Airport Noise Pollution and Ongoing Development Near Denver Area Airports

(Private and military aircraft at Centennial Airport)
As the world turns more and more towards aviation as an effective, efficient means of transportation for business and pleasure travel, the number one environmental impact continues to be aircraft noise (Visser & Wijnin, 2008). As people fly in record numbers both commercially and privately, more and more complaints are received every year regarding the noise from "low-flying" aircraft. The Denver area is a perfect example: 
  • Denver International, the 20th-busiest airport in the world and 5th busiest in the US (Fly Denver, 2020)
  • Centennial, the 3rd-busiest corporate airport in the country (O'Neil, 2020)
  • Rocky Mountain Metro Airport 


General and Business Aviation alone contribute more $2.4 BILLION dollars to Colorado's economy (CABA, n.d.). In addition to the three noted above, numerous city and county airports exist throughout Colorado to encourage local business, medical evacuation, flight training, and leisure flying. But as Colorado has grown, so has opposition to the noise generated by our local airports.


 (The Colorado Aviation Business Association using General Aviation aircraft to support VFW posts throughout Colorado with the Holiday Airlift)

In 2011 the Citizen's for Quiet Skies group was formed in the Boulder area in response to increasing noise complaints from the relatively small Longmont Vance Brand Airport (Citizens for Quiet Skies, n.d.). The group has taken its claims of illegal and unsafe low flying and excessive noise to court, where it has repeatedly been shut down. Most of the members reside in neighborhoods built in the past twenty years, while Centennial, Rocky Mountain Metro, and Longmont airports have all been in existence for more than twice that time. Denver International Airport was opened in 1995 in wide open plains far from Denver, but has found itself overgrown in development in the past 20 years as well. 

(Pilatus alone accounts for several hundred jobs at its' North American finishing headquarters at RMMA)
In a September news story about the rise of noise complaints around the Rocky Mountain Metro Area, Denver's Local CBS affiliate interviewed a plaintiff, who refers to airplanes frequent flying well under the 1,000 foot restriction for congested areas (Todd, 2019). However, the plaintiff also refers to his neighborhood in the interview... a neighborhood less than a mile from the end of the runway at Rocky Mountain Metro. Also, the FAA regulation of maintaining a thousand feet exempts aircraft during take-off and landing... obviously an aircraft must descend in order to land. While the airport has issued voluntary noise abatement procedures (indeed, every airport in the Denver area has noise abatement policies available online), there's no justification for complaints from individuals who live so close to an airport which has been in operation since the 1960's. 

Reducing flights and closing airports is not the solution the noise abatement. If local governments wish to appease the very small but vocal minority who complain about aircraft noise, they must take steps to restrict residential development within the immediate area of airports. Tremendous developments around the Denver International Airport, once located far outside the residential portions of Denver, will only lead to more noise complaints as more people return to flying. Pilots can "fly neighborly" to the best of their aircraft capability, but as has already been shown by Citizens for Quiet Skies, the expectation of the noise plaintiffs would require hundreds of millions of dollars to relocate airports (Longmont Government, n.d.), or cost billions in lost economic impact to close them (CABA, n.d.). 

References 

Citizens for Quiet Skies (n.d.) About Citizens for Quiet Skies. Retrieved from: 

Colorado Aviation Business Association (n.d.) About CABA. Retrieved from: 

Denver International Airport (n.d.) About DEN. Retrieved from: 

Longmont Government (n.d.) Frequently Asked Questions. Longmont Airport. Retrieved from: 

O'Neil, L. (2020, April 27th) Not Just DIA: Traffic plummets at Centennial Airport too. Business DEN. Retrieved from: 

Todd, J. (2019, September 13th) Resident's Upset About Increase in Flights at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport. CBS Denver. Retrieved from: 
https://denver.cbslocal.com/2019/09/13/rocky-mountain-metropolitan-airport/

Visser, H., & Wijnen, R. (2008). Management of the environmental impact at airport operations. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com



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