Notes
David Goebel, President of Vashon Island Fair Skies (VIFS), writes to Councilmember Kwon and the SeaTac City Council on July 22, 2020, requesting the City of SeaTac lobby the Port Of Seattle to retain raw second-by-second data from its 24 Larson Davis 831 noise monitors currently managed by vendor L3Harris. Goebel argues the Port’s failure to retain this raw data — approximately 62 MB/month per monitor — violates the spirit of Washington’s Public Records Act (RCW 42.56) and impedes rigorous noise analysis. The letter documents a December 2019 anomaly at monitor site SEA12 showing dramatically undercounted 16R Southflow arrival events compared to SEA11 and SEA13, caused by high background noise suppressing the overflight detection algorithm. Public Records Request 20-19 was required to obtain the raw SEA12 data, which L3Harris warned would incur additional fees for future requests. The letter references the UC Davis Aviation Noise & Emissions Symposium and L3Harris Training & Solutions Manager Samuel Carter confirming the procedural change would be simple.