This Week
Tuesday 12:00: Port of Seattle Commission Meeting (Agenda)
Thursday 12:00: Commercial Aviation Coordinating Commission (CACC) Meeting. Sign up here to attend or make a public comment.
Last Week
Tuesday: Testimony on HB1791 (Second Airport) This is a follow-on to what I wrote last week. Basically, my group SeaTacNoise.Info has always advocated for ongoing impact fees, rather than ‘mitigation’ on any specific construction project. What’s the difference? Rather than having a long and expensive argument every time the Port builds anything, our City should work towards obtaining a fee for the ongoing variety of impacts that are intrinsic to living next door to an airport. This concept is used in many contexts–sports stadiums for example. The stadium owners pay a sliding scale fee to cover the added costs to municipal services. As attendance and revenues increase, the fees paid to the city increase accordingly. This revenue gives the city tools to solve many problems on its own.
Wednesday: Highline Forum (Agenda) See last week for a bit of background on the HF.
Wednesday: I wandered past the Quarterdeck tent and heard a bit of the Quiet Skies meeting re. Steve Edmiston’s public records law suit with the Port of Seattle. I’m glad to see so many people there (including a quorum of the Des Moines City Council–guys, get a note from the Clerk next time. 😀 ) Regardless, it’s good to see that there is still some concern in the community and I hope they keep it up. I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly certain where Mr. Edmiston wanted his complaint to go, but this kerfuffle is an oblique reference to the same document CM Achziger gave to the City Manager at our last meeting. Namely this thing…
Community Health and Airport Operations Related Pollution ReportIn one paragraph, that study was actually done in 2019, and the results were (and I know you’ll be shocked to hear it) as follows:
The closer you live to the airport, the greater the statistical likelihood of all kinds of health disparities, including shorter life expectancy and risks to the unborn.
Now here’s place where I part company with a lot of activists–and in fact the main reason I ran for office. This sort of anecdotal information has been known since… wait for it… the 1970’s. We’ve been (cough) ‘studying’ aviation impacts for a very long time and it has lead us absolutely nowheresville. I’ve seen this movie before.
When I worked in Detroit, the auto industry had been doing exactly the same thing regarding leaded gasoline. Scholars had known about the bad effects of lead since (literally) the Romans. For decades, the industry kept sponsoring ‘studies’–as a way to slow walk (and avoid) any regulations. In other words, they tried to look like they were doing something, in order to avoid doing anything genuinely meaningful. And almost all politicians and unions were also complicit. Frankly, the thought of regulating lead was such a threat to everyone in the auto industry that almost no one sincerely wanted to do anything about it.
We (and by ‘we’ I mean everyone from the Port to your own City Council) have also been doing the same thing here regarding aviation noise and emissions for decades. We keep showing ‘deep concern’ and studying the same things over and over–but never seriously enough. And that is intentional.
See the thing that is rarely explained to non-regulatory people, and this matters, is that scientists can strongly suspect something is true, but… There is a certain scientific bar you have to get over before you can even talk about winning law suits or obtaining regulations. If you don’t have that information, nobody in government will take you seriously.
And that’s the Catch-22: If you don’t collect the proper data, they won’t regulate it. And if they don’t regulate it, they don’t collect the proper data to ever get there. Aviation-specific emissions are not currently regulated. So regulators do not monitor for aviation-specific emissions. See how that works?
So, the winning strategy for any industry which is at risk of being regulated is not to avoid studies, but rather to support as many studies as possible, so long as they aren’t specific enough to put them at risk of being regulated. Your goal is to look concerned. Tricky, huh? 😀
For example, this year, after 50 years, it looks lik we may get the first aviation specific air quality monitor within ten miles of Sea-Tac Airport. Woo hoo!
However: when scientists first proposed the idea in 1973, they asked for six. Because six was (and probably still is) the number of AQMs necessary to collect the right kind of longitudinal data to get to that regulatory standard.
Instead, our City, along with SeaTac, Federal Way, Burien, NP, will continue to ask Congress to create a Federal program to do that same work. Who knows how long that will take–either to pass or to complete.
Ffty years ago, we could have installed our own monitors, and started collecting. Or five years ago. Or this year. The sooner we start, the sooner we’d have information necessary to obtain a regulatory standard. As with so many things airporty, we’ve chosen not to do it.
Until local governments do everything we can do for our communities, we’re just as responsible for our situation as the Port and the airlines.
Spoiler alert: in case yer wondering what broke the dam in the auto industry, there was never enough political will to do the kind work that needed to be done. Fortunately, one ‘crank’ named Clair Patterson did it himself and his life story is worth taking a few minutes to read. If someone that dedicated (or obsessive) hadn’t come along, literally millions more people would have died or been damaged from leaded gasoline.
By the way, the cost for a proper aviation-specific air monitoring is about $2,000,000. All we need is a City Council willing to ask for it.
Thursday: 3:30PM Ad Hoc Rules of Procedure Committee Meeting at Police Station. More below.
Mayor, Vice Mayor and Council positions are public, so the public should be able to voice opinions. So it appears some members have problems with Freedom of Speech, Freedom to assemble and protest (outside of council meetings), HIPPA laws, not being recorded or photos taken and of course they blog by Mr. Harris. Of course you must ask Mother May I record this meeting from the Gestapo! Photos are OK when attending events of their choice. Hats are not ok esp. when Mr. Harris is wearing one. Conflicts between members are to be worked out between members and surely not on a blog BUT members are not available for meetings with Mr. Harris, oh no these members are allowed in a public forum to speak of how disappointed they are with Mr. Harris. Guess that working out amongst themselves is a one way street! I truly enjoy the blog from Mr. Harris. Perhaps council members should have thicker skin. If your major concern during meetings is ad hoc meeting rules, whether Mr. Harris wears a hat too meetings in a time when people are not willing to step up to serve their community or be council members there is a problem! No wonder nothing gets done and what this council truly wants is to be able to pass what they want without public knowledge. Such a dysfunctional group its like reading Dear Abby each week!