In the ongoing saga of posts on airport noise, Dean Lindberg was critical of
some past decisions by City officials, and particularly the Mayor, in regard
to a possible new airport. Unfortunately I have a long memory and some of
the things Dean wrote in his post are completely opposite of positions he has
taken in the past. In other cases, there is another side to the story.
Dean wrote: "The city of Richfield has been effective in reducing flights
over that
community by blocking use of the crosswind runway for southwest
departures. The result: more flights over Minneapolis. I expect
Richfield will continue their habit of being creative and aggressive,
and likely push to limit use of the new north/south runway when that is
completed. ...I'm not aware of any activity by the city of Minneapolis
designed to guarantee that the north/south runway will be used to
significantly reduce flights over Minneapolis."
Dean is critical that more flights have not been moved to the runway that
points at Richfield and Bloomington. The truth there is that because of the
number of flights at this airport the two runways pointed at Minneapolis and
Eagan need to be simultaneously to handle the traffic. It is those pesky
people who want to fly that are the driving force behind this problem.
And I must add that during two summers one of the parallel runways was closed
for repairs and flights were shifted to that northeast/southwest runway
pointed at Richfield. Dean wrote numerous articles in the papers how that
was a bad deal too because more flights had been shifted to the northern
parallel runway over Minneapolis. Even though the there was fewer flights
over Minneapolis in total, Dean was upset about the fact that some areas of
the City got some temporary relief at the expense of the area where he lived.
So more flights over Richfield mean a shift in flights and areas impacted by
noise in Minneapolis. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Dean repeated the statement that it is the Mayor's fault that the new airport
option was not chosen by the Legislature. I don't know how many times it has
to be said, there simply was no support for a new airport. The only ones
who wanted it residents affected by noise and those far sighted people who
could see that the present airport location might have capacity limitations
in the future. But there were no "names", no businesses, no groups pushing
for a new airport.
Dean was very critical of a consultant report by Hammer, Siler and George
that stated: "The basic finding, is that data from the expressed judgments of
Downtown Minneapolis business and institutional leaders.....clearly supports
the conclusion that convenience to the metropolitan airport is an important
locational
factor for downtown."
That is what the business leaders were saying. Just because you don't like
it doesn't mean that the people weren't saying it and, more importantly, they
believed it. Please name me business leaders who were pushing for a new
airport. They weren't in sight.
The Airport Task Force mentioned by Dean did have citizen input. A Board
Member of the South Metro Airport Action Coalition was part of the Task Force
as were labor leaders, University professors and business representatives. It
again comes down to the fact that the Task Force did not support a new
airport.
Dean quoted from the report: "The total market value of Downtown property is
something over $27 billion, and current dollar growth over the last ten years
has been
slightly over one-percent, or $27 million. Were that growth rate to be
reduced by ten percent once the airport trip was lengthened by 25 to 30
minutes....or the total City non residential property tax growth rate to
decline by only a small fraction of that amount, it would much more than
cancel out the gained (property tax) revenue in south Minneapolis areas
which will remain impacted with the airport remaining in place". So what is
sinister here? Those are conclusions based on data.
And finally, Dean asked what the City had done to ensure that the new
North/South runway would actually be a noise benefit to Minneapolis. Without
that new runway all those flight would be over Minneapolis spilling over
further and further into the night time hours. When opened in 2003, flights
that would have been over Minneapolis will be over communities to the south.
The FAA's Record of Decision on the Environmental Impact Statement says there
will no flights to the north on the North/south runway except under
extraordinary circumstances. Any change to that would require a new
Environmental Impact Statement.
Well, this really is the last point. Go back to the decision about possible
airport expansion. The choice for expansion of MSP was a new North/South
runway or a third parallel runway pointed at Minneapolis. Minneapolis (and
the Mayor was very involved in this) and the MAC now have a contract
prohibiting a third parallel runway until 2035 and beyond. Let's face it, at
the rate of air traffic growth, there will have to be other measures taken
long before that contract expires to accommodate such traffic. I personally
believe that the future will see the growth of air traffic in such places as
Duluth, St. Cloud, Rochester and other regional centers thus lessening the
pressure on MSP.
Jan Del Calzo
Lynnhurst
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