Category: SFO Airport

  • Bayfront shenanigans: Where to put the seawall?

    Sea level rise.  King tide flood control.  Airliner bird strikes.  A new lagoon with algae and sediment.  50 years of conflicting regulations.  Sinking runways. Shore-based or Bay-based.  Swing a cat–hit an environmental group:  Citizens Committee to Complete the Refuge, the Center for Biological Diversity, Sequoia Audubon Society, Green Foothills, Baykeeper and Sierra Club.  The Daily Journal's Holly Rusch did as good a job as could be done describing the circular firing squad of government agencies, politicians, environmental groups and the OneShoreline county entity that seeks to build a seawall in the Bay from SFO to Coyote Point.  The article didn't note what size budget OneShoreline has to gather public comment and attempt to get a draft EIR out by 2025, but we will $niff that out going forward.  In the meantime, the engineer in me is very curious about this:

    The proposed barrier would remain open unless the Bay was hit by extreme storms or king tides, at which point the tidal gates would close to protect from flooding impacts.  One major concern regarding the project is the permitting and legal hurdles it could face when receiving approval due to its unprecedented scale and goals, said Save the Bay Executive Director David Lewis, a point his organization’s letter emphasized.  The “unprecedented” size of Bay fill required for the project, which includes a lagoon that could be as many as 670 acres, could require significant mitigation, BCDC warned in a letter to the agency.

    For those keeping track at home, 670 acres is about 29.2 million square feet or exactly two-thirds the size of Golden Gate Park.  What could go wrong?  The County Supe contender (against Jackie Speier) notes:

    Millbrae Councilmember Ann Schneider, who has been speaking out against the project since November when she was mayor, reiterated concerns that the community had not been given adequate time or space to provide feedback on the project.  “OneShoreline completely ignored me, me as the mayor of Millbrae, me who has been working on sea-level rise since they created the first vulnerability process,” she said.

    I predict a lot of sound and fury ultimately signifying nothing–apologies to the Bard.  Here is our local jewel Coyote Point yesterday as an airliner descends through our December clouds.

    Coyote Point in clouds

  • “SFO is sinking fast” while expired legislation is reintroduced.

    The Comicle front page headline blared out the news SFO’s runways are sinking, new research finds in the on-line version.  The print version (below) was even better.

    San Francisco Internation airport is sinking, fast. That’s according to new research, being presented at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco this week.   SFO’s runways are sinking approximately 0.4 inches per year, the fastest among 15 coastal U.S. airports surveyed in new research from Virginia Tech. The research, which utilized submillimeter satellite imagery, found that Los Angeles International Airport’s runways are sinking at roughly 0.1 inches per year, the slowest among the measured locations.

    Subsidence, or sinking, can cause cracking and bulging on runways, a major hazard for aircraft while taking off and landing. SFO isn’t vulnerable to this cracking, but as the water level rises in nearby San Francisco Bay, the airport could be at risk in about 40 years, according to lead researcher Oluwaseyi Dasho, an environmental hazard specialist at Virginia Tech.

    They don't mention why SFO runways are not vulnerable to cracking.  That would have been helpful since they are mostly landfill to begin with.  For those keeping track at home 0.4 inches per year for 40 years is 16 inches–that's some speed bump at 120 mph or more.  And then there is the "seawall" project.

    Airport revenue will pay for the $590 million Shoreline Protection Program, a seawall that will shield the airport from some storm surge and future sea-level rise impacts. Project construction is scheduled to begin in 2025.

    We have our very own Hans Brinker effort going on although it would probably be wiser to emulate Tokyo or Denver and just start working on an adjacent airport out in the East Bay–maybe the Silicon Valley investors hoping to build a new city in Solano County could spare a few hundred acres.  Back in real time, our Rep. Kevin Mullin has reintroduced some of the same legislation that Jackie Speier logged as noted here.  The specifics of the two most important pieces are:

    Reps. Panetta, Eshoo, Mullin, Cárdenas, and Sherman introduced the following pieces of legislation to ensure quieter skies:

    The “Restore Everyone’s Sleep Tonight Act” or the “REST Act” (Panetta)

    Legislation which would authorize an airport to impose an access restriction between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. for aircraft.

     

    Reps. Panetta, Eshoo, and Mullin, all Bay Area members, introduced legislation specifically aimed at addressing issues with San Francisco International Airport (SFO):

    The “Serious Noise Reduction Efforts Act” or the “SNORE Act” (Mullin)

    Legislation that would address noise mitigation through soundproofing and other strategies in the communities surrounding San Francisco International Airport.

    This acknowledgement about the noise from take-offs and landings in the press release shows a good understanding of our current situation

    “This legislation requires the FAA to prioritize noise-related health impacts, enables communities to engage with the FAA, establishes standards related to ground-based noise".  We shall see if our local reps can muster any support in Congress.  I applaud the attempt.  Now put some juice behind it in DC.

    SFO sinking

  • Bgame is for the birds

    A friend turned me onto an app that has brought a lot of enjoyment lately.  Cornell Lab's Merlin uses your phone's microphone to record bird calls and references their database to identify the bird.  Thus far, in my very bird-friendly yard it has identified:

    Dark-eyed Junco        Chestnut-backed Chickadee

    Oak Titmouse            Nuttall's Woodpecker

    Bewick's Wren            Lesser Goldfinch

    Canadian Goose         House Finch

    Steller's Jay               Bushtit

    American Crow

    I haven't bothered to record the Mourning Doves that have been around for several years and mating seasons or the random Seagull that flies by.  And while you are looking up in the sky, another app to enjoy is Flightradar24.  It maps the aircraft in the area, and you can click on any of them and see the flight number, origin, time en route, altitude, etc.  All of the airliners that fly south over Bgame and make a U-turn in the South Bay to land on 28 L & R show up nicely.

  • SFO: Quiet electric taxis coming

    B'game is so close to SFO airport that almost everything that happens there affects us–for better and for worse.  We love the cheap cab fare or Lyft cost to get there.  But the runway backblast can interrupt sleep so much that it's bad for our health.  Some residents can smell the fumes.  Now, next up are electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) taxis ferrying passengers to and fro per the SF Comicle

    United Airlines is partnering with an electric aircraft company with plans to introduce an all-electric air taxi service from San Francisco International for commuters coming to and from the airport starting in 2026.

    The Florida-based company, Eve Air Mobility, announced Wednesday that both companies will be working with local and state officials as well as infrastructure, energy and technology providers to ensure the appropriate infrastructure is in place to introduce electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft flights.

    “Our shared goal is to provide residents and visitors to the San Francisco Bay Area with efficient and cost-competitive transportation in one of the most densely populated urban areas in the U.S.,” said Andre Stein, co-CEO of Eve Air Mobility. “The Bay Area is perfect for eVTOL flights given its size, traffic, focus on sustainability, innovation and commitment to add other options for mobility.”

    On the bright side, a piece in the Wall Street Journal described another eVTOL company that had trouble getting any attention at the Paris Air Show because the craft was so quiet that it blended into show hubbub.  That model is a two-seater, so only one passenger per flight.  The Eve taxi rendering looks a little bigger.  I will love to see how that pencils out for United and Eve.  I just hope they don't expect to take B'game parking spaces to recharge!

  • Odd night in B’game

    Maybe it's Jupiter and Mars running across the night sky together–or not — but there was some odd stuff happening in B'game tonight.  First, I was picking up food on the Avenew at about 8:15 PM when a flash mob of kids on bikes rolled down the Avenew.  150 or 200 kids on bicycles popping wheelies and playing music headed towards El Camino in a pack.  Fun until it's not.  The restaurant owner I was patronizing had never seen that before.

    Then we were sitting outside eating said take-out and for no apparent weather-related reason, SFO went into the rare "Reverse Operation" mode.  Commercial airliners, one after another, approached low, northbound right over El Camino, banged a hard-right at the Millbrae border and were landing on 1L and 1R.  I've seen it before when the winds get strange, but it was a pretty nice, calm evening in B'game.  Sept. 28th–make a note.

  • SFO Runway Noise: Legislation Needs a Push

    I called Jackie Speier's office a couple of months ago to ask what was the progress on the various airport noise bills she introduced last congressional session.  Read about them from 2019 here.  When I spoke to the staffer-in-the-know I learned that the bills had expired and needed to be reintroduced for this House session.  That has finally happened.  The press release is here.  Here are some snips pertinent to us close by and more affected by the engine run-up noise than the overhead flight noise:

    “For years, constituents have lived with the scourge of airport noise. One sleepless night after another takes a significant toll on an individual’s physical health, mental health and emotional well-being.” Rep. Speier said. “This year we finally received the results of the long-anticipated FAA Neighborhood Environmental Survey, which showed what so many already knew to be true: residents are annoyed by airplane noise levels far lower than the FAA uses for its current minimum standards. 

    I can totally agree with that.  Unfortunately these two bit of proposed legislation, while better than nothing, are pretty limited:

    Serious Noise Reduction Efforts Act (SNORE) Act, H.R. 4931: Establishes a program at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to noise insulate 200+ homes per year in specific areas or provide financial support to the cities impacted by noise.

    Restore Everyone’s Sleep Tonight (REST) Act, H.R. 4929: Allows airports, at their option, to impose a curfew, under specified circumstances, at any time between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

    I'm not in favor of giving SFO the option on a curfew.  They (the City of SF) are about the Benjamins so why put in a curfew?  But this one shows a way forward on Burlingame's main problem (and Millbrae and Hillsborough too)

    Low-frequency Energetic Acoustics and Vibrations Exasperate (LEAVE) Act, H.R. 4926: As an airplane leaves from an airport, its takeoff generates significant amounts of ground-based low-frequency noise and vibration impacting residents in the vicinity. The bill would lead to the establishment of standards and remedies related to ground-based noise (GBN).

    Now the trick is to rally the House of Representatives to actually move these forward and to find sponsors in the Senate to do the same.  Maybe our three congresspersons can take a page out of the Manchin/Sinema playbook?  Time to play some hardball on the infrastructure bills since the Townhall meeting at Skyline college was three years ago.  Yes, three years ago and last night was every bit as loud and unhealthy as 2018.

  • Burlingame Wins Lawsuit Settlement Against SFO

    A very quiet lawsuit filed by B'game against SFO and its owner, the City of SF, for causing the ground to sink in North B'game and along the Bayfront has been settled in B'game's favor.  Back in February, the SF Chronicle reported

    The entire Bay Area is plunging downward under the weight of its own sprawl. And that’s a concern as sea levels rise and cities try to figure out how they’ll stay above water in the coming decades. 

    Tom Parsons, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, documented the problem recently. He calculated the weight of every building in the Bay Area and found the total to be so great, about 3.5 trillion pounds or the equivalent of more than 7 million Boeing 747s, that it’s pushing the Earth’s surface down. His research shows the region has sunk as much as 3.1 inches, on average, as a result of a century’s worth of development.

    “We’ve got all that fill on the bay that’s susceptible to being compressed, and we’re building on it, and we’re seeing some of the impacts of leaning buildings and subsidence,” Parsons told The Chronicle.

    But the key fact that led to the quiet legal action is

    Parsons did his research by tapping databases of Bay Area building sizes and figuring out the weight of the structures and their contents. As might be expected, weights were greatest in the downtown areas of San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Of nearly 1 million buildings evaluated, the heaviest was San Francisco International Airport.

    The weight calculation did not consider roads, bridges and other infrastructure, so the total is assumed to be a significant underestimate.

    The City has been worried about the impact of sea level rise on our Bayfront (noted here) and has expended substantial resources coming up with plans.  All of the additional building at SFO (the international terminal, the hotel and the new tower) is believed to have exacerbated the sinking–and made sea level rise more of a risk.  The settlement amount rumored to be in the neighborhood of $3.5 million will go towards reimbursing these expenses and further mitigation near our cash cow hotels.  Great work by the city staff getting SF to pay up!  Here is the map of building "subsidence".

     

    SF Chron Building sink
     

  • Bayfront Prediction – 48 Inches of Rise?

    The SF Chronicle broke up the pandemic news with a front page piece about the local effects of sea level rise.

    The study was led by the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which released its first detailed look at sea level rise in 2007. But the autonomous state agency was joined in this effort by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Regional Collaborative. Caltrans funded most of the $1.2 million study, which bears the unwieldy title, “Adapting to Rising Tides Bay Area: Regional Sea Level Rise Vulnerability and Adaptation Study.”

    The full report analyzes scenarios for 10 different extremes of “total water levels,” a term that would apply to straightforward higher tides — day in and day out — as well as storm surges layered on top of higher tides. They range from 12 to 108 inches.  But much of the emphasis is on a raised water level of 48 inches, a number that corresponds to the “likely” amount of sea level rise forecast in the Bay Area for 2120 by the California Ocean Protection Council.

    This part caught my eye as we are enjoying a slightly quieter SFO although two nights ago was still quite bad

    The findings go beyond large-scale numbers to highlight specific aspects of the approaching threat to how the region functions.

    • Runways at San Francisco and Oakland airports would be largely under water.

    It's fun to wander around the internet looking at various studies.  This one is pretty short and leads to the factoid that

    The current sea level rise is 3 mm/year.  The data from the past can also be used for future projections, using a so-called semi-empirical model calibrated with the historically observed relationship between temperature and sea level. With the new data, this results in a projected increase in the 21st century of 24-131 cm, depending on our emissions and thus on the extent of global warming.

    Keep in mind, the highest-water mark of 131cm is 51 inches or close to the "most likely" 48 inch rise in the Bay Area study.  You will have to decide if using the highest prediction is an April Fool's joke or not.

  • SFO Runway Noise: Winning at Appeal, On to Round 2

    Here are a couple of updates on the on-going claims against the City of SF and SFO regarding runway noise.  When the city lost the decision for some of the plaintiffs to recover damages because they have owned their homes since before 1980 (see the original decision here), it appealed that ruling.  The appeal wound its way through court and the appeals judge, Judge Novak, sided with the plaintiffs, so seven people are entitled to damages.  Finally.  Readers who have owned their homes since 1980 should think about joining Round 3.

    We wrapped up the second round of complaints in court on January 21st with the original judge, Judge Mazzei, again hearing the cases.  Just as that day in court arrived, the city made an appeal to dismiss Round 2 complaints as being the same as Round 1.  The plaintiffs presented information indicating that plaintiffs who are continually sustaining damages can continually file complaints in Small Claims court.  The judge allowed another two weeks for plaintiffs to present more information.  I have done that myself using the fact that I have new data from my personal monitoring station report for Round 2.  You can read about that report here.  We also presented more information disputing the applicability of the case law that limits damages to pre-1980 owners.  We do not have a date for the decision on dismissal nor the base Round 2 decision.

    Lastly, under my questioning, the aircraft noise expert witness that the City has been using from the beginning, Steve Alverson from Environmental Sciences Associates, confirmed my suspicion that trees and vegetation don't have any impact in blocking noise.  This is interesting because the SFO Community Roundtable is spending time and money to investigate "vegetative attenuation" as I noted here when I went to the last Runway Noise subcommitte meeting.  I understand that in sprawling organizations (really two organizations here– the airport and its owner, the City)– things can get lost, but when one expert says something is irrelevant one would hope the other experts would take note and not waste effort investigating it.  The time would be much better spent figuring out what else has changed and what they can do about it.

  • SFO Runway Noise: Speier Jumps in With Legislation

    My take on Rep. Jackie Speier's townhall meeting on airport noise back in October 2018 is here.  In the interim 14 months we have been pursuing legal, small claims recourse in hopes of getting the City of SF's attention (you can read all about it using the SFO Airport link on the lower right hand side).  We will hear the City and the airport's latest defense on January 21st.  The parallel effort on governmental action occurs at the Airport Roundtable "Ground-based noise" subcommittee.  In my post about that meeting, I noted that we need a greater sense of urgency on the issue of engine back blast.  Right on cue, Jackie Speier has authored proposed legislation described by a member of our SFOrunwaynoise.com group who attended the last Airport Roundtable meeting like this:

    • The most important point at this meeting was that Kathleen Wentworth (retired United Pilot working with Jackie Speier’s office) surprised us by announcing that Congresswoman Speier has introduced EIGHT pieces of legislation aimed at helping communities address AND CHANGE noise issues that affect them. Currently, curfews, flight paths, number of flights, etc. are all under the control of the FAA and there is no way for an impacted community to bring about change or force SFO or the FAA to negotiate policies that affect surrounding neighborhoods.

    • Passage of any of these bills would be beneficial for all of us, as well as for the thousands of Americans across the country who are fighting similar issues with their airports. If passed, this legislation would give the public the ‘teeth’ to get something done. Please let Congresswoman Speier know that you appreciate her efforts on our behalf by contacting her office. While there are 8 bills, HR 5112, the LEAVE Act, specifically addresses GBN:

    "As an airplane leaves from an airport, its takeoff generates significant amounts of ground based low-frequency noise and vibration impacting residents in the vicinity. While measurement, standards, and mitigation of airborne flight noise is well defined, low frequency noise and vibration caused by an airplane on the runway at high thrust levels accelerating for take-off is not yet established. The bill would lead to the establishment of standards and remedies related to ground-based noise (GBN).

    If enacted, the bill would permit a state cause of action for GBN if a state has undertaken a study of GBN at an airport, determined the amount of GBN, and identified a level of substantial negative impact and any diminution in real property values caused by such GBN. Before a cause of action would be permissible:

    a. the state must complete a study of ground-based noise at the airport in question
    b. the state must set a limit for ground-based noise emanating from the airport
    c. the airport would have to be shown to have exceeded that limit"

    Rep. Speier and her colleague to our south, Anna Eshoo, held a press conference on Friday that the Daily Journal is reporting included these comments:

    San Mateo County Supervisor David Pine said years of work by local officials about the problem have left them frustrated.  “We haven’t moved the needle,” Pine said. “The FAA cares very little about noise.”   Burlingame Councilman Ricardo Ortiz, who along with Goethals and Pine serves on the San Francisco International Airport Community Roundtable, said he welcomes Speier’s proposed legislation.  “We can recommend little changes,” Ortiz said of local officials — who he said don’t really have any power over airport traffic.

    And in the "This Should Get Their Attention" file:

    SFO spokesman Doug Yakel said of the proposed legislation that, “We are reviewing the impact of the proposals and look forward to working with Congresswoman Speier to appropriately address the issues.”

    I will follow-up with more details as they come available, but this is clearly progress!  I'm looking forward to ensuring the judge is fully aware of this legislation since it buttresses our point about the continuing nuisance–a legal term that understates the problem.

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