We noted the two runway noise meetings being held by local activists on June 21st here. Both meetings went off as planned and offered a lot of information and a plan to hopefully force SFO and its owner, the City of San Francisco, to investigate what has changed for the worse since 2015 –and maybe even do something about it. One of the things I learned at the meeting are that the noise limits that are in place are purely voluntary by the pilots and there are little if any penalties for not following the guidance. Some airlines are known to be worse offenders than others. The standard is more than 40 years old and does not account for high and low frequencies. Also, back in 2011 the County Grand Jury found that the Airport Roundtable was experiencing "diminishing effectiveness". Given that the Airport Roundtable is the one body that local politicians and city staff have for interacting officially with airport officials, that "diminishing effectiveness" is of great concern. It hasn't improved in the last seven years!
The airport has reacted like any bureaucracy would in response to legal inquiries about noise. In a case mentioned during the meeting, they responded with 118,000 pages of "documentation". We know from a commenter here at the Voice that certain changes in "engineered arresting materials" have been implemented and may be partially the cause of the nerve-wracking noise that we hear far too often. Just try to find it in 118,000 pages.
The Plan: The three women behind SFORunwaynoise.com have come up with a plan of attack based on a similar civil action that took place in B'game decades ago and worked. By getting many B'game and H'borough people to file small claims against the City of SF, which they will naturally deny, residents can build up enough of a record to go to Small Claims court en masse. It's worth a try.
In the meantime you can enroll at Flightware.com to see which noisy plane is disrupting your afternoon conversation in the yard or your attempt to get to sleep at 1:30 am. The list of 1:30 am departures is very enlightening (see below). Is there any reason why three flights to Taiwan or two to Hong Kong cannot leave at a decent hour? I can't think of one. Here's the form to fill out to join the effort–get one by emailing SFOrunwaynoise@gmail.com.
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Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE) |
01:51a PDT |
05:16a CST |
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Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE) |
01:46a PDT |
04:59a CST |
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Tocumen Int'l (PTY) |
01:38a PDT |
10:24a EST |
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El Salvador Int'l (SAL) |
01:36a PDT |
07:59a CST |
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Taiwan Taoyuan Int'l (TPE) |
01:32a PDT |
04:44a CST |
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Hong Kong Int'l (HKG) |
01:28a PDT |
05:31a HKT |
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Nadi Int'l (NAN) |
01:20a PDT |
07:01a +12 |
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Hong Kong Int'l (HKG) |
01:16a PDT |
05:47a HKT |
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Newark Liberty Intl (EWR) |
01:12a PDT |
09:12a EDT |
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Chengdu Shuangliu Int'l (CTU) |
01:09a PDT |
05:18a CST |
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Houston Bush Int'ctl (IAH) |
01:08a PDT |
06:36a CDT |
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