateo County — but has been denied membership be- cause it's outside the county. But Palo Alto Mayor Nancy Shep- herd and City Manager James Keene have both weighed in on NextGen's environmental- impact study, Shepherd said. Palo Alto residents who are looking into the issue are seeking to form alliances with the estab- lished groups. • Stewart Carl, a member of Sky Posse Palo Alto, began notic- ing the flight and noise changes around the fall of 2013. From his third -story Palo Alto home office, he has heard the thunderous noise as he's worked late into the night and early morning. "I've lived there for 18 years and it never bothered me. Now I'm hearing jet noise constantly. I started wondering, `What is go- ing on ? "' he said. Residents last week gathered in a Palo Alto office conference room to discuss strategies and share information. They consid- ered an email from an SFO of- ficial in the Noise Abatement Of- How loud is that? Here's what decibels sound like in terms of everyday noise fice regarding changes in flight paths. He stated that there have been no changes in 2014, but a change did occur in 2013. Prior to July 2013, arrivals were split between routes over land and over San Francisco Bay. But the FAA permanently directed in- ternational planes to fly over the Midpeninsula after the Asiana Airlines crash, when the pilot landed short of the runway, he noted. The FAA has declined to com- ment on matters related to the SFO flights because of the pend- ing litigation by the Portola Val- ley and Woodside residents. But numbers tell part of the story. This year, 68 percent of flights have come overland from the south compared to 54 percent in 2010, according to SFO data. For Palo Alto, 48 percent of flights came over land in 2014 compared to 45 percent in 2010. Palo Alto residents believe the flight paths have shifted to the south. SFO spokesman Doug Yakel said that flight patterns may expand or contract based on Decibels (db) Noise Subjective loudness 150 jet takeoff at 27 yards eardrum rupture 120 thunderclap, chainsaw painful 110 rock band, auto horn at 3 feet average human pain threshold 90 Boeing 737 at 1.2 miles before landing, likely hearing damage from 8 hours of power mower exposure 80 garbage disposal, dishwasher, car wash at possible hearing damage from 8 hours 20 feet, propeller plane flyover at 1,000 feet of exposure; twice as loud as 70 dB 70 vacuum cleaner, radio, television upper 70s are annoying to some people 60 air conditioning unit at 33 yards, moderately noisy conversation in a restaurant 50 conversation at home, loud enough to wake moderate up sleeping person 30 calm rural area 10 breathing very quiet barely audible Sources: Temple University Department of CivillEnvironmental Engineering, Federal Agency Review of Selected Airport Noise Analysis Issues; Outdoor Noise and the Metropolitan Environment, M.C. Branch et al., Department of City Planning, City of Los Angeles, 1970; Centre for Human Performance & Health, Ontario, Canada Page 28.October 24, 2014 • Palo Alto Weekly • www.PaloAltoOnline.com Tina Nguyen, who has filed a lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration, talks with Jon Zweig and other area resident's about the noise of airplanes flying over residential areas in Palo Alto and surrounding cities on Oct. 16. increases or decreases in air traf- fic volume, but he did not specify how far or where the contractions and expansions have occurred. Tina Nguyen, one of the plain- tiffs challenging the FAA's• find- ing of no significant impacts in its environmental review, said tracking the flights through the online airport Web Tracker con- firms flights are coming in fur- ther south than before. In addition, Southwest and Vir- gin America increased their traf- fic into SFO in 2007. The airport has compensated for it by send- ing many flights into a holding pattern over Woodside and. Por- tola Valley, while they hold their place in the queue, she said. She verified the traffic patterns by studying the online SFO and San Jose flight trackers. All of these flights also pass over Palo Alto, she said. Yakel confirmed that traffic around the three Bay Area air- ports is up about 2 percent com- pared to last year, mainly due to increases at SFO and San Jose. In August, SFO recorded 18,664 ar- rivals, he said. Of these, 7,470, or 40 percent, flew over Palo Alto at an altitude of 10,000 feet and lower. Decibel levels and how they are measured are a major point of contention between the FAA, residents and congressional members. When Eshoo and Fazzino made their agreement with SFO, the al- titude for planes flying over the border of Menlo Park and Palo Alto was to be 5,000 feet rather than 4,000, according to a May 12, 2000, letter she wrote to members of UPROAR, a local airplane -noise group. Eshoo wrote that the change was anticipated to reduce noise by one to two decibels at ground level. SFO also agreed to install a permanent noise monitor at the Palo Alto and Menlo Park border to aid enforcement. But Bert Ga- noung, SFO's manager of aircraft noise abatement, said the deci- bel monitor was never installed. When 9/11 and fears of SARS led j to a drop in the number of people who were flying, airport revenues decreased, he said. The decreased number of flights also resulted in a lesser need to monitor noise lev- els, he added. In 2002, a letter from the head of the noise office withdrew the offer of a decibel monitor. Cities were offered monitors if they paid for them, with SFO agreeing to do annual maintenance, but most no longer saw a need, he said. An Eshoo spokesperson said the permanent decibel monitor was awaiting final permitting when 9/11 dried up air traffic and the funding for the site. "At this time, cities can pursue a portable decibel monitor pro- gram at no cost," the spokesper- son said in an email. "The State of California accepts this quar- terly monitoring system as an ac- ceptable substitute to permanent noise monitors under Title 21 — California Noise Standards. Again, it is incumbent' upon cit- ies to pursue this option, and they are encouraged to do so." Nguyen's group hired its own aviation -noise expert, who con- ducted tests and found that be- tween Aug. 26, 2013, and Sept. 11, 2013, 61 arrival flights had a peak noise level of 80 decibels near Skyline Boulevard in Wood- side, she said. The noise seems to stem from low- flying planes that are vio- lating agreements SFO made in 1998 and 2000 to keep flights above Skyline above 8,000 feet and at the Palo Alto and Menlo Park border at 5,000 feet, Nguyen said. Data from the SFO Noise Abatement Office shows that more than 80 percent of arrival flights on a typical Sunday vio- lated the 8,000 -foot agreement, Nguyen said. Data obtained from the FAA also showed that between Jan. I and May 31, 2013, 60.4 per- cent of flights arriving from the west were below 8,000 feet over Woodside — with more than half of those flying below 6,000 feet. But Ganoung countered that planes fly at those altitudes only when weather is good. The FAA has a 65- decibel Day -Night Average Sound Lev- el standard, which has been in place since 1976 and is consid- ered compatible with residential neighborhoods. But the standard is "outdated and disconnected from the real impact that air traf- fic noise is having on our constit- uents and should be lowered to a more reasonable standard of 55 decibel DNL," wrote 26 members of the U.S. House of Representa- tives, including Eshoo and Rep. Jackie Speier, in a Sept. 12 letter to the FAA. The letter demanded an update of national sound -level standards and that the agency expedite a five -year noise -level study the FAA has underway. Most European countries have dropped the standard to 55 deci- bels, Carl pointed out. Nguyen said the FAA's use of the day -night average is exactly that — an average. It doesn't note flights that exceed 65 decibels nor remove the night curfews when planes are not flying. A better weighted analysis would be to study noise levels from single airplanes passing over homes, the residents con- tend. The U.S. First District Court of Appeal supported that conten- tion in an opinion on an Aug. 30, 2001, lawsuit filed by the group Berkeley Keep Jets Over the Bay Committee against the Port of Oakland. In that case, the Port's Board of Commissioners had ap- proved a plan to reconfigure and expand the Oakland International Airport to accommodate nearly double the number of flights be- tween 1994 and 2010. The board had concluded there would not be significant noise and emissions problems based on the 65 -deci- bel level, which is an average over a 24 -hour period. But the environmental- impact study did not account for the disturbance of increased nighttime flights. The plaintiffs argued that the Port's reliance on the average provided a skewed representation of noise issues. The three judge panel agreed. "This conclusion is derived without any meaningful analysis of existing ambient noise levels, the number of additional night- time flights that will occur ... the frequency of those flights, to what degree single overflights will increase noise levels over and above the existing ambient noise level at a given location, and the community reaction to aircraft noise," the judges wrote. The members of Congress raised similar concerns in their letter to the FAA. "It is imperative that the FAA properly balance emission and noise concerns. This includes variations of daily flight routes, continuous descent approaches and rapid ascents," they wrote regarding the NextGen program. NextGen has been touted by the FAA as a necessary and long- overdue program that will modernize the nation's air- traffic operations systems and prepare for a future of increased sky traffic. The FAA's Aerospace Forecast projects that commer- cial air - traffic volume will nearly double over the next 20 years. SFO forecasts a 2 percent annual increase in air traffic, Yakel said. "The airport can accommo- date this rate without any add- ing runway capacity until about 2025 -2030. At that point, airlines would have to start using larger aircraft, and /or the airport would have to expand runway capacity," Yakel said. "To deal with the projected in- creases," Carl said, "the NextGen program will channel air traffic into a handful of narrow flight paths starting up to 200 miles from an airport and will allow air - traffic control to use much tighter aircraft -to- aircraft spac- ing. "The net effect is all of the air - traffic and noise that was spread out over a large area is concen- trated over a smaller population living under the handful of preci- sion flight paths into an airport," he said. Prior to NextGen, pilots chart- ed their own course until 20 miles from the airport. This approach allowed for flight paths that were more spread out, and with them, the noise. Under NextGen, the flight paths will go directly on over particular neighborhoods, he said. The plan is to have five paths into SFO. Three of the five come over Palo Alto, and the city is getting roughly half of the arrival traffic, Carl added. Aircraft spacing, which is now about 6 miles between planes, will reduce to 1 mile or less, he said. Higher noise levels over Palo Alto are projected under the FAA's plan, according to con- sultants ATAC Corporation. The greatest increase by 2019 is ex- pected to be between 1 and 2.7 (continued on page 30) Cover Story Passengers board a Surf Air flight to Santa Barbara at San Carlos Airport. living under the belly of Wheast F Residents express growing concern over Surf Air's small commuter planes �edgl ing airline Surf Air's marketing slogan is "Dis- ruptive Innovation — A Revolutionary Approach to Air Travel:' Some residents in Menlo Park, Redwood City and Atherton say it sums up their experience with the commuter airline's turbo - propeller planes. Surf Air started flying out of San Carlos Airport in June 2013. The start-up airline offers members unlimited flights for a monthly fee between regional airports, including Burbank, Hawthorne, Santa Barbara, Las Vegas and Truckee. It currently has as many as 24 flights to and from San Carlos, with the ear- liest departing at 7:05 a.m. on weekdays and the last arriving at 8:55 p.m. On weekends, the first flight leaves at 8 a.m. on Saturday and the last lands at 10 p.m. on Sunday, according to the company's website. The airline plans to add Oakland and Carls- bad to its service in November and December. But its concierge service has upset Midpeninsula residents, who say its Pilatus aircraft is ex- ceedingly noisy. CalmTheSkies, a group based in Atherton, has been trying to get the company to change its flight paths or to have the _planes fly higher. A Sept. 30 meeting at Holbrook - Palmer Park brought together people from Palo Alto to Red- wood City to voice their con- cerns to Surf Air executives. "A critical takeaway is that this isn't an Atherton problem. It is a problem that affects many communities," Atherton resident David Fleck, an organizer, said. Residents said the plane's sound frequency has been like nothing they have experienced before. "I call it the blue - bellied beast," said Sheri Shenk, who said the planes shake her home. Her visiting grandchildren ran for cover during a recent visit. "I gauge it by the height of my redwood tree. It's often lower than 1,500 feet," she said. Surf Air CEO Jeff Potter, a former Frontier Airlines CEO who took over in February, said the airline wants to work with the community. Surf is testing a new, quintuple- bladed propel- ler that might be quieter than the four - bladed type in current use, he said. The airline would like to fly out of Moffett Field, which could eliminate some of the noisy traffic currently bur- dening south San Mateo County cities, but so far the company hasn't gotten approval, he said. Pilots at the Sept. 30 meeting said that Surf Air pilots need training on best practices to de- scend more quietly in the Pilatus aircraft. CalmTheSkies is also working to try to get the Federal Avia- tion Administration to increase the altitudes on flight paths or spread the flight approaches over U.S. Highway 1.01. Some residents say they have already done enough talking, and they are considering legal options. "That's very indicative about how upset people are becoming in our community," Fleck said. San Mateo County has con- tinued to accept federal money from the FAA. Some residents say it is time to stop. "In doing so, they're giving away the ability of the county to have leverage to manage ground operations better. We can no lon- ger demand to manage curfews or the number of flights," Fleck said. The residents also want better noise monitoring. The studies are dated to before the class of aircraft such as Pilatus existed, he said. Noise studies are also gener- ally done nearest to airports. "They don't extend back to the community," he said. Residents said they are closely evaluating candidates running in this November's election for their responsiveness on the issue. "It's the county's responsibility. They own it — it's their airport. We're really questioning where our seats of government are on these issues. They are missing in action, and we need them front and center," Fleck said. ■ — Sue Dremann A Surf Air employee pushes a bag cart away after passengers boarded a flight to Santa Barbara at San Carlos Airport. www.PaloAltoOnline.com • Palo Alto Weekly • October 24, 2014 • Page 29