Editor’s note: The video clip is at the end of this story.
Chris Hurd, of Stop the F-35, a group that opposes the basing of the fighter jet at Burlington International Airport, played the roar of jet engines outside the Burlington mayor’s office and the governor’s office in Montpelier on Tuesday.
Hurd prefaced the demonstration with a short speech to reporters in which he castigated the state’s political leaders for refusing to meet with residents who would be in the flight path of the jet fighter.
“Let me first say we don’t want to do this and we apologize upfront to all Vermonters,” Hurd said in prepared remarks. “We don’t want to expose anyone to the staggering noise generated by an F-35 warplane. We don’t believe in it. Unfortunately, we are forced into doing this demonstration so that you can hear for yourself with 2,200 lbs of extremely sophisticated audio equipment the actual colossal noise generated by an F-35 and so minimized by all our Vermont political, business and military leaders.”
At 10 feet from a bank of speakers parked outside the Pavilion Building in Montpelier, the deep rumbling roar of the engines hit 113 decibels, or the equivalent of what the F-35 would sound like at 1,000 feet. That’s close to the 115 decibel level the U.S. Air Force says would affect some 8,000 residents in the flight path of the jet.
Hurd hoped to let the speakers go for six minutes — or about the amount of time the Air Force says the noise would last on any given day when the jets are deployed — but he ran into some technical problems (his iPhone overheated after a couple of minutes), and the six-minute din outside the Pavilion Building, the location of the governor’s office in Montpelier, abruptly halted after only several minutes.
The Air Force has said the F-35s would take off daily for six-minute intervals, 260 days a year.
Hurd, who lives two miles from the airport, says the demonstration was the only way to get politicians — namely Mayor Miro Weinberger and Gov. Peter Shumlin — to listen to the din Winooski and South Burlington residents will hear should the Air Force approve the Burlington International Airport as an F-35 basing facility.
“Instead of representing the people, they have chosen rather to issue joint press statements, to cower, hunker down and circle their wagons tighter around themselves,” Hurd wrote in his speech.
Hurd went so far as to compare Shumlin’s unwillingness to consider the needs of residents in the flight path to the recent flap over governor’s land deal with Jeremy Dodge, in which critics say he took advantage of a low-income neighbor.
“We want Governor Shumlin to know that we are all Jerry Dodges,” Hurd wrote. “There are at least 8,000 Jerry Dodges living in Winooski, Burlington, Williston and South Burlington who will be taken advantage of by our Senator Leahy, Senator Sanders, Congressman Welch, Mayor Miro Weinberger and Mayor Michael O’Brien, big commercial developers advocating for the F-35 basing here including Lang McLaughry Real Estate, Coldwell Banker Hickok and Boardman Realty, and Pomerleau Real Estate all joined in support of basing F-35’s in Burlington Vermont in full page ads in the BFP last fall.”
Weinberger and Shumlin, both Democrats, have enthusiastically embraced the F-35 basing, as have all of the members of Vermont’s liberal congressional delegation.
In December, Shumlin and Weinberger flew to Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Fla., to hear the F-35s. (The flight was paid for by the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp.) Both men remarked at the time that the jets weren’t as loud as they expected. Neither politician responded to Stop the F-35’s sound demonstration Tuesday. Journalists swarmed to both demonstrations.
Hurd’s objective was to let Vermonters “hear it for themselves.” In Burlington, a tenant near city hall marched outside, demanding to know what the racket was all about. “He’s like, ‘what the hell are you doing, it’s rattling the pictures in my place,’” Hurd recounted. “I said I apologize, it’s not our intention to disrupt you, but this is the plane politicians want and we’re doing this demonstration for the mayor.”
Opponents have complained for months that none of the state’s top politicians have listened to residents who are concerned about the impact of the high noise levels on their quality of life, the health impacts on children and the value of their property.
Business leaders, including Ernie Pomerleau of Pomerleau Real Estate and Frank Cioffi of the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp., have been outspoken supporters of the Vermont Air National Guard’s bid for the F-35s.
The airport, located in South Burlington, is home to the Vermont Air National Guard (VTANG), which flies and maintains the F-16, a fighter jet that was used to protect New York City after 9/11 and was deployed in the nation’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Though F-16s have been flown from the airport since the 1980s, it was only more recently that the VTANG began using loud afterburners to give the aging planes adequate lift for carrying additional fuel for long-range missions. The jets generate about 94 decibels.
The Air Force ranked the Burlington Airport among its top choice of bases around the country. Two other bases are vying for the F-35 basing. Burlington has a high mission scoring, which members of the VTANG is the most important factor considered by the federal military agency.
The Air Force is expected to decide where to base the F-35 in the fall.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 4:50 p.m.
