In 1996, the PSRC required the Port of Seattle to provide sound insulation systems, known as Port Packages for all homes and apartments in a geographic area known as the DNL65. This requirement was in exchange for providing the Federal funding necessary to construct the Third Runway.
The estimate was perhaps 15,000 new units–in addition to various sound insulation systems the Port had already been installing since the Sea-Tac Communities Plan of 1976.
The Port got to work and completed slightly over 9,000 from 1998 to 2008–cruising along at a rate as high as 110/month.
It may just be a coincidence that the Third Runway opened in 2008, but from then on until 2022, the rate has slowed to about eight per month.
The discussion you cannot have…
And it was also the case that the Port left until the bitter end most of the apartment buildings–which have always been majority BIPOC. So if one took the time to notice, one could see all those BIPOC apartment dwellers (with no noise mitigation) situated in neighbourhoods where, a block away, all the overwhelming white single family homes had Port Packages.
That is how we define structural racism. And that is the uncomfortable picture we wish some ‘woke’ journalist would have taken.
Partly because of our urging, the Port finally took action in 2020 to ‘accelerate’ this process, which means that all those apartments will finally get the sound insulation they were supposed to get for the Third Runway in. But… not until 2027. (Perhaps just another coincidence, but 2027 is also the target date for the SAMP. ) Sound insulation always seems to only happen when the airport expands.)
Poor quality. And less of it…
The Cities are also complicit, since they did nothing to heed residents’ complaints over provide oversight, both about the poor quality of so many of those Port Packages, but also the following graphic.
See the blue line? Those are all the eligible homes the Port was supposed to do as of 1998, See the red line? Those are all the eligible homes in 2018. The number of eligible homes keeps shrinking as the DNL65 keeps shrinking.
So, every year the Port waited? The fewer people got Port Packages. Which saved the Port quite a lot of money. How much money? As of 2020 the Port says that they have done 9,400 units… and have only 1,100 to fulfill that 1996 obligation. The number of homes who did not receive the federally mandated benefit between the blue and red lines add up to several thousand. Do the math.
And worst of all in our opinion? The Port touts the hundreds of millions ‘they’ have spent–which has actually been overwhelmingly Federal money. But in fact, every year, they simply did not ask for all the grant money necessary to fulfill all the Port Packages residents were entitled to. And now? The Port itself acknowledges that new funding from Congress is highly unlikely in the next decade. So those homes between the red and blue lines will never get Port Packages.
The harm you aren’t aware of…
The good news? The Port may not have been held to account for all the crappy installs, but it did learn from its mistakes. So today, the sound insulation systems the Port provides are great. For a homeowner to do a truly equivalent sound insulation system, it might run them between $60,000 and $100,000.
When new homeowners move into a home without a Port Package (or one of the crappy earlier ones with mold and structural flaws) they will likely not spend that kind of money on a proper sound insulation system–which means that every homeowner from then on will not have proper sound insulation and/or proper interior air quality. It’s like so many environmental harms: you don’t know what you don’t know. People buy the house before they understand what their daily experience of noise will really be like. And they almost surely have no idea as to the health impacts.
Now, why is the DNL65 shrinking? Because the airplanes are getting quieter, silly. Seriously. The FAA formula is based on the calculated noise level of each aircraft, not the number of flights. And in fact, it is expected to keep shrinking for the next decade, because both the House and Senate have made it clear that any reform would cost billions of dollars–and Congress has bigger fish to fry.
We do not blame you for having trouble believing this last paragraph. The formulation is so ‘1984’, it is difficult to accept in a country supposedly governed by a rule of law.
Frankly, nobody in local government advocated for this problem until we came along. As we’ve said before, cities like Des Moines actually went the other way with developments like Blueberry Lane.
Another kind of slow walk…
One last thing which may be obvious by now: The Port has not installed a single Port Package in response to any noise impacts beyond that 1996 mandate. Despite the shrinking DNL65, the real world noise around here has increased dramatically since 1996.
The truly insulting part is that, regardless of ideology, every Port Commission has been consistently disingenuous on this. Rather than attempting to do something, the Commission has consistently rent their clothes, begging “Congress” to do something to help our poor residents! But never acknowledging that the Port could, at any time, simply use their own money (or our money via the Tax Levy) to address both missed opportunities and updates. Because they could not solve the entire problem, they have chosen to do nothing, and make the FAA the scapegoat.
At the end of the day, one judges people not by aspiration, but by what actually happens. And every choice the Port Commission has made with regard to sound insulation has been to avoid doing the right thing whenever possible, to to spend the least amount of money legally required on the people who endure the most negative impacts.