The Hayward City Council's Airport Committee met June 22, 2000 to review the "evaluation of the performance-based [aircraft] noise ordinance" for 1999 prepared by the Hayward Airport manager. The following critique of the evaluation was submitted by Howard Beckman, a resident of San Lorenzo.

June 21, 2000

TO: Hayward City Council Airport Committee
FROM: Howard Beckman
SUBJECT: 1999 Annual Noise Evaluation for Hayward Airport

I have the following comments on the annual evaluation of the city's aircraft noise ordinance prepared by the Hayward Airport staff for 1999 (document undated).

As in years past, the 1999 report continues to correlate noise complaints from neighboring residents with exceedances of the ordinance noise limits. The purpose of this correlation eludes me altogether. The effect, however, is to marginalize complaints that are not associated with exceedances, perhaps on the theory that such complaints are not legitimate in some sense.

Indeed, the report characterizes the majority of complaints from the two complainants with the highest number of complaints as complaints about "aircraft overflying the complainants houses while in the traffic pattern." I am undoubtedly one of those two complainants, and I can state without reservation that almost all complaints made by me to the airport about aircraft in flight have concerned noise. I have documented in my complaints aircraft (observed by me) departing the airport over homes at altitudes around or less than 100 feet above ground level; the overwhelming majority of such instances are associated with disturbing noise. (Is it so difficult to conceive that an airplane at 100 feet AGL will be a nuisance?)

The airport continues to attract more helicopter operations, which produce a quality of noise disturbance that is magnitudes greater than that of fixed-wing aircraft, yet helicopter operations will almost never exceed the noise limits in the ordinance because the limits are designed to abate noise from fixed-wing aircraft only.

During 1999 there were 160 exceedances of the noise limits in the ordinance, representing a steady increase of 55 percent in two years (128 exceedances in 1998 and 103 in 1997). However, as in preceding years, the majority of exceedances (121 or 75 percent) were by aircraft exempt in the ordinance. As a result, those of us affected by the noise of airport operations are being subjected to an increase in noise as operations of exempt aircraft at the airport increase each year.

As the report demonstrates, the City of Hayward continues to narrowly define its duty to residents near the airport -- to work to ensure that noise from aircraft operating at the airport does not exceed the limits set in the ordinance. Noise events that do not fit the design criteria in the ordinance are regarded by the City as beyond its duty to control. Although the airport claims elsewhere to enforce noise abatement measures in addition to the city ordinance, airport staff do not evaluate the effectiveness of these measures, either in the subject report or in any other document. It does not because these measures have not proved effective in reducing noise on neighboring residential districts, and therefore do not redound to the city's credit as easily as a tally of exceedances of the high noise limits set in the city's ordinance.

The airport's annual evaluation concludes, "Aircraft noise has been reduced to decibel levels that respond to the environmental concerns of the community ...." This conclusion is a fiction of the airport's owners. The term "environmental concerns of the community" in the context of the report means only the Hayward ordinance setting noise limits for aircraft. The "environmental concerns" of residents near the airport are those effects of airport operations that interfere with the quiet enjoyment of their homes. These interferences can only be articulated by residents themselves -- not by the airport's owners.