Joint Meeting with Aviation Advisory Committee and Aviation Consultants
machine-generatedConsultants present: James (Jim) Allardice, Jason Schwarz, Emily Tranter, and [Airport-side consultant — Larry?]
Aviation Advisory Committee members present: David, Sheila Brush, Steve Edmiston, Wendy Ghiora, Mark Proulx
Mayor Pina: Please let the record show that all council members are present. Council, we have consultants here with us tonight and they have a hard stop at 9:00. This work study is for the purpose of us — this is our chance to get some information — so I am going to move straight into our discussion items, which is a little bit out of the ordinary for us. We only have two hours and I want to make sure that we get our questions, get the communication, and get our questions answered.
The first of the discussion items is StART, and we have had a change there. So I’ll start with a motion to accept the resignation of StART Committee Member Ken Rogers and to nominate Steve Edmiston as his replacement.
Deputy Mayor Pennington: So moved.
Mayor Pina: Okay, we have a motion made by — well, started by myself but made by Council Member Pennington.
Council Member Bangs: Second.
Mayor Pina: Seconded by Council Member Bangs. Any discussion? We have a comment from City Manager Matthias.
City Manager Matthias: Thank you, Mayor. I’d just like to acknowledge the effort and work of Ken Rogers on behalf of the city on the StART committee. He’s a valuable participant. He ran into a conflict with a local business called Quarterdeck — encourage everyone to go — but we just wanted to thank Ken and at the same time acknowledge appreciation of all the effort that Steve has put into helping us move forward. Just wanted that to be out there.
Mayor Pina: Absolutely. And per typical protocol, we’ll draft a letter. With that, is there any other comment? All those in favor of Steve Edmiston joining our StART committee, please raise your right hand and say aye.
[Motion passes.]
Mayor Pina: Probably should have asked Steve first, but since we didn’t — hey Steve, welcome aboard the committee.
Steve Edmiston: Thank you.
Mayor Pina: Okay. This will jump us right into our aviation topics. I’ll turn the floor over to Michael Matthias.
Aviation: Background and Framing
City Manager Matthias: Thank you, Mayor. This evening — actually this entire day, and portions of yesterday — we’ve had the opportunity to have some very dynamic conversations with our aviation consultants. Let me provide a little bit of background.
Our consultants with us today are James Allardice, Jason Schwarz, and Emily Tranter. They’re here and they’re going to be answering questions and presenting information.
Originally, the four cities — Des Moines, Burien, SeaTac, and ourselves — came together and contracted with these consultants, each city making a financial commitment to the process, so that they would be available to help us in the environmental review of the Sustainable Airport Master Plan. That involved originally helping us with the scoping efforts — which identify the elements that need to be included in the environmental review, at least from our perspective. The cities joined through their SEPA officials. Susan Cezar is here — she’s our city SEPA official — and the other cities have their SEPA officials. We came together — SEPA officials and the consultants — and made comments on the scoping and submitted those to the Port of Seattle. At the same time, the city made an individual letter identifying elements we were concerned about being in the [environmental review].
So now what’s happened is that we’re waiting — the Port needs to respond to the scoping letters and comments — and then they’re going forward with their environmental review of the SAMP process. Our consultants, working with our SEPA officials, will [continue]. The next thing is that when the Port issues their environmental documents, we will comment on those documents for sufficiency in mitigating impacts from the proposed growth at Sea-Tac.
Along the way, we then thought it would be helpful — given the city’s commitment, council’s commitment, the work of our Aviation Advisory Committee, the work of staff — to engage the consultants for a day in Des Moines. We made it a full day: we started at 11, took a tour, had lunch, met with about 30 staff just to assure that our staff understands the issues. Had some more meetings, had a senior staff meeting, had an Aviation Advisory Committee meeting, and now we’re doing the joint Council–Aviation Advisory Committee [session].
I also want to mention that yesterday we had a meeting in Burien — called by Brian, who’s here — of the four cities and the consultants, just to discuss activities related to the interlocal agreement on the scoping and environmental review of the SAMP. That’s a separate contract. Now the city of Des Moines is engaged in a separate contract for today to have our consultants here to answer questions, to help us with strategic planning. We’re very pleased they’ve been very resilient. Hopefully they can last through one more session.
What I’d like to do — I think we’ve introduced everyone, it’s fairly evident through our name cards — but if each member of our Aviation Advisory Committee could identify themselves. Maybe starting with Dave?
Dave: [Identifies himself.]
Sheila Brush: Sheila Brush.
Steve Edmiston: Steve Edmiston.
Mark [on phone]: Mark Proulx.
City Manager Matthias: Great, that’s five members of the Aviation Advisory Committee.
The Core Problem
City Manager Matthias: We’ve talked before about challenges for our city because of our proximity to Sea-Tac airport. We face significant impacts from aircraft operations, and the primary challenge that we all face — and I know there are people here from Federal Way, Burien, and other municipalities watching or involved — is that the cities proximate to the airport suffer disproportionate impacts of the aircraft operations. While the region enjoys economic benefits, proximity determines where the balance point for that is. For all of our cities, our proximity to the airport shifts the balance away from fairness and to disproportionate impacts suffered by our residents and businesses.
That’s the primary issue. And at the same time, Sea-Tac since 2012 has had year-over-year double-digit growth without environmental review of those impacts. Now they’re starting the SAMP, and they’re looking forward to 66 million passengers at some point. They’re currently at about 45 million. They’ve probably experienced in the neighborhood of 40% growth in seven years.
We think one critical issue regarding the SAMP is that the baseline is not 2018 or 2019 — the baseline is 2012. We’d like to see mitigation of wherever we are now before anybody starts talking about growth at the airport. That was one of the primary comments we made in our scoping.
But the result of that disproportionality: impacts of noise, health, traffic congestion, sleep disruption, the impact of fuel emissions, and other types of impacts.
Our consultants are here today to help us better understand how we respond to these. We had two primary requests of them in terms of briefings and information. One was looking at what’s the SAMP really about. They’ve got three runways. They’re utilizing one that never really received environmental clearance, as far as we’re concerned, relative to the Third Runway. They’ve increased frequency of flights and operations dramatically. So what is — is there a rationale behind how the SAMP is structured, in order — what are they trying to achieve? Simultaneous takeoffs — there’s space, there’s lineal feet that has to be observed in order to do that. What’s this really all about?
The second is strategies we can develop to successfully mitigate and minimize impacts of the airport. Given the fact that we’re a city of 31,000 people in proximity of the airport, with no jurisdiction over the FAA, no jurisdiction over the Port, no jurisdiction over the airport, no jurisdiction over the airlines — what do we do? How can we go about protecting and representing our own interests relative to the airport and Port?
That’s what we asked. We thought it could take them about half an hour to come up with that. No kidding. What we learned is an exceedingly complex issue. But we wanted to brief the council and the Aviation Advisory Committee, have an interactive discussion about strategic planning in order to move forward and accomplish the most possible for our city in mitigating impacts.
Actions Taken to Date
City Manager Matthias: Just a brief summary of actions that we’ve taken. These are inclusive — many of the people at this table, staff, audience, residents have participated in a number of these.
We’re involved in the ultrafine particle study, initiated by Representative Orwall, being conducted by the University of Washington. I’m personally on the technical advisory committee. I see John Reaning here — I think you’re on that committee as well, in Federal Way. That was initiated by Representative Orwall, was picked up by Congressman Adam Smith. He had legislation passed in Washington to expand the ultrafine particle analysis to other airports similar to what we’re doing here.
We’re involved in the Sea-Tac Airport Stakeholder Roundtable Committee [StART]. There’s a noise subcommittee, there’s a federal legislation subcommittee. Much of our discussion today was about ways the city’s participation — this is the committee that Sheila is on, I’m on, and Steve was just appointed to. This is about finding ways to make that committee effective relative to outcomes — what can come of that committee in partnership to mitigate impacts. That’s a challenge.
In the past couple of years, the city convened the Aviation Advisory Committee, whose members are here tonight. They’ve been exceedingly focused on finding ways the city can engage with the airport and with whatever authorities to help mitigate impacts.
We were very involved and active in supporting Representative Orwall and Senator Keiser in establishing a siting committee for a second regional airport in Washington State through the legislature. They introduced legislation to establish a committee and to fund that committee. It’s extraordinary that the House voted 96–0 in support of it, the State Senate voted 48–0 in support of it. It was the first year that the Port of Seattle supported this activity, so we had unanimous concurrence that this is a worthwhile undertaking and critical.
Also we participate in the Sea-Tac baseline impact study, funded through efforts by Representative Orwall and other representatives to establish what the baseline is of airport impacts in our region — also known as the BUDS. That’s $300,000 from the legislature and $300,000 mostly from Sea-Tac. The city also participates in the financing of this study and are involved in it. They recently chose consultants to undertake this study. It specifies it’s not an environmental review and it’s an update of the 1997 or ’98 study that was done. So this is an update to establish the baseline impact, from which one could then go [further]. It’s not part of the study, [but] could then say, well, what are the mitigation strategies? The timing is more or less consistent with what’s going on with the SAMP — may not be exact.
Those are some of our activities to date.
We talked about the SAMP environmental review. So what we want to do is kind of open it up. Maybe it might be helpful — calling on you guys without telling you — just talk a little about kind of what your experience has been here, what you’ve seen in the city, some of the ideas perhaps that we’ve discussed. And then we’ll open it up to the council and Aviation Advisory.
Emily Tranter — Opening Remarks
Emily Tranter: Thank you so much for having us here. Jim’s going to set something up that I think will be useful and interesting. I’m Emily Tranter, and my experience professionally has been engaging with cities who are airport-adjacent for the last 12 years. That’s been one of my major focuses.
One of the most heartening things I’ve seen today, and through working with you, with your city and the other three cities, is the willingness and level of engagement from the cities themselves — not just the residents, but from elected officials and city officials. A couple of things that just struck me as really encouraging:
This is a very complex issue. It can be rife with confusion or emotion or just lots of things, with airport noise and airport impacts. Coming to the decision to really put resources behind that to address them — it sounds good, but it’s a really great first step and it’s so important.
I’ve seen successes across the country, and I’ve seen fits and starts. If you really have a plan of action, there can be some really meaningful tools implemented that will help with advocating to the airport for meaningful solutions that actually will help your residents, both from an environmental standpoint and from just a noise standpoint. That level of engagement is really encouraging.
Jason, anything you want to add while Jim sets up?
Jason Schwarz: Yeah, I’ll pass it over to Jim, I guess. I would just say that really our philosophy as a team is to make sure that communities are well represented and have that technical background and support to help them in these arenas. That will kind of tee off what my more technical colleague has to share with you.
Jim Allardice — ATC Background and Sea-Tac Airspace
Jim Allardice: Thank you, Emily. My name’s Jim Allardice. My background is air traffic control. I started out in 1980, joined the Air Force, went to Del Rio, Texas — Laughlin Air Force Base — for a few years, then went up to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana. Then I got in the FAA in November 1983. Worked at New Orleans International Airport, Lansing Capital City Airport. In January 1991 I went to Atlanta — Hartsfield — and I’ve been there ever since. I retired in November of 2014 from the FAA.
The last 10 years of my tenure at Atlanta, I was a support specialist in charge of implementation of NextGen — which is a four-letter word, I know. One of the things that entailed was airspace and procedure design. I designed all the RNAV infrastructure for Atlanta. RNAV is known as area navigation, and it’s the satellite navigation that aircraft use. We design the highways in the sky that aircraft use. We use this software called TARGETS — something that the FAA has been using for several years, modified and upgraded over and over. Basically it’s a design tool that allows us to make sure that all the procedures pass FAA criteria and that we’re getting the most efficient use of airspace possible.
What I’m going to do tonight is just relay to you how that process works. I’m jumping to the end, which is the technical stuff we did, and we’ll get back into some of the other discussions. This is just some ATC 101 about how traffic control in this airspace works.
One of the things that I was able to do when I was with the FAA was actually work collaboratively with the communities that surrounded the airport to determine where the departure tracks should go. We went in and had public meetings very similar to this, got feedback from the citizens and from the city councils, and made determinations on what would work best for the communities as well as for the airport. That allowed us to implement the Metroplex plan in Atlanta without lawsuits. I cut my teeth on community engagement back then, when I was actually in the FAA, and I’ve carried it forward. This has become a niche for us. To my knowledge, not very many other environmental consultants are in this niche on the community side. There are a lot of them on the airport side, but not very many on the community side.
The Burien Turnout and Available Airspace
Jim Allardice: I just want to do a quick overview of the airspace around Seattle and some idiosyncrasies that affect you all directly. One of the things we talked about last night was the Burien turnout. I will not debate the legality of it tonight because I know that’s an ongoing issue that will be addressed. But I do want to discuss some options of what can be done, and why they did what they did.
If you can follow the bouncing pointer here — these two yellow lines actually represent the airspace in which the aircraft could turn. If the aircraft depart off of one of the runways here and turn left — I think now they’re turning left to a 250 heading, which is more down this way — they could turn as far left as 210 degrees, or they could turn as far north as 280 degrees, actually 285 degrees, but it’s like 280. Terminal controllers usually use round numbers when they’re assigning headings.
The reason for the airspace being the way it is — usable airspace — is, number one, Boeing Field over here. The rule the FAA is using is that an aircraft departing must be diverging 30° from the missed approach course. The missed approach course off of Boeing Field is to the northwest on about a 310 heading. So you’d have to turn at least to a 280-degree heading here to diverge from the missed approach course at Boeing Field. That is the rule they’re using now.
It is debatable whether that’s being applied exactly correct. If I was within the FAA, I could very easily have that debate. Outside of the FAA — if that’s the way they choose to interpret it, that’s their call, that’s their rule, that’s the way they interpret it. Most of the time with the FAA, the controller bible is what we call a 7110.65 — that’s the order you operate from. You operate in the gray area a lot in that order, because a lot of it is human intuition on what the correct response to any given situation is. That’s what the controllers are tasked with: to ensure safety and separation of aircraft. In the application of some of these rules, sometimes there’s debate on whether that’s the correct application of the rule. As it’s been related to me, that’s how they’re interpreting the use of the rule here.
The other piece down here — this 210 — is a different rule, which says aircraft landing this way and departures have to be separated by 45 degrees from the reciprocal of the final approach course. That means these aircraft can turn to about a 210 heading because these guys are landing on the 34s, and that gives you at least 45 degrees divergence. If it’s any further south than that, it would be considered opposite-direction separation. So that gives you the resulting airspace into which aircraft can be turned.
I do think, if it is determined that yes, in fact they can continue to turn these aircraft out, one of the things there is a discussion about is how to utilize that airspace for the benefit of the city — or the least dis-benefit of the city. Could you use a specific heading that you all decide would be beneficial? Or could you use multiple headings within that space to disperse the noise so that the same people aren’t experiencing it the same day? There’s some options to be talked about there.
The 41-Alpha Process and the Noise Containment Box
Jim Allardice: The other piece I wanted to talk about specifically — have you all heard the term “41-Alpha process”?
The 41-Alpha process used to be termed the 18-step process. It’s the process that the FAA uses to implement new procedures, and it is done in a collaborative manner with the airport, the FAA, the air traffic controllers, the airlines, and now sometimes cities are involved in it, depending on exactly the venue. They certainly are involved in the FAA’s community engagement piece — if not sitting at the table.
The 41-Alpha process here was started, I believe, in 2016. They were looking at the southbound departures and seeing how they could do something different to increase departure capacity. To do that, they had to examine this yellow box here. This yellow box is considered the current noise track or noise containment area.
Today, what has to happen is all the aircraft that depart southbound off Seattle must remain within this yellow box until they get to the very end of it — or 3,000 feet — before they can turn. Today, all the aircraft go all the way down here. No matter which runway they depart, they go down to this waypoint, all the way down over Federal Way, before they make any turns.
One of the suggestions — and I wouldn’t even call it a notional procedure at this point, I think it was just a discussion that was had in the 41-Alpha working group meetings — was to design a procedure that diverged by a new rule. If you did 15 degrees divergence, it would take it outside of this box before the end of it. If you did 10 degrees, you could stay within this box down to this corner before the aircraft diverged. Or they could actually diverge within the box but stay in the box all the way down to this corner.
The idea was to get the aircraft out over the water as soon as possible and keep them over the water for as long as possible, thereby not flying over your homes — just flying over the water.
The advantage to the airport, if the aircraft diverge immediately after departure, is they can launch the aircraft quicker. Right now, minimum separation for aircraft that are departing in trail is three miles. They have to all be three miles apart if they’re going the same place. If they all go down to this waypoint before they diverge, that’s the closest they can come off the airport — three miles apart. If they diverge — like in this example here, on this little red line — if they diverge, then they only have to be one mile apart when they come off the airport. So basically it’s runway separation: when the first aircraft takes off, the second aircraft can roll immediately. They don’t do that today because they can’t get the appropriate amount of separation. Pretty much, the first aircraft has to cross the end of the runway before the second aircraft rolls.
The exception to that — I will say — is prop aircraft, because a prop aircraft can be turned out, the jets cannot. That’s where you get the Burien turnout piece. But the jets, they’ve got to go out that noise track.
My question — our food for thought to you all: if the airport came back and decided they’re going to reinitialize the 41-Alpha program, which has been paused or shelved — I would hate to say cancelled, but at the very minimum postponed due to budget considerations — if it was to revitalize itself and it came out, do you all see an advantage to something like this? Do you see an advantage to getting the aircraft out over the water sooner? And if so, how would you want to do that?
According to the rules — if you can see this little arrow here, the end of that arrow is about a mile off the departure end of the runway — that’s the soonest an aircraft could turn according to the rules. Once they get out there a mile off the departure end, is there someplace between there and down around here that would be more advantageous for those aircraft to turn out over the water? That’s something that has to be decided politically with you all.
One of the things we can do is explain the rules to you guys, how they’re applied, and what your options are. But we’re not going to pick what we think you should do. We’re going to say: these are the parameters within which you can choose. Tell us what you want, and then we can advocate for that.
In any situation that is a capacity enhancement for the airport, it does the one thing that I think most of you don’t like — it increases the number of flights possible. The airport is always looking to enhance capacity.
Wake Recat and Runway Spacing
Jim Allardice: How many here have heard the term “wake recat”? We had a little bit of a discussion on that earlier today.
Wake recat, according to the FAA, is a separation standard change. A change to separation standards according to today’s rule does not require environmental review, although it would have the effect of potentially increasing capacity at the airport. One of the things that came to mind earlier when we were talking about this was to check the airline schedules to see if, after wake recat is fully implemented, the airlines change their schedules and add flights. That would be interesting to see if it actually happens.
The issue here is that the runway separation — the distance between the runway centerlines — is such that you cannot run what they call independent simultaneous approaches. Independent simultaneous approaches can only be run to runways — a new rule — that are spaced 3,600 feet or further apart. There’s some special rules for runways that are separated by 3,000 feet with an offset final. You don’t have that here. Your two outside runways are separated by 2,500 feet. So the only time you can do simultaneous arrival operations to those runways is in visual conditions, where aircraft can see each other. If they can see each other, they’re spaced far enough apart that they can do simultaneous approaches and don’t have to worry about the other big bugbear, which is wake turbulence. Wake turbulence is produced by larger aircraft — it’s wingtip vortices that can upset an aircraft following them.
2,500 feet is the magic number for spacing between the runways that allows simultaneous approaches in visual conditions. One aircraft is on the final, another aircraft’s coming in — this airplane has to see this airplane, acknowledge it, and be told to maintain visual separation from that airplane. Then they can come in and join the final next to them and both proceed in lane.
When the weather is down and crappy, you can’t do it. You have to do what they call dependent simultaneous approaches — they say “simultaneous” because they’re running the two runways, but the closest they can do it is a stagger. They stagger the aircraft to the outboard runways.
That center runway in VMC conditions is being used more and more for departures. The drawback is that some of the longer, heavier overseas flights still need 16L — the longest runway — for departures. So they don’t get maximum amount of efficiency out of the airport, just due to the rules and the runway spacing. They can’t simultaneously depart the center runway and 16L generally speaking.
For simultaneous same-direction operations, you need 700 feet between runway centerlines. You have that here — I believe those are at least 700 feet apart. If there are two large aircraft like two 737s, they could take off simultaneously in visual conditions and then diverge. But they would have to diverge immediately after departure, like what I was talking about earlier, which they can’t do today. What they can do is simultaneous departures with a jet and a prop, and turn the prop out — which probably happens quite a bit.
The mixed use of those runways is a limiting factor on the capacity of the airport. The runway configuration is not conducive to simultaneous approaches all the time in all weather conditions.
The one thing you all probably do know is that the furthest west runway is generally used for arrivals. They very seldom use that runway for departures unless another runway is closed. Generally speaking, that’s an arrival-only runway.
We talked about a runway-use plan. That would have to be something done voluntarily, and it would have to be something that we advocated for, helped you advocate for, and tried to amend their current procedures for the use of those runways.
There can be things done like choosing the direction of takeoff on certain days or certain weeks. Some of that is constrained by wind. Generally speaking, aircraft take off into the wind or as close to it as they can. The FAA considers it a calm-wind runway when it’s less than five knots of wind — if it’s less than five knots, they can take off any direction they want. I’m not aware if they have a designated calm-wind runway here or not. I would suspect it’s probably a south operation, if I was a guessing man, but I don’t know that to be a fact.
[Audience response.]
Good guess, huh?
One of the things that is a possibility is to come up with a plan that would allow sharing the wealth, basically — sometimes they’re departing north, sometimes south. Of course, departures are louder than arrivals generally speaking. So if you can have them depart equally north and south, kind of try to get as close to a 50/50 mix as you can, that kind of shares the wealth on noise. Not a total solution to the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Curfews
Jim Allardice: The other thing we’ve heard the word several times tonight is “curfew.” I’ll let Jason talk to this because he’s a lot more knowledgeable than I am, but just for my limited knowledge — because this is more of an airport thing — the airports that have quote-unquote curfews today were grandfathered in. To get an official, formal curfew is horrendously hard, costs a lot of money, and takes an awful lot of time. That’s something you guys would have to decide if you wanted to pursue. To our knowledge, there may have been one airport — Jason, since 1980? — that got approved, but virtually anybody else that’s tried it has been denied. I’ll let him talk about that in just a second.
The reason I bring it up is, I think we had a discussion tonight about the noise limitation from midnight to 5:00 a.m. If we were able to help facilitate better communication and collaboration with the airport and the FAA, and if we could get that expanded to even 11 to 6, I’d call that a win. So I think what we would look for is things like that we can help you advocate for. Now, something like that would still be a voluntary program, and we have connections within the FAA we can talk to, connections within the airlines we can talk to. Maybe we can help facilitate cooperation in that area. It’s not a guarantee or anything, but that’s an idea or a suggestion of one area we may be able to help facilitate an answer for.
That’s just a few ideas that I’ve heard over the last nine hours. It’s way past my bedtime — I’m from Atlanta, so forgive me. If you have any other questions or anything you want to talk about — reference this or anything else — just go ahead and toss it out.
Q&A — The Maps and Current Departure Reality
[Councilmember Buxton]: I want to go to your maps, because the maps — you seem to have it in a box, and that’s not our life. Our life is — your map just disappeared there, and my life is disappearing under these planes — but you have it so it looks like they’re turning out over Normandy Park. They’re not. They’re turning out over the marina. We’re very familiar with the props, the Q400, down here.
Jim Allardice: Where, the prop?
[Councilmember]: No, it’s further down over our marina. You’re missing actual [tracks]. If you go to your arrow — the end point of the runway — and you head east, they turn there. East. They turn over —
Jim Allardice: They turn east?
[Councilmember]: They turn east. It’s right at takeoff they’re turning. If you go to your line again and then go west, they’re turning. We’re very familiar with this.
Jim Allardice: I should have said that — that is a north operation, when they’re departing to the north and they turn west to that 250 heading. When they’re departing to the south—
[Councilmember]: Okay. So they are turning already — it’s not your hard yelling, but it’s further down over our marina, over our East Hill, or the north hill. We are experiencing — the wake recat — the frequency of getting the turboprops, or the Q400s, out of the way. So it’s prop-jet, prop-jet.
Jim Allardice: Prop turns out, jet goes straight. Props turn out, jet goes straight.
[Councilmember]: So we are already experiencing the frequency. I don’t think anybody in this room wants another community to experience that. We need to have a conversation about how we are going to manage some sort of relief from this. Because Des Moines is long and straight — basically nobody will get relief. So there’s really no plan to move the flights over another community, because I would never want to inflict harm on my neighbor. Those are the type of conversations I hope we can have with you — not negotiating a turn over my neighbor, but how we’re going to manage the growth when we are so confined.
Jim Allardice: That’s one of the beauties of having the four cities involved — you can have those kinds of conversations for the betterment of all. If there is — I’m not saying there is, and I’m not saying there’s not — if there is something that all of you can collaboratively agree on and advocate for together, procedurally, I think you have a great lobby.
[Councilmember]: Okay. And I realize you did this primarily for the Des Moines area, but the yellow lines — what would they look like to the north, for our friends here from [other cities]?
Jim Allardice: There is a box to the north. I don’t have that airspace depicted, but I will say this: these red lines are the current departure lines that the jet aircraft take. The jet aircraft do not deviate off those lines until this intersection. From there they do various things — these are just a couple of the departures they have. For instance, northbound departures, a lot of times they’ll come out over here over the bay, the sound, and then go to the north. This one is a westbound departure route — they come out here and turn to the northwest. There’s a new departure procedure called the ATOMY, after this intersection right here. That was going to be used at night, but they haven’t implemented it. That was part of that 41-Alpha thing — went north, climbed out to the north, then turned east at night. A nighttime-only procedure they were proposing.
But for today, the aircraft that depart northbound — I don’t have the box, because no turnouts for jets were proposed to the north for whatever reason. But these are the tracks they take to this intersection.
Boeing Field Question
[Councilmember]: The other question I have, and it’s more for our Burien friends — what does Boeing Field — King County Airport — do? Do they utilize these same turnouts, and are they receiving impacts from King County Airport over the White Center area? Are they getting hit by two different airports?
Jim Allardice: Is that for me? I’m not familiar with King County Airport.
[Councilmember]: All right, thanks.
Approach Slopes and Climb Profiles
[Councilmember — possibly Mahoney or Bangs]: I’m just wondering, if they changed the trajectory at which they landed and took off, if it would affect less people. I flew into Oakland once and it’s like the plane drops out of the sky, and when they’re climbing it’s like they’re coming straight up. So is the slope changing? Is that going to change? Could we get our airport to do that?
Jim Allardice: We had a discussion about that yesterday. There is — today, on the ILS, the instrument landing system, I guess it’s 2.7 — what did you say?
[Other consultant — Jason or airport-side]: 2.75.
Jim Allardice: 2.75 degrees. Standard across the country right now is 3 degrees. Generally speaking, in my experience, they do not go higher than a 3-degree glide slope, specifically for noise. They will do it for terrain, but not for noise. It is reasonable to expect that they go to a 3-degree glide slope for arrivals, for aircraft coming in to basically all runways.
One of the things we talked about the other day was, in Greener Skies, they implemented some RNP arrivals — RNP stands for required navigational performance. RNP arrivals are very precise arrivals, and all of those are set up on a 3-degree glide path. As more aircraft get equipped to fly those procedures and as the rules change to allow more aircraft to fly them, they can transition to those and fly those more without having to go out, physically change a glide slope, republish procedures, and so on.
So there are some things in the near term that could possibly be negotiated with the FAA — to assign those approaches as often as possible. It raises the glide path a quarter degree. I’m not sure the amount of impact that would have, but it’s better than nothing.
On departures, they have two standard departure procedures — the NADP 1 and NADP 2, noise abatement departure procedures. NADP 1 generally speaking is a steeper climb early that gets them higher faster over the ground. NADP 2 is more of a rate of climb that gets them higher over time. There are debates on which one is better for a given community. NADP 2 is the most generally accepted departure procedure that they fly. They have some special procedures grandfathered, such as John Wayne Airport. But virtually all other airports, NADP 2 is the standard.
When they take off, they climb to a specified altitude — like 1,200 feet or so — and then they cut back the power so they’re quieter. They gain altitude a little bit slower over a distance, but they don’t have as much thrust, they’re not generating as much noise from the airframe itself, the engines aren’t as loud. That helps mitigate noise on the ground.
NADP 1, they use a higher power setting — Larry can correct me if I’m wrong — they use a higher power setting and they get up higher faster, but generally that tends to cause louder noise in close to the airport, which is where you all are. There would be a debate as to which one would be better, but generally speaking NADP 2 is in use pretty much as a standard now.
Successes Elsewhere — Laguna Beach Example
[Councilmember]: Thank you. Emily, you talked earlier about having several successes across the country. Are there any successes that you’ve had that are not these options that we’ve been presented tonight? Can you summarize — are there some successes you see possibly that we could be successful with here? Are they just these?
Emily Tranter: That’s a really good question. I think the one main thing — and you may have heard it in your different meetings — if you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one airport. The options available in every scenario, or every airport, are different. What could work somewhere could be very detrimental somewhere else.
What I would say in terms of the success I’m building on or talking about is really in identifying what those options are. I don’t think this is an exhaustive list — I think this is just our [list] per question from today, and we need to go back and really look at things that have been discussed and spend more time on it.
The success that I can really capture and say I think could be emulated here or repeated here is that once there are some solutions or options, that connection — speaking their language, all of the things we’ve been able to provide in other cities — that’s where we really had measurable successes. I can give you specific examples. I can almost guarantee you that the actual solution would not be meaningful here, but just as general examples: just an awareness — which you guys already are way beyond — but cultivating that awareness of what’s coming down the pike, and having people on the ground that speak the language of the airport and the FAA, that you can utilize as support in formal processes and in meetings behind the scenes.
Even just learning from other cities, through us, through my work with them over the years — learning what is possible theoretically and what can be discussed, what works at the proverbial StART meeting in Minneapolis, or Atlanta — which Jim can talk about — or Baltimore. What has worked elsewhere. It’s more theoretical than the actual options, but I can see it being replicated here very easily — that same sort of formula of success.
Jim Allardice: One of the examples we gave earlier today was one of our other clients, Laguna Beach. We were able to go into a situation there where they were involved in a lawsuit against the FAA for the implementation of new routings in Southern California TRACON airspace. It was with departures out of John Wayne to the south that turned back east, departed over the water, and then came back over the land — normally above 10,000 feet — but what was happening was the aircraft were shortcutting that route and flying over the city.
When we went in, they were in litigation, and we asked them to give us a crack at negotiating a settlement agreement. We were able to discuss with the FAA, and basically asked them to keep the aircraft on that existing route they had designed as much as possible. Their retort basically was, “Well, we have to be able to turn aircraft for spacing, for separation, for weather, for restricted airspace” — a litany of reasons why they have to turn airplanes.
My response — I was talking to one of their air traffic controllers — was, “Well, you should.” And he was taken aback, really didn’t know how to respond, because I agreed with it. But then I said, “But here’s my ask: if you don’t have to, don’t.”
They basically chewed on that for a little while and said, “Well, I think we could agree to do that on a voluntary basis.” Voluntary basis — big D — voluntary basis. We entered into a settlement agreement with them that memorialized that — said to the maximum extent possible they’ll stay on the route. Today we’re having about an 85 to 87 percent compliance rate. I’ve told the city that about 90 percent is the best you can ever expect, because 10 percent of the time they’re going to have to turn the airplanes for something.
In addition, there’s another arrival route designed to go right over the city, and they gave us the option to go in and suggest alternative designs, which we’re in the process of doing right now.
Down the road, there were five or six other cities that had lawsuits filed against the FAA. All of those lawsuits were dismissed, and the only community that got anything was Laguna Beach, because we negotiated a settlement agreement with them.
Does that type of situation specifically apply to you guys here? No. But the thing that’s relevant is the fact that if you can get to the right people — if you can talk to the people that can actually make a decision — you can get in there and get something done. Whether that is through StART — we’ve heard that, shall we say, there’s been varying levels of success with StART, or failure — there’s some other avenues we’ll explore.
One of the processes we have talked about is to have the four cities make a list of all the things they have asked for through StART, and give it to us. Let us evaluate that list, parse it, and categorize it by: is this reasonably implementable, or is it not? Number two, if it is reasonably implementable, is it easy — low-hanging fruit — is it midterm, is it long-term? If we categorize those out, we give that list back to you all with our opinion as to whether it’s implementable and the likelihood and difficulty of implementation. That gives you the chance to go back through and say, “Okay, of these things that are reasonably implementable, which ones are the most important to us?” Once we have that, then we have the basis to advocate on your behalf going forward. We can make a plan as to how to get from A to Z, and who we need to talk to, what resources we need. And then you all have economic and political decisions to make at that point. It’ll be a process, but we think that’s a good beginning.
Steve Edmiston — Are We Fighting the Last War?
Steve Edmiston: First, thank you again for being here. I am convinced there are few firms and individuals with this level of expertise in the United States who are willing to work in alignment with communities as consultants — versus, let’s say, the industry — because most of the big paychecks are written by industry to consultants in this field. We appreciate that and the work.
Here’s what’s troubling me about the discussion we’re having, and I just want to help parse through this. I feel like we’re playing on the playing field that exists. In a sense, in the military we’d say we’re fighting the battle that was the last war, using our lessons learned from that prior experience and trying to apply them to the present. In many cases that makes sense.
I’m just trying to catch up to you guys — I’ve only been doing this for a couple of years. It used to be, if I look at the old science, they called it “annoyance science.” It was like, who’s annoyed by this and who’s not? Sheila’s annoyed and I’m not, but okay, we’ll try to figure out how to help you.
What’s happened in the last six months alone is that all of that thinking, all of those old battles, all of that old science seems to be getting kicked to the curb on noise. We have the World Health Organization environmental noise guidelines out of Europe, and they looked at everything from 2009 to the present. We’re not at this meeting so far talking about [that]. Playing on that playing field is not addressing the fact that we’re being told that 45 dB and above is hurting us. So deciding where to make a micro-change on where an airport flight would go, because four cities think there might be a slight improvement, doesn’t seem to be addressing the core problem.
Number two is on emissions and pollution. What we’re learning on ultrafine particles, and the studies are underway at the University of Washington — leading state-of-the-art, but they’re going to be going out all over, coming in from all over the country, they’re all coming in one way. We’re never going to be told when we listen to the radio in the morning one day that it turns out ultrafine particles are good for us and we should have more. We know that the science is going to say it’s bad for us — here’s how it’s bad for us, and it’s worse than we thought. They’re just all going to come in. That’s how they’re coming in.
The City of Des Moines and the City of Burien have already passed resolutions and sent letters to the Port of Seattle and said — asked, for this — not to buy the science, but: wait. Could we just take a breath? Could we slow down? Could we wait to start the SAMP and this expansive growth that we have talked about, until at least we are more sure? And if we’re more sure that it’s hurting us, can we at least not play on that playing field, but understand what we have to do to protect the health and safety of our citizens?
I feel like if we’re not talking about that, we’re not advocating on behalf of the health of our humans and the environment. And if we’re not leading with that, that’s troubling to me as a citizen.
If you feel I’m right — I’m speaking truth here — we have Mr. Kaplan, our former mayor and council member for 16 years, who now works for the Port of Seattle and is essentially kind of the tip of the sword on these issues for expansion. If you think I’m right, what would you tell Mr. Kaplan, who’s taking notes in the audience for the Port of Seattle tonight? What would you tell him is the right thing to do? Should we be holding off and waiting until we have this science for six months, or a year, or two years if that’s what it takes to be sure? Or should we go ahead on that playing field no matter what, and just let this expansion go forward? What’s your thought on that?
Emily Tranter: If I’m hearing you — you want to be addressing the larger, more global issues of what is causing the harmful impacts of airport noise on citizens. Am I capturing that right?
Steve Edmiston: Not just me, but our cities have passed resolutions.
Emily Tranter: Not just you, but what you’re capturing. I think that is important — bar none. It’s second to none. It’s critical. I think they have to be — what those are, are such long processes that it is not harmful or wrong or not speaking the truth to be putting your flag down, as you were saying, that these are things that are important and we want to address. But the reality is that those playing fields are not going to change for a very long time, in terms of noise impact, in terms of the WHO study. The World Health Organization’s assessment might put some pressure on the United States — and we operate very differently than Europe in terms of our noise mitigation, in terms of everything — but that will be an extremely long process.
So I think it’s vital to capture and vital to make sure that a city’s decision — and you said you’ve already put that marker down — but if there’s going to be meaningful change in a meaningful timeframe, we’re working with this set of cards. This hand we’re dealt. If you can not have to cry uncle and say “okay, this is the deck, this is the hand we were dealt,” but realize that in the interim you’ve got to work within that, so that you can make some meaningful changes while still advocating long-term.
That’s something I talk about a lot in my work: the top-down, bottom-up approach. The top-down approach is where that stuff is going to have to come from. The World Health Organization — they are going to have to make our environmental policy makers and FAA policy makers kind of shrink and be like, “we’ve got to catch up to this,” and put some pressure on. It’s going to be national federal policy, and it’s going to take a great deal of national pressure. I think that’s a very slow process — federal government moves very slowly.
I don’t think it’s throwaway, what you’re saying. I don’t think that we should ignore it or say that this is fair or anything like that. But I do think you can make some simultaneous progress with this current playing field while still advocating for that big long-term change — doing both from the top down and the bottom up. If you’re advocating from both those angles, does that make sense, or address [your concern]?
Steve Edmiston: It does make perfect sense, and there is absolute truth in that. But there are also absolute opportunities in the very short run to use those tools.
I’ll give you an example. My understanding of the law is, federal dollars are very wrapped up in federal grant assurances and have great limits. For us to collect federal money and say we want, for example, mitigation — we’re going to live with the 65 DNL, we’re going to live with the contours as defined. But my understanding is that non-federal dollars that the Port of Seattle would have available to it through tax levy and otherwise are available for mitigation down to World Health Organization levels of 45 dB, if we wanted to do — if we choose, because there’s no restriction on that money. I could spend it on marketing, I could spend it on vendors, I could spend it any way I choose to. If I believe that the health and safety of my citizens [is paramount] — and I buy science — unless you’re suggesting that you have a better report today than the World Health Organization’s aggregation since 2009 of all science on this issue.
Why can’t we, as we sit around a table as citizens talking to each other — and Mr. Kaplan’s here, and I don’t mean to put him on the spot, he doesn’t have to respond, but the Port is here and they’re listening — it’s so important for our consultants to be able to turn to them and say, “Hey Port, we believe the World Health Organization is correct, we believe we have to mitigate now, we believe that there’s a way for you to spend those dollars. There’s no science that’s saying they’re wrong.” Let’s have that discussion. That’s not — we don’t have to change the needle at the federal level to do that. We don’t have to do any of the things you just said. That’s now. We could do that now.
Emily Tranter: Yes. I think you’re right. My only response is, basically, that is a prioritization that you guys will have to do. We had the green short-term low-hanging fruit, the yellow, and the red — the longer-term things, or the things that are not implementable, which may fall into kind of the red. There’s a 10 percent chance you’re going to get that done, it’s going to cost millions of dollars, but it’s really, really important to us and we want to do it. If that is the priority that you have and that’s the priority assigned to us, I think we can help.
My expertise, nor Jason’s, nor Emily’s — well, mine — none of us are particular-matter experts on ultrafine particles. We don’t know a lot about that. We do have a partner that has some background. Unfortunately, he has to act in an advisory capacity now because he works for a major corporation in New York, so he’s now a senior advisor to us. Some of that information we can ask him questions and stuff. He can’t come to meetings, he can’t be involved in day-to-day operations, but we do have access to him and his advice, and to whoever else we can talk to about those things.
If we don’t know an answer, number one, I’m not going to tell you I do when I don’t, and number two, if we don’t know an answer, we’ll go find it for you. That’s our niche, that’s our expertise. We’re going to try to do what we can based on the prioritization that you all give us to address the issues you want. It’s just a matter of resources and priority.
Steve Edmiston: Thank you. This is very helpful. As I did in the last meeting, I took too much time, so I’m done.
Airport-Side Consultant — Part 150 Recommendation
Mayor Pina: [To airport-side consultant] You represent kind of a different angle on this topic, and I think we’d be interested in hearing if you had anything you wanted to bring forward from your side.
[Airport-side consultant — Larry?]: We spent the last day and a half working on this expanded look at opportunities and we haven’t really delved into the specifics. So if you’re asking about the low-hanging fruit kinds of things —
Mayor Pina: Well, Mr. [Allardice] covered the low-hanging fruit and the very high fruit, and we’ve heard from the air traffic management side, the legal side. My understanding is your expertise leans more to that of an airport entity?
[Airport-side consultant]: Airport, correct.
Mayor Pina: So if you think about what’s been said and discussed here — just your take on where you think we might find the win, where you think the perspective could be. I know you’re not going to be knowledgeable about how every airport’s thinking, but at least you’re there, having some experience and how the behavior typically is toward each of these arguments. Where you think we might have reasonable success, or might not.
[Airport-side consultant]: Okay. We’ve talked a little bit about the Part 150 study, which was completed in 2014. Right off the top of my head, that was one of the areas I would look at first. We actually started at that, but we haven’t dug very deep into it. What of the approved recommendations [are outstanding]? Those would have been vetted through the community, through the airport, and the FAA. You send the recommendations to the FAA and it comes back in a record of approval. So going through those recommendations and figuring out what was approved, and then what’s the status? That included noise abatement, sound insulation — things like that.
That would be my first step as the airport-side guy of the group — looking at the existing Part 150, what has been done, what hasn’t, and reaching out to the airport and checking out: why? Are these in process? Are they going to be?
Then the question came up in our discussions earlier today about updating the Part 150. We heard that they wanted to wait — at least what I heard — until after the SAMP was complete, which makes sense for a number of reasons. You could kind of argue either way. But for whatever their reason, they’re waiting. That would be a step — to recommend through StART that they revisit updating the Part 150, because that’s really, for noise abatement and mitigation, if you want to solve the noise issues — not the air quality and some of the other stuff we’ve talked about — Part 150 is the right tool. That’s what it’s there for.
It also includes and requires community involvement. So a StART-type committee would be required under the Part [150] process, where you’d get the cities involved, residents involved, the airport, the airlines, and air traffic at the table going through some of these procedures. That would include management-type stuff. If there are issues with StART as a group, as a committee, that tool isn’t working well for you — that’s something you could talk about in the guise of Part 150 under the management practices. Some of the stuff Jim talked about — the operational procedures, flight paths, departure profiles — all that is fair game in Part 150. And then for communities that have noise exposure that’s non-compatible, so above 65 DNL or above, would all be options.
From my perspective, Part 150 is really the best tool for all this, because that’s what it’s designed for. And that would open up federal dollars to some of these projects.
[Councilmember]: Our big challenge is that we’ve had very limited success with Part 150. I would hope that — if we did end up working a 150 — your input would help us figure out a way to be more successful with the outcome of that.
[Airport-side consultant]: Thanks for weighing in.
Councilmember Mahoney — The Yellow Box vs. the Contour
Mayor Pina: Next I saw was Council Member Mahoney, then I’ll go to Council Member Bangs, Sheila, Steve.
Council Member Mahoney: Thank you, Mayor. I was very interested in your perspective from the FAA — the noise track, the yellow box. My thought was that’s a lot bigger than the contour that surrounds the airport where the mitigation has occurred.
Something Mr. Edmiston said as well — have you ever heard of anybody being able to use that? Because it seems like that’s what the FAA uses as their noise box, but the contour is much smaller. The difference is kind of outstanding. Is there a way to use that as far as expanding the contour? In the new science, some of the studies with the particulate — is there a way to bundle the two? Probably one doesn’t fit under the 150, but has it ever been tried anywhere?
Jim Allardice: Part of it is the understanding of what that box represents and why it is where it is and why it’s as big as it is. There are a number of aircraft that still depart off of this airport on headings. Headings are affected by the wind, so the box is oversized because of wind drift. That way it gives them a fighting chance of staying within that box.
If they transition to RNAV-off-the-ground procedures for all aircraft departing out of there, the tracks become much narrower and will be more representative of the noise contours as they actually are.
I think it’s apples and oranges, really. By changing the dimensions of that box, you’re not changing the requirements for any kind of mitigation. It’s just a target for the FAA to shoot for, to stay within.
[Airport-side consultant]: Just to add to that — the genesis of the [same graphics], I think — the Fly Quiet program for Sea-Tac has very similar boxes. My understanding — and I haven’t dived [into this], it’s on my to-do list — but that came out of a Part 150, and it was the Fly Quiet program developed back in the ’90s with community input.
My guess, based on what airports typically do, is they work through the Part 150 study to identify what area would be the least impacted, probably back then in terms of population. If the population density was the least right there, or they could keep it — if they found they kept the aircraft as precisely along that runway heading as possible, it would minimize the number exposed to the higher decibel levels.
The point is that those were created as a noise tool. So if they’re no longer working, the community could bring that back to the noise office and say, “Hey, maybe this needs to be looked at again.” Because some of the things that Jim talked about — like a turn earlier — they can’t right now turn out of that box because the noise program, the Fly Quiet program, says they can’t. So the FAA is saying, “Okay fine, we’ll comply with that.” If you, working through the airport, came up with a better solution — maybe an early turn gets them right over the water right away, and you do want them to turn out early — right now the FAA won’t turn them early because they’re complying with the Fly Quiet program, which is meant to minimize noise for the community.
Council Member Mahoney: Just expanding the contour for other people to get mitigation would be more what I’m after. Thank you.
My next question: the curfew thing. I heard the difficulty of getting something that’s basically mandatory, or that they have to follow by law — that’s been solely volunteer. Obviously many of us would love to see a quiet window between 12 and 5. Nobody likes the cargo plane at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. Are there, or has there ever been, any ways — that you’ve negotiated — for a particular type of aircraft, particularly the older ones or the cargo planes that have been retrofitted, which are much noisier in a lot of cases, where they are curfewed in some kind of agreement to say certain daylight hours instead of almost any time?
[Airport-side consultant]: Yeah, we implemented a — they call it a voluntary curfew, which I know everybody hates. Some airports call it a “voluntary restraint from flying.” At that airport, the voluntary curfew began at 6:00 a.m. We had one large cargo carrier that came in with three flights. One came in at 5:30, 5:45, and 6:15 or so. Through negotiation, we got one of the aircraft arrivals out of that quiet window. The other one, they had to bring it in at like 10 minutes to six — right before the end of the voluntary curfew.
It’s voluntary — but I mean, you can work with the operators. You just have to keep in mind that, at least in the case of the airport I was working with, the arrival schedules are based on logistical chains. They told us, “Well, if that last aircraft came in at 6:00 or later, it couldn’t — the offloading and the trucking that goes out through the metro area wouldn’t make it to the destinations in time.” We were able to negotiate some improvements, but not as much as we wanted. But it’s possible.
Council Member Mahoney: All right. Thank you.
Council Member Bangs — Moving Forward
Council Member Bangs: We’ve certainly heard a lot. I appreciate that, and I know that quite a few committees and cities have been working on this.
My question is more along the line of moving forward. I’m hearing a lot of ideas. I’m hearing some things that sound good. I know that we’re dealing with four or five entities that may not come to the table — three might come, two might come, the most important one typically doesn’t. So what do we do now, moving forward as a city?
I know we’re in collaboration with the other cities, but we’ve got to move somewhere — move this forward. Listen, the duration of politics kills you. The litigation of dealing with organizations kills you. But where can we go now to make some step forward?
I’m hearing all the things you’ve done in smaller communities and smaller airports. I’m assuming Laguna is small — I don’t know — but we’ve got a fairly large airport here. We’ve got 31,000 people, we’ve got Federal Way, we’ve got Burien, we’ve got SeaTac. We’ve got serious issues. What are we going to do? I’ve not heard that. And I’m sorry I haven’t been involved in a lot of this, for many reasons — one in particular — but now I want to know what we can do as a council, or cities, moving forward. Because we could do this all day long.
City Manager Matthias: I appreciate the question, and the reason we’re sitting at this table is to find answers to that question. I think where we’ve gotten to — there’s a lot of pieces to this. I worked in another community that had an urban airport that expanded a runway, and I was involved in that process — both the environmental and the economic-benefit side.
It’s fair to say, with all due respect to everybody in the room, that these three individuals bring more knowledge than probably everyone else in the room has. That’s a step forward. The four cities — Burien, SeaTac, Normandy Park, and ourselves — it was a very positive dynamic to engage these consultants in helping us review impacts that are going to affect us.
So what we’re trying to do is both work with the other cities but break it down for Des Moines. You’ve heard a number of things. We talked a lot about runway usage, we talked about the nighttime flights, we talked about glide slope, we’ve talked about what the actual flight patterns are. There’s a lot of other things that can be discussed that haven’t yet been discussed.
The next steps are pretty specific. One is to develop with the consultants — and the more time we spend with them, and the commitment of the city to data- and science-based responses — I think it’s safe to say that we will intend to engage these consultants for our city in addition to their role in the ILA for the SAMP response. The next step is to work with them, through the Aviation Advisory Committee especially, and council’s input, to identify what Jim was talking about: what’s short-term, what’s medium-term, what’s long-term, what’s the likelihood. To review sort of a matrix of the different options, and then where do we focus.
One of the reasons that I hear a level of frustration in what you’re saying — I think we all share — is that such a universe of complexity, where do you pick it apart? It’s made more difficult by the fact that the airport and Port, with all due respect, in many people’s view have not always been transparent as to what the options are.
I think now, finally, with the consultants, I feel confident that we’ll finally know what question to ask, based on specific science review. When we’re told “you can’t do that,” why not? What about [alternative]? Because that usually ends the conversation. I know Sheila, you’ve been on the StART committee, Steve, you’ve been to a number of meetings, as have many people in the audience. There’s a level of frustration — we say, “well, why can’t we do that?” — “well, because, you know.” With all due respect to the Port trying to create a community-based engagement, they still win, because they know more than we do. What’s a little scary is, they ask us, “what do we want them to do?” No — we want them to tell us what they can do. So the thing gets reversed. It’s a little surrealistic.
But I think finally, for the first time since I’ve been in Des Moines, I think we have the tools to understand what our fate looks like based on different options. So I think that’s the next step, and to prioritize counsel that, as we go forward.
Mayor Pina: I’d also say that there’s a multitude of levels of engagement, and augmenting our ability to participate in the conversation — the talent in the background of these individuals really gives us the advantage. Jim cited earlier how he was given all these reasons, and he said, “well, yeah, you should.” He understands what I do — but now he’s going to come back with an alternative that could work and help provide some relief here.
I’ve been through the AAC and everything else, and I think this is the approach we’re going to have to take — something different in the long run. But I think this is the right approach. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s been tried here very well, if at all.
Sheila Brush — Federal Legislation
Mayor Pina: With that, next person I have is Sheila Brush.
Sheila Brush: I wanted to talk about the current bills pending in Congress and get your feedback. We have Congressman Lynch’s bill, which is [H.R.] 976. I think it’s an important bill because it will have the Academy of Sciences and Medicine — which is probably the only non-stakeholder group — as you know, the FAA tends to use Harvard.
The downside I see in them always doing the FAA study is the FAA grants Harvard a lot of money. So you have a study that is currently done by the FAA that has somehow sat in the can for two years and they’re not releasing it — and that’s the study on noise.
Besides Lynch’s bill, you have Congresswoman Meng’s bill, 31. And then you have our own Congressman Adam Smith, who has an assortment — one being 2315-2. You have the Communities Act. He also has another one which is really important on the secondary noise insulation package, which will revisit homeowners that have gotten shoddy work — shoddy windows, and now moldy, shoddy insulation. Maybe upgraded to include HEPA filters. You also have the Community Act, and you have the particle emissions [bill]. So where does your point of view land on these pending bills?
Emily Tranter: On the National Academy of Sciences bill — Lynch’s bill — that’s really interesting to me, because the ACRP, the Airport Cooperative Research Program, has been in existence for decades. It’s out of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s doing exactly what that bill is proposing.
What is my biggest concern when I see pieces of legislation come down the pike: it’s been clear that the FAA and Congress aren’t talking to each other at the headquarter level. That’s one of the examples. The intent of that bill is excellent, and I think the outcomes would be excellent. But there could be some recognition of maybe augmenting something that’s already going on and supporting that, rather than recreating the exact same wheel. That’s something I have seen repeated. I think members of Congress want to be very responsive to their constituents and introduce legislation that addresses their concerns.
To the extent that these bills will move on their own and pass through both the House and the Senate — which is a long shot in some cases — I would say now that the House has a Democratic majority, it’s more likely that these individual vehicles will move forward and pass the House. But passing the Senate will be very difficult. Senators are not as engaged on this issue as House members are, because senators have the whole state — the issues tend to be more micro. The House has, for instance, a Quiet Skies Caucus. There is not one in the Senate. It’s not to say they’re not aware or willing to listen, but the majority of the bills are in the House. Passing a Republican Senate can be difficult, because as you can imagine there’s a strong lobby — financial and physical — on the other side.
I can go through the list — I’m pretty familiar with all of the bills you just mentioned. I think it’s really important, and I’m really encouraged by how much more members of Congress have been willing to — you know, create the Quiet Skies Caucus in 2014, introduce legislation, use these platforms to push and use that leverage. That’s something I do all the time as I work to use the office of the member of Congress to put pressure on — in letter-writing, in bill introduction, those kinds of things.
The likelihood of a lot of those bills moving before being combined into the next FAA reauthorization vehicle is low. I have thoughts on each of those bills in terms of pluses and minuses. But my general impression and point of view is, it’s really good that the members of Congress are engaged and want to be introducing this stuff. It lends itself to more conversations so that they are more educated.
I try to spend a lot of time with staff to be a subject matter expert — because, as you can imagine, a lot of these staffers are 25 to 35, they’re very young, they move in and out quickly. It takes a very long time to have a portfolio of five different things, learn about airport noise, and be able to effectively work on that. That’s what I try to do — be their resource. I’ve given briefings to the Quiet Skies Caucus staff, try to make sure I’m talking to committee staff a lot. The most encouraging change I’ve seen since 2014 is the willingness to be more engaged, ask more questions, and find out what they can do on behalf of their constituents.
Sheila Brush: My next follow-up question — I know you don’t know very much about ultrafine particulates, but we have a study at our own University of Washington that is funded by the Port of Seattle. Yet under their SAMP, they are choosing to move forward and not wait for the results of their own study.
Since you do consulting work also in LA — and there’s been the LAX study, a huge study going on — have you seen a trend in airports that are participating in these studies but ignoring any outcome of science, so that they can push forward with their own greedy expansions? Is this a common thread amongst them — that they say, “we’ll fund it, we believe in it, but we’re going to expand and actually ignore the science”? Because what will happen is the science will come out and, as Steve has already articulated, that science will not tell us that we live in a healthy atmosphere — we don’t. But it’ll be too late, because they already expanded. Are you seeing this as a trend in airport expansions?
Emily Tranter: I personally have not seen, in my work, another airport that has funded a study or participated in a study and then moved past it. But I will say, talking about Washington — you were talking about Harvard, and a lot of FAA studies come out of Harvard. Boston study — but that’s MIT. So PARTNER, which was the partnership — I can’t remember what the acronym stands for — was the FAA Center of Excellence. It’s the consortium of universities: MIT, Harvard, Boston, and Georgia Tech. One of Jim’s colleagues was one of the founders of PARTNER. It’s something we worked on to get federal funding for. That is the consortium of universities across the nation to work on these issues.
Penn State — that grant Sunset did in I think 2000, I can’t remember when. But the new iteration of that is ASCENT, and that is based out of Washington State. It is looking at renewable fuels — jet fuels — and it is taking on the noise studies from PARTNER and working through the lifespan of those studies. I just mention that as another resource, another point of interest when you look at this stuff, because there’s both environmental and noise that are studied out of that consortium of universities.
Sheila Brush: Just one quick last question. Have you ever had a lawsuit — a settlement in a lawsuit with the FAA — where the outcome was some kind of reduction in nighttime [operations] or a nighttime curfew? Are there any lawsuits you can describe, outside of Phoenix that we’re all familiar with, where there has been a change?
Emily Tranter: I don’t know of any lawsuits that have resulted, particularly in the nighttime curfew issue. There was one — a 161 study in Naples — that I think was, in part, a settlement out of that lawsuit. It didn’t go to court. That’s the one that we talk about, the one curfew. But I’ve never been involved in that. The Phoenix one is really the only lawsuit I have seen move forward in recent memory that was successful — that the FAA lost.
NextGen Summary
Mayor Pina: [To Jim] One question is — we haven’t, you know, we’ve talked about this peripherally, but I’m wondering if you guys could summarize, to some degree, NextGen overall, and then NextGen as applicable to Sea-Tac airport, to the degree you’re aware that aspects of it are implemented or that there will be implementation. Just general — because it’s one of those things where there are lots of acronyms, and we’re really trying to get on the same page in terms of understanding. If you could just address that, I appreciate it.
Jim Allardice: NextGen — oh gosh, that is a huge animal. There are so many parts to NextGen.
ADS-B is one of them — Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast. It’s a device that the aircraft are going to have on board that will enable it to exchange information more efficiently with the ground, giving position data updates every second. You have better surveillance on aircraft. Once all the aircraft are equipped with that, it would prevent stuff like Triple-7s going down in the ocean and not knowing where it was — that kind of thing. It also enables some technologies that can be used for spacing and sequencing of aircraft. Another step up from the baseline of ADS-B Out is ADS-B In — that’s where you can get information in from another aircraft you’re supposed to be following.
That’s part of NextGen. The communications aspect, where they have telecommunications between controllers and aircraft that’s automated — that’s part of it. There’s so much.
The aspect of NextGen that affects Sea-Tac the most is the RNAV — the Performance-Based Navigation, the PBN. That’s what was implemented in Greener Skies. It’s what is used on those departures I showed you with the red tracks off the airport — that’s a procedure known as RNAV-off-the-ground, which means the aircraft can engage either on the ground or very shortly after leaving the ground a very precise track that they will follow.
That is the aspect of NextGen that raises the ire of communities, because the paths become so narrow that you’re constantly being overflown very precisely by aircraft one right after another right after another.
Wake recat is also part of NextGen as well. But NextGen’s really gotten a bad rap from all the noise. Like Emily started out saying — if you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one airport. The question is, can NextGen be used to the benefit of the surrounding communities? In certain circumstances, it can. It’s not all bad.
Like I said, at Atlanta we were able to use the precision of those tracks to put the airplanes over a specific area that the communities wanted them to fly over, because it was the least impactful to that community. In that case, the very precise ground track was a good thing. In other cases, a very precise ground track may not be a good thing — dispersion of the noise over a broader area may be a good thing. If that’s something the communities around the airport want to pursue, they can pursue. It’s not NextGen per se — it’s the application. If you’re doing it in concert with the surrounding communities, it can be a very good thing.
City Manager Matthias: The follow-up — we talked about this a little yesterday, we just want to bring it up for the council. The incre[ase] — which shows somewhat to Steve’s point relative to the DNL as the measurement — the dichotomy is that as the flight tracks become more precise, and the window of variation is closed, the contour shrinks — even though the people being overflown are getting killed, because the frequency has increased so much. The frequency has increased so much within a more constrained space. That’s a complete[ly different scenario] relative to relieving impacts or identifying impacts. I think Emily spoke to that a little yesterday at our meeting. Whoever, just comment on that.
Emily Tranter: It is really interesting. I look back at the national advocacy work I do, and I remember NextGen — because what NextGen really is, is federal policy. It’s the FAA’s movement from ground-based to satellite-based air traffic control. That was something our national organization — that I’m the professional staff of — supported. Because, like Jim said, if you use it in places like Atlanta, where he designed the tracks to go over what our friend down there calls “the highways in the sky,” you could use it as a really strong tool.
But what has happened is that the noise impact has changed because of that frequency and concentration. The perception, how people experience that noise, has changed from traditional procedures. I don’t know if that’s what I said yesterday, I don’t remember. But it has been very interesting to see unfold over the last decade or so.
There’s still the NextGen Advisory Committee. They’re still talking about this at the federal level — how to best implement, where the benchmarks are. It’s still very much an ongoing process. The community engagement part should have been addressed right from the beginning, and there’s a lot of catch-up that needs to be done. But we’re moving in that direction.
Something I think is being talked about — I have not been in the room for this, but I have heard secondhand, thirdhand, that’s being talked about from the university side — is, how are we going to capture that impact? Looking forward, how is that impact going to be captured, because it’s changed so much?
[Airport-side consultant]: Just one point of clarification — the contour won’t get smaller, it’ll just change shape. So [it gets] longer and more narrow. I just don’t want anybody to think that [we’re] sort of hiding, or changing the contour to make it smaller. Get longer — probably. And in a lot of ways, the ground directly under that contour is probably going to have an increase in noise exposure. So hopefully airports and FAA will allow some kind of mitigation to accommodate that change.
City Manager Matthias: The point to make is that maybe the spatial dynamic of the contour remains relatively the same — it’s being constrained and then extended — but the intensity of the experience of the people in the contour is what is not appropriately being captured, because it’s all being logarithmically averaged.
[Airport-side consultant — likely]: [What you want to] show the community is the current number of events over, say, 55 [dB], and then post-project, how’s that going to look — so they understand. Because people don’t hear in averages. They don’t experience [in] averages either.
Jim Allardice: The other piece — has to be a decision of the communities — is, do you want to stick with the departures that you have now, or do you want to go to a dispersed, diverse-vector area of headings off the airport?
Let me tell you — any controller worth his salt, if you give them multiple headings to use off the runway, they’re going to take that, heartbeat. They can spray airplanes all over the sky, if that’s what you want. But that’s a piece, you know — that whole thing about advocating for a change to the Part 150: what does it look like if these airplanes are dispersed within a wedge? What is the impact? What do the noise contours look like then? Is that what you want? Is it solving a problem for the folks that are on runway heading basically today, but increasing an issue for people all over the place? You’re sharing the noise, basically, over a much broader area. Those are the kind of political questions you guys have to deal with within the four cities — to determine what options you have and which one you think is most beneficial to advocate for.
David — Impact Avoidance, Curfews, and Landing Fees
Mayor Pina: I’d like to recognize David.
David: This is sort of a follow-up to the notion of what the alternatives are — assessment of success and the timing and so forth. We haven’t been talking much about impact avoidance here. I think what we’d all like is that the end game here is a new airport. That’s going to be a big battle. It’s going to be fought. But sure — that’s impact avoidance.
On impact mitigation, we’re also working on — we’ve got a little bit, the Port plants some trees, and may put in non-working insulation, and so forth. I’ve got a little bit more ambitious idea: that perhaps “first, do no harm.” We have a lot of people impacted here. The Port is literally getting away with murder, and the construction going on right now — which did not get environmental review — the damage being done is incredible.
Along those lines, I’ve asked Port personnel on a couple of occasions: can we get a nighttime curfew? They said no, we’re prohibited from doing that. On another occasion I said, “Well, how about landing fees for impact mitigation?” They said, “No, we can’t do that. Can’t do it. Not possible.” At the time, I accepted their answers at face value.
I asked Representative Smith not too long ago the same questions. I said, “The Port says we can’t do this.” Representative Smith said, “Well, they can do that. They can do that.” But he said, “It just doesn’t fit in with their business model.” He said they could find people for [doing it].
Emily Tranter: Talk about — landing fees, that’s going to trigger a 161, in my [understanding] — correct me if I’m wrong. But if they did increase landing fees — this is something I’ve explored at major airports across the country — you’re not wrong, it would solve a lot of problems. But I believe that if the airport were to increase landing fees, that would trigger 161, meaning that would trigger that long-term, very expensive process — the one we’ve only seen work in Naples, and that was because of a lawsuit in tandem.
I need to look a little bit more into that. Maybe he’s talking about something else that would be possible. But my understanding is that — even people have come up with the idea of a market incentive — but that also would trigger 161.
David: That’s what I’m talking about.
Emily Tranter: Market incentive and impact mitigation, yeah.
David: The issue seems to be, what is our perspective here? Representative Smith — I couldn’t follow up the question because of time, but I got the sense that he was saying, “Yeah, we can just change rules.” Along with this thing you talk about — an assessment of alternatives and their likelihood — I would imagine along with that would go what the actions would be required to take it. Does it require King County or the State of Washington or the feds to change the rules so that we could do landing fees, so that we could do curfews?
Emily Tranter: That is something that, in my national advocacy hat — has been sort of a topic of discussion. And if I didn’t open with this — I’m also professional staff of a national nonprofit that’s airport-adjacent communities. One of the things — when I talk about the top-down approach — one of the things that other communities have looked at is exactly that: in Europe, there are curfews and all of these things that we would like to try, that would make that difference here.
In my opinion, it would take an extremely large national lobby. Because the lobby against Congress changing the rules are the airlines, and the FAA, and industry as a whole. That is a very, very strong lobby. Sure, Congress could change those laws, and the FAA would have to implement that. It would be a long-term national campaign that would have to involve every single airport-adjacent community. And — I’m not being political here — but it would have to have both Democrats in the House and the Senate, and the White House, I would assume, just because of how I see the politics playing out, environmentally.
David: I don’t like hearing “that’s against the rules.” I really don’t like hearing that. First of all, things like “it’s against our business model” — which is what Representative Smith says is really what’s going on with the Port of Seattle. All right, change the business model. Stop including killing people in your business model. Number two — if it’s “change the national rules,” I don’t like hearing “we can’t think about that.” So I encourage you to keep our minds open.
Emily Tranter: I think it’s definitely being discussed elsewhere. It’s a very heavy lift. That’s the long-term stuff we’re talking about — research and development, how to make quieter planes, all this stuff is decades long. But it’s stuff that we’re certainly thinking about. I appreciate this — it comes up a lot. You’re not alone in bringing this up. None of you are. Other communities across the country are all thinking about this kind of stuff too.
Mark Coe [on phone] — Airport Governance Structure
Mayor Pina: We’re running close to the hard stop. I want to check with Mark, who’s on the line, see if he had any questions to bring forward.
Mark [on phone]: One question I have — and maybe we already know the answer among ourselves, but just for fun: the Sea-Tac airport is operated by the Port of Seattle, which is kind of a quasi-governmental agency. Is that a common kind of airport management structure, or are we in some way unique in that regard?
Emily Tranter: That’s a really good question. I don’t know that I’ve interacted with another airport that’s got the same — I was asking a lot of questions about that today throughout the day with staff at the city. What is the sort of oomph behind the commission? It’s very different in every airport that I’ve engaged with. It’s got a different setup.
Atlanta’s owned by the City of Atlanta, but it’s not in Atlanta. New York airports under the PA, Port Authority. Minneapolis is owned and run by a statewide board that then has a metropolitan board that manages it. It’s very different everywhere. I would have to really research a little bit if there’s an exact similar setup that you guys have. I don’t know that answer.
Mark [on phone]: That may be helpful for us to know, so we can understand what we’re really dealing with.
Closing
Mayor Pina: Steve, I’m going to give you the last question.
Steve Edmiston: Not my place to do this, but I was hoping we’d get some public [comment] before the consultants left.
Mayor Pina: It’s not my job to make that call. I understand where you’re coming from. I have six minutes to a hard stop, which makes it very difficult, and I apologize that we weren’t able to include public comment tonight. The purpose of our work study is to have the kind of interaction you’ve all experienced here. Hopefully you’ve asked a lot of the questions you wanted to get asked.
The other thing I would say is that, as a council, we always welcome anybody to correspond with us through email and writing or whatever. We’ll make sure the council, Aviation Advisory, and the consultants get those questions, so we can get those back to you. They do become part of our public record.
Again, I apologize, but with the hard stop we just didn’t have the flexibility in the schedule. With that, I’m going to turn the microphone over to Michael to wrap up.
City Manager Matthias: Thank you, Mayor. Hard stop — I’ll have to say this in four minutes so you can catch your [plane].
This was an important day that we spent a lot of time preparing for. The day included this meeting with our council. I appreciate a number of people from other cities being here — especially Burien. We appreciate the efforts of our consultants to go through a very long day in Des Moines. We probably had somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 staff involved in the process today, in terms of meetings and briefings and participation. All of our senior staff — I think Susan spent almost the whole day with our consultants, as did Tim, through different activities.
What it shows to me — and the voluntary efforts of our Aviation Advisory Committee, who bring a lot to the table in terms of knowledge and understanding and perspective — what it shows to me is a commitment of this city to leave no stone unturned in trying to find a way to mitigate the impacts of Sea-Tac airport on our city. With that, I appreciate your engagement, your participation. We look forward to continuing this relationship. Hopefully we have other opportunities like this to talk with council and the Aviation Advisory Committee and the community about steps that we’re taking, possible steps we could take, actions we’ve taken — measurable actions that bring results.
The same thing with dealing with the airport, the Port, the StART committee, and the four cities — all of us at this point relative to those things are pursuing one single focus, and that is outcomes that achieve mitigation, achieve relief for our community. This is one step, but I think a significant step forward in that pursuit. I thank everyone for being a part of this.
Mayor Pina: With that, I also want to extend the thanks. The council, the Aviation Advisory we have, is outstanding. The way that the teams cooperate across cities I think is absolutely amazing. I feel like we are in a good position to make progress. It’s taken a long time to get here, and sometimes this is the appropriate path.
To cite Mr. Edmiston earlier — I heard him say, “Well, you want to work through all the issues first before you go to trial.” I’m not saying that there’s a guarantee of going to trial, but what I am saying is, you do want to work through the issues. You want to have the science, you want to have the facts. We are all affected by this, and we get very emotional about it. Unfortunately, the emotion won’t get us anywhere. It may motivate us, and we can be thankful for that, but it won’t win the argument. We have to have the facts. We have to have the right presentation of those facts, and we really have to be effective so that prevailing wisdom will hopefully fall on our side.
I just want to thank everybody for their time tonight. As Michael said, hopefully we will have other opportunities. I want to repeat that any community member or public member who would like to share their comments with us through an email or some other form of writing — we’re happy to hear it. I will say that our next meeting will be a regular council meeting on June 13th here, and we will have public comment in that. So if there are folks that really want to make their comments from the podium, the podium will be there at our next council meeting.
With that, I believe we are within about 30 seconds of your hard stop. Do I have a motion?
Council Member Nutting: [Motion to adjourn.]
Council Member Bangs: Second.
Mayor Pina: All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
[All in favor.]
We are adjourned. Thank you for coming.
1This is a machine-generated transcript generated on the fly by Google/Youtube/AI. Accuracy totally not guaranteed. Provided only as a convenience and to help people with disabilities. Caveat lector!