Letter to Tina Orwall on 2023 Legislative Agenda…

Thanks again for your time.

I understand well that yer up to yer neck in now, but I’m hoping these are issues you will consider taking up.All my thinking comes from my group’s (SeaTacNoise.Info) research into the history of Sea-Tac Airport.

Background

With all respect to Native Americans, if not in magnitude, in kind, our situation bears some resemblance storybook negotiations with the American Indian:

In 1973, the Port/FAA/King County/residents/scientists created the Sea-Tac Communities Plan as a model program to figure out if/how the community might live in (relative) harmony with an ever-expanding airport. Everything we think about now, they studied, planned for, and established agreements for, back then. Those people were real heroes. Air Quality Monitors, Noise Monitors, Water Quality, Impact Fees, Noise Buffer Lands, Ongoing Health Studies, Airline rules to minimise annoyance, even the Glide Slope thing.

Unfortunately, politics being what it is, almost as soon as the ink was dry, various stakeholders started slowly rolling back almost every aspect of it, leaving the communities with only trinkets relative to the benefits accrued to other stakeholders.

Our asks…

1. The most obvious example of this rollback, which we discussed, are the noise buffer lands, property bought by the FAA. The two pieces most people know today are the Des Moines Creek Business Park and North Sea-Tac Park. But the DMCBP was bought by the FAA for community benefit. And it is simply unfair that…

• The City of Des Moines lost a ton of structural revenue (property taxes)
• We also lost a ton of tree cover, which was never mitigated.
• The Port not only pays no property taxes, but it also gets all that juicy market rate lease revenue going down to the Federal lockup.

Add up the property taxes the City does not get, and the lease revenue the Port does and it’s north of $10MM per annum. The environmental cost cannot be easily measured, but according to Greener Cities Partnership, our tree cover is lower than it has ever been and continues to decline. All this using lands that the FAA meant for ‘community benefit’.

The fact is, we (local politics) surrendered this based on a notion of ‘trickle down economics’. The argument has always been that if the Port developed the DMCBP and SR-509, all those employees and all those businesses would generate a ton of knock-on revenue for Des Moines. It never happened and it never will happen. The Port gets the money. We get uncompensated negative externalities.

Therefore, we would like to see at least some form of revenue sharing from the noise land–specifically Des Moines Creek Business Park. There are many ways this could be done. But as just one example, the could kick back a tiny fraction of the lease revenue the Port derives–one being Part #53 of the RCW defining Port Districts. Even a miniscule percentage would be a game-changer for cities like Des Moines.

2. The Sea-Tac Communities Plan also called for a network of air quality monitors, in conjunction with a network of noise monitors. I won’t bore you with the history, but the fact that we got the Noise Monitors and not the AQMs was no accident. By rights, we should fund for at least four. That is what researchers actually want and need to get to the causal relationships that will drive regulation and mitigation. One will not do it. If that is too heavy a lift, please consider budgeting for at least a second one, for the north end (takeoffs) in Des Moines. Having a monitor in Des Moines matters; not merely for the science. We need to draw attention to the fact that Des Moines gets at least as many negative externalities as SeaTac–but with none of the compensatory revenue. This is equity and justice. St. Philomena school is overwhelmingly BIPOC and given its location away from road traffic and directly under the departure paths would make an ideal location.

3. We need to provide funding for every home with a Port Package to obtain a low/no-cost home air filter and a proper mold test. As we’ve discussed before, we have data on the prevalence of mold mitigation after home sales and it is concerning. Especially in this era of “no-inspection” loans and corporate purchases, we need to elevate mold and air quality writ large to the same level as plumbing and electrical code compliance.

4. With regard to Port Packages, you’ve seen examples of some of these hard cases. After three years of not easy conversations with the Port, we’re convinced that a fund and a first-come-first-serve system (like San Francisco International) is still the best (and only) way to get this done in the near future. The moment you bring in ‘worthiness’ and/or the FAA grant system, the discussion on how to structure such a program becomes almost impossible. Our hundreds of members need to see some progress, now, even if such a program is far from perfect. Let me reiterate that: The people on our list much prefer having a chance at a real program that only provides a limited number of annual updates, over a hypothetical program that looks much more comprehensive and ‘fair’, but is not real. People have lost patience.

The churn in the real estate market has caused many people to sell and do their own replacements with lower quality results. Our area is one of the last places for ‘affordable’ housing that meets that American Dream. As we become more diverse, it’s simple justice that new people moving in have at least as much relief from noise as my generation.

5. Last but not least, we must have a noise wall along SR-509 and Blueberry Lane. Those homes were built after the City rescinded its noise building code, so they are already at a disadvantage. The addition of road noise adds insult to injury. Again, I fully acknowledge that the City shot itself in the foot on this one, but regardless, if we do not address this, it will cause the area to decline, likely permanently.

Sincerely,

—JC