The Challenges
- Developing East Bay mitigation proposals that better distribute aviation noise and restore flight paths across East Bay communities to best echo Pre NextGen conditions.
- Responding to the FAA’s request for community-driven NextGen mitigation proposals and solutions.
- Maintaining community, airport and elected representative pressure on the FAA to work with the East Bay in good faith to develop and implement fair noise mitigation in a collaborative, timely and transparent manner.
The East Bay Solution Process
- The Oakland Airport-Community Noise Forum accepted a role, as proposed by the FAA, to work with the FAA and communities to develop NextGen noise mitigation proposals to deal with the impacts created by both OAK and SFO air traffic on the East Bay. The Noise Forum is a longstanding committee of elected and community representatives formed by The Port of Oakland.
- In response to the need for community proposals, East Bay noise advocacy groups (SOS East Bay, Citizens League for Airport Safety and Serenity, and Keep Jets Over the Bay) assembled a volunteer team of affected residents that included acoustic and other engineers, pilots, air traffic control and other professionals to develop mitigation proposals. The task was to identify NextGen noise issues and devise mitigations using the principles of safety, efficiency, minimizing noise impact, fairness, and collaboration to restore the historical flight patterns as much as practical and improve them if possible.
- Support for the process and proposals has come from:
- Representative Barbara Lee who was instrumental in brings the FAA to the table.
- The Cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda and San Leandro passed resolutions urging the FAA to mitigate NextGen noise
- Letter of support from Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Vice Mayor Annie Campbell Washington, Oakland City Council President Larry Reid
- Letter of support from Alameda Supervisor Nate Miley
- Proposals were sent on March 27, 2017 to the FAA. It’s important to note that some of the proposed “fixes” are easier and have the possibility of being implemented more quickly. Others are more complex and will require more time and community energy to try and bring about.
We are currently in a “holding pattern” and don’t know when the FAA will be back to us. The proposals specifically asked the FAA for a timeline for the process, and we hope to hear soon on what that might be.
To be successful, solutions are going to require good faith participation of the FAA, airports, and, importantly, the continued energetic and consistent involvement of the community. Support from our elected officials is needed to assure that the FAA works collaboratively with their offices, the Department of Transportation, the Port of Oakland, SFO and OAK airports and advocacy groups, to address the problems of NextGen in a timely manner.