SMO — Measure D, a pro-Santa Monica Airport measure, failed at the polls on Tuesday but the airport was still there on Wednesday morning and it’s probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
In the meantime, residents in the surrounding neighborhoods are frustrated by the amount of noise created by the jets, planes, and helicopters.
Despite a decline in noise violations, noise complaints from residents rose last year, according to the 2013 Annual Noise Report, released by the Santa Monica Airport Commission last month.
Remote monitoring stations are located about 1,500 feet from the runway and they report any aircraft that exceeds 95 A-weighted decibels (dBA).
In 2013, there were 134 noise violations, a decrease of 14 percent from the 155 noise violations recorded the year prior, according to the commission’s report.
Longtime opponent of the airport Martin Rubin, who runs Concerned Residents Against Airport Pollution (CRAAP), claims that the noise monitoring systems do a bad job of accurately capturing how noisy it is in the neighborhoods.
There are too few monitors, he said.
Others have noted that while they pick up very loud noises, they don’t register repeated noises, like the propeller planes that circle the airport.
“The whole system is counter-intuitive,” Rubin said. “It’s the most absurd thing in the world to think that noise violations are going to be reflective of what actually goes on. It’s a one-dimensional picture of a three-dimensional situation.”
In 2013, there were the fewest number of recorded violations since 2010 and the second-fewest recorded in the past decade.
Despite the decline in violations, which resulted in $55,000 worth of fines and three banned aircraft, complaints from residents rose.
There were 4,368 noise complaints in 2012 and 5,137 in 2013.
May was the month with the most complaints (1,016) followed by June (782). Complaints dipped in the last three months of the year; there were 235 complaints in October, November, and December combined.
Not all complaints received from the Airport Noise Management department had to do with noise. In fact, one-third mentioned the fumes created by the planes. Departure noise made up a quarter of the complaints while arrival noise totaled 4 percent, according to the report.
Aircraft can land at SMO 24 hours a day but City Hall has created a voluntary night arrival curfew, asking pilots not to land between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. on weekdays and 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. on weekends and holidays.
Only 221 landings broke the voluntary curfew in 2013, the lowest total in at least a decade. This is a 17 percent decrease from 2012. The number of late landings has been steadily decreasing. Most of the 2013 violations were from propeller planes and occurred between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.
While the landing curfew is voluntary, the take-off curfew is not. There were 21 departures after curfew in 2013, up one from the year prior. There are certain exemptions to the curfew, for instance in the case of emergencies, and only eight of the departures were found to have violated the Municipal Code.
There were 703 different households that registered complaints in 2013 but majority of the calls were made by 58 households, which averaged at least 65 complaints apiece.
Some airport proponents have pointed to this number as proof that there are a couple dozen households that flood the system with noise complaints to make a point.
“That’s a ridiculous claim,” Rubin said. “People are busy. They have better things to do with their time then to call in with complaints.”
Rubin said that he hasn’t made a complaint in the past three months.
dave@www.smdp.com
The fines levied are laughable….and yes, prop planes still use AVGAS, leaded fuel. That is a fact.
Melissa Jordan Dammer is a pilot who is not a Santa Monica resident and she chooses to live nowhere near the Santa Monica Airport, and her comment about fuels doesn’t address MY issue, which is that the people of Santa Monica – not the federal government, not the FAA, and not some private aviation company – own the 227 acres on which the Santa Monica Airport is located. Santa Monica has 10,000 people per square mile packed into cramped living space. The city is short of parkland and playing fields. Why should 227 acres of public land owned by the City of Santa Monica be used exclusively to provide a playground for a privileged few when the rest of the city population could benefit from the land being used for recreational and cultural purposes? How can that possibly be fair?
People think if they close the airport, they’ll get rid of the planes…very naive! And not all aircraft use leaded fuels. our aircraft utilize unleaded fuel we purchase at ordinary gas stations. no worse than the cars you all drive.
Makes sense. Flight operations are up 30% last year so it make sense that complaints would also continue to rise. It looks like people are really getting sick of the health and quality of life impacts from the noise at Santa Monica Airport. Who should this airport serve? The handful of privileged people that use it on a daily basis, or the 100,000 people who live immediately nearby?
Noise violations may be down. The 95db limit is loud, really loud. So is less than 95 FB. Studies have shown that noise over 55db can cause cardiovascular disease in men. This research is relatively new. As is research on the very small ulra fines found in jet exhaust. These ultra fines are smaller and more dangerous to us than other ultra fines produced by trucks. Also relatively new information.
When people moved to their homes close to the airport, there were not the thousands of jets flying in and out of Santa Monica Airport each year that we now have. I can remember when there were “NO JETS” signs at the Santa Monica Airport. As for the roofing nails thrown on the tarmac, that was done by ONE person (from Venice) who was apprehended and sentenced accordingly. That person had nothing to do with the Measure LC people, and accusing the Measure LC people of being part of that crime is defamatory as well as untrue. I don’t live near the Santa Monica Airport and don’t own property near the Santa Monica Airport. I have chronic asthma, and when I was at Clover Park (adjacent to the runway) when my daughters were younger and I was watching their softball games, I frequently had trouble breathing. As bad as the pollution is near the airport (and believe me – it is bad) the issue for me is the fact that tens of thousands of Santa Monicans have no backyards, we have too few park acres for the number of people in our city, and it is hard for me to justify how it is fair for a tiny handful of airplane owners and private jet owners to monopolize those 227 acres of publicly owned land at the Santa Monica Airport while so many tens of thousands of residents could benefit if that land was used for park purposes.
I believe the complaints were ramped up because the anti airport people thought they had a chance to close SMO. If you choose to live near an airport then you choose to deal with the noise. The pollution is no worse then the two freeways that are close to the airport. These activists are on a mission and they will do anything at any cost. How about those roofing nails that were thrown onto the tarmac?