Community braces for arrival of F-35 stealth fighter jets

Rough Landing is a special series and podcast on the debate over basing F-35 fighter jets in Burlington. Read Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Conversations in Ray Gonda’s house came to an abrupt halt whenever the F-16s started roaring. As the growling grew louder, Gonda and his wife moved away from the windows, which vibrated as if they were possessed. As the plane took off and flew over their home, family pictures hanging side-by-side on the living room wall shook violently.

“I’d often have to readjust those pictures after the plane took off,” Gonda recalled recently.

For decades now, a fleet of F-16 fighter jets have flown out of Burlington International Airport. While the noise has become routine to many, the impact of the sound hasn’t lost its potency.

The residential blocks situated in South Burlington’s so-called “noise zone” are small Levittown style homes could have been plucked from an episode of “Happy Days,” but the noise that batters them has wrought pain, suffering and potentially hazardous health effects.

Some residents have been able to escape the clamor. Last year, Gonda left his home on Berkley Street for a quieter part of town. So far, he’s been unable to sell his old home, which is located in the so-called noise zone — an area that is considered to be on the edge of livability, according to federal maps.

“Many who lived in the noise zone have moved out,” Gonda said. “I had the financial means to get out, but others don’t have a choice in the matter.”

After years of noise from the F-16, conditions are expected to worsen when the far louder F-35 fighter jets begin to arrive at the airport next fall. South Burlington residents are worried about further impacts to their fragile community — populated mostly by middle class Vermonters — while outlying communities nervously ponder a future in which F-35s fly overhead.

The Air Force says the F-35 would be perceived by the human ear as nearly four times louder than the F-16 at 1,000 feet in the air. The sound will penetrate into homes, places of worship, hospitals, schools and child care facilities in certain areas of Chittenden County. Studies show the sound will adversely affect the health of children and adults and have other deleterious effects on the community that run the gamut in severity, from declining home values to the potential of a disastrous crash.

Grassroots activists have fought powerful military and political interests for five years, using protest and litigation to impede the basing of the new aircraft at the airport. But all of their efforts have failed. With nearly every option exhausted, opponents have turned to the ballot box. On Town Meeting Day next Tuesday, Burlington residents will be asked whether to advise the City Council to oppose the noisy jet and request a quieter replacement.

Most of Vermont’s high level politicians dismiss the ballot resolution as non-binding and the concerns over noise as trivial. Yet the issue of noise is a complex one in the many ways it can lead to damaging effects — lifelong learning impairment in children, for example. And it is just one of a myriad of potential community impacts that could reshape Chittenden County for decades to come.

The airport in South Burlington has been at the center of the community’s growth for nearly 100 years, but the basing of the F-35 could change that. Hundreds of homes in the noise zone are being razed because of higher anticipated sound levels.

The first aircraft landed at what was then called Burlington Municipal Airport on Aug. 14, 1920. In May 1935, world-famous aviator Amelia Earhart visited the airport to be presented with the keys to the city and to assure Vermonters that aviation was safe.

“Statistics show that, based on the casualties per passenger mile flown and the average usage, the average person will have to reach the ripe old age of 128 before it comes his turn for an accident,” Earhart said. “I plead with you not to wait until you are 128 before you try the facilities offered in this state, a service which is becoming more efficient, more safe every day, and which is the most beautiful man has yet devised.”

Two years later, Earhart disappeared on her most ambitious journey: a flight around the world. Since the Golden Age of Flight, the airport and surrounding community have grown dramatically. In the 1940s and 1950s, a whole neighborhood was built around the airport, which mostly housed military veterans. Many of these veterans later served as the Vermont Air National Guard’s 13th Fighter Squadron, chartered on July 1, 1946.

Over the years, the Air National Guard has been equipped with all manner of cutting-edge military planes, from the C-47 “Gooney Birds” to F-51H Mustangs. Today, the commercial side of the airport has domestic flights to 10 major North American cities, and the Guard base is poised to receive 18 F-35 Lightnings, the newest stealth fighter available.

Many see the plane’s basing as a point of pride for the “Green Mountain Boys,” a fierce cadre of fighter pilots whose informal name traces back to the founding of the Vermont militia in 1777. Proponents of the F-35 have made lawn signs and bumper stickers describing the plane’s exceptionally loud roar as “the sound of freedom.”

But many community residents say the “sound of freedom” makes them feel uneasy and trapped.

Carmine Sargent has lived less than a block from the airport, on Elizabeth Street, for 45 years. As houses have come down, the noise has traveled deeper into her community and her quality of life has declined. But she refuses to leave, largely because she helps care for her disabled daughter in a home that is well suited for them. Spiteful of the powerful interests pushing her to leave, Sargent became active in the fight against the F-35s five years ago.

“As a single woman raising two daughters here, this is my main asset: this house, and this lot, and being a part of this community,” she said. “And I felt like it was being taken away from us by people that could give a shit, really. They didn’t care.”

To mitigate noise damage from the F-16s, the airport has obtained grants from the Federal Aviation Administration to purchase homes from residents, and tear them down. So far, 200 predominately middle-class houses across dozens of acres around the airport have been razed.

Demolition teams removed the homes but not the trees. Rows of evergreens that once shaded houses and delineated lawns now divide wide, empty lots into rectangular segments.

With the impending basing of the F-35, noise zones will shift, and many more Vermonters will be exposed to potentially dangerous sound levels. An estimated 1,000 additional households in South Burlington, Burlington and Winooski will be exposed to noise above 65 decibels, a level the federal government considers “unsuitable for residential use.”

Some residents will likely leave, if they can afford to. Others, in the Vermont tradition of plucky independence, may choose to stand their ground and not give in to the noise and health threats that come with it.

Neighbors call Dave Deslauriers the King of Delaware Street, an ironic title for the only person who still lives there. Deslauriers moved to his current home in 1986 to be closer to his job at IBM, and to send his sons to South Burlington’s reputable schools.

At the time, his property faced two rows of other houses. Now, the bay window in his dining area looks onto the airport parking garage. Over the years, Deslauriers has resisted offers of a buyout.

“Here, it’s convenient for me. I’m near all my doctors, all the services. I’m a veteran — I’m close to the VA,” he said. “For me, this is my home, this is my place for my children to come back to. This is my place for my grandchildren to come back to. It’s still the home that they know.”

Many local officials and residents don’t want to see more homes razed, citing concerns about fundamental community and economic changes. And while FAA officials have resisted calls for other noise mitigation efforts in the past, Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger told VTDigger Tuesday that the city plans to purchase and destroy only four more houses.

Weinberger said the city is transitioning away from home buyouts and toward sound mitigation efforts, including the noise-proofing of homes.

“Early in my administration, out of growing discomfort with this program, I directed the airport to do everything they could to bring this purchase program to a halt,” Weinberger said. “With it ending, we will commence a new sound mitigation program that can help a much broader number of homeowners.”

Weinberger also said that, despite contentions from the FAA that a new F-35 noise mapping process couldn’t commence until the planes land, the city has successfully pushed to expedite the process. Officials have recently begun work on a new noise map, funded by the FAA, that incorporates air traffic data and F-35 noise projections made in the Air Force’s environmental analysis of Burlington.

With the FAA up for congressional reauthorization this spring, some members of Congress — nicknamed the Quiet Skies Caucus —  are criticizing the FAA for building its noise maps based on models and projections, not real observed sound on the ground. The lawmakers are also pushing for stricter noise regulations. The current definition of unsuitable noise — a day-night average of 65 decibels — was set in the 1970s and recent data suggests that number may be too high.

Steve Ambrose, a noise control engineer, said the 65 decibel day-night average is misleading. Impacted citizens experience noise much louder than 65 decibels, he said, but the government averages those penetrating levels with absolute quiet, thereby producing 65 decibels.

The new noise mitigation efforts won’t likely ramp up until 2020, until after the F-35s land next year. The noise zone will shift, based on new mapping, and the number of residents affected by damaging noise levels will double.

Those who live at the corner of Airport Parkway and Kirby Road, for example, will face, on average, a 24 percent chance of being awakened nightly by the sound of a plane, according to U.S. Air Force calculations. With windows open, that number jumps to 41 percent.

The noise will reverberate through the community, anytime between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays and weekends when the Air National Guard is training. The Guard is expected to engage in 5,798 flight operations a year with the F-35.

“When you have loud, low-frequency noise, it enters the house real easy, and it will interfere with people as they relax and sleep at night,” said Ambrose, the noise engineer. “Sleep is a needed function for any human being, and if it is interfered with persistently it will create very negative health impacts.”

The Air Force projects the F-35 would be perceived by the human ear as nearly four times louder than the F-16 at 1,000 feet in the air, though the levels can vary greatly based on a number of factors, including the plane’s power settings and surrounding climate conditions.

The noise will be substantially louder when the F-35 deploys afterburners, which are essentially auxiliary jets that increase thrust on takeoff. If afterburners are employed on the F-35, decibels will skyrocket, increasing the risk of permanent hearing damage for community members and likely widening and elongating the noise zone.

While the Air Force contends that afterburners will only be employed on about 5 percent of takeoffs, a January report from the Department of Defense estimates the plane may become heavier in its final development stage, which increases the potential for afterburner use. The Burlington F-35s would likely need to employ afterburners if they add external fuel tanks to increase their flying range, as Israel is doing.

Burlington’s F-16s did not initially use afterburners, but as the planes were upgraded and retrofitted, their use became commonplace. (There was no public discussion or analysis prior to the ramped-up use of afterburners in Burlington, leading community leaders to worry they could similarly be shut out of discussions surrounding potential F-35 afterburner use.)

It’s not clear if the military’s projected noise levels will even be accurate to on-the-ground conditions, and military officials have said levels will invariably change as airspeed and power settings are refined. As the Air Force worked internally on mocking up sound levels for Burlington, officials went back and forth on the merits of various noise simulators that produced widely different projections. The F-16’s initial noise projections for Burlington extensively underestimated the scope and power of the actual noise the plane would produce.

Children’s health impacted by noise

The noise levels of fighter jets have the potential to drive long-term public health damage that may never be fully understood.

More than 20 studies have shown serious cognitive effects of noise on children, including on reading, memory, comprehension and attention. A 2011 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that “exposure during critical periods of learning at school could potentially impair development and have a lifelong effect on educational attainment.”

Children and animals have a much higher sensitivity to sound than adults, making disruptive noises more distracting and damaging. Gonda, the Berkley Street resident, recalled conversations with neighbors who told stories of their young children clutching their ears and screaming when an F-16 took off.

Noise is expected to increase at four area schools once the F-35 arrives. Two other places of learning, including the Chamberlin School, will see similar conditions to what currently exists with the F-16.

At Chamberlin, an elementary school a half-mile from the airport, teachers have, for years, had to suspend class when military planes take off, a task so common it’s known as “the Chamberlin pause.” Dave Young, the superintendent of South Burlington public schools, called the noise a “pressing problem” that is expected to endure once the F-35s arrive. Chamberlin officials have asked for assistance to soundproof the school, but, so far, have received little help.

“We are in need of more help, but the FAA and the airport have not been responsive to our current concerns,” Young said. “We are frustrated because this is about kids, and how we can make their learning environment better.”

These significant health risks were acknowledged in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) produced by the Air Force over the basing of the F-35. The EIS cited a study of children exposed to airplane noise near Munich, Germany, noting they had “modest (although significant) increases in blood pressure, significant increases in stress hormones, and a decline in quality of life.”

The WHO and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have concluded that day-care centers and schools should not be located near major sources of noise, such as airports. Yet the Air Force chose to house the F-16, and now the F-35, at an airport in Burlington surrounded by households and schools. There are seven schools in the F-35s noise zone, meaning that hundreds of young students could suffer cognitive issues.

There is also data suggesting serious implications from noise exposure on adults, including increased blood pressure and heart rate, which can lead to hypertension and heart disease. Additional stress-related symptoms from sound also may seriously affect a person’s mental health.

“Environmental noise should be considered not only as a cause of nuisance but also a concern for public health and environmental health,” the WHO report concludes.

Another adverse health impact for neighbors emerged last year when the Vermont Air National Guard found perfluorinated compounds in a private drinking water well near its base. These chemicals are used chiefly in airport firefighting foam.

Concerns of residents ignored

Many of the neighbors surrounding the airport say they feel as if no one has adequately listened to their concerns, and they place blame on various actors, from local officials to the entirety of Vermont’s congressional delegation in Washington.

Those who have seen the homes around them razed often point the finger at the city of Burlington, which controls the airport and coordinates the demolition program.

Gene Richards, the aviation director at Burlington International Airport who used to sit on the airport commission, is often viewed as a central figure in radically reshaping the community. Last year, Richards announced the planned construction of a 104-room hotel room at the airport, which will sit across the street from some residents.

Richards was named to his post by Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger in May 2013, and he enjoys broad support within the Chittenden County business community. In a live interview with the Burlington Free Press in March 2016, he faced sharp questioning over the noise issue, which he was quick to minimize.

“The neighbors, I’m assuming when they bought they homes, knew there was an airport there,” he said. “I am sympathetic about the noise. But at the same time, I live on the Hill in Burlington, and we get a lot of walk-by noise, and we have a lot of fire trucks and police cars.”

Yet many of the residents have lived in their homes for decades, before the airport extended its runway and hosted big, noisy warplanes. They recall taking in the majestic views of Mount Mansfield during pleasant picnics in spaces that are now off-limits and visiting beautiful homes that no longer exist. Even the local corner store Gino’s is a thing of the past. It’s now called the Aviation Deli.

Loretta and Steve Marriott have lived on Mills Avenue, about 1,200 feet from the airport, since 1976. They planned for their house to be a starter home, but they opted to build an addition rather than leave the neighborhood. “We’re here for the long haul,” Steve says.

Loretta says that in the 1970s, the community was growing. Owners around the area were adding onto their houses to accommodate more children.

After the buyouts, Loretta says, “it’s gone from growing to, now, shriveling.”

“It’s really changed the geography of it,” says Steve. “You ride your bike around now, and it’s great big open spaces where there used to be houses. And people.”

“You can have a community of residential houses or you can have noisy military jets,” said Loretta. “But you can’t have both.”

Military had misgivings about BTV

Military and political officials have often brushed aside public concerns over what will change once the F-35s arrive. Privately, however, officials worried they did not have adequate answers to important questions, and that the whole basing decision was built on fallacies.

In a 2012 email chain highlighting critical press coverage of the Burlington basing, one Air Force official suggested reconsidering more rural options, writing, “So, can we take this opportunity to make a strategic, efficient decision and rethink putting 18 F-35s out in the middle of nowhere!?!?”

The potentially damaging effect of the F-35 on Chittenden County residents is puzzling when compared to the relatively minimal impact the planes would have brought to either of the other two Air National Guard bases that were considered for the basing. On virtually every issue, Burlington scored the lowest.

In its EIS, the Air Force clearly found that the McEntire Air National Guard base in South Carolina was the environmentally preferred alternative based on the fact that it “represents the greatest decrease in the amount of acres, population, households, and receptors exposed to noise levels 65 [decibels] and greater.”

McEntire sits in a more remote area, surrounded by green fields peppered sparsely with houses. While the basing of the F-35 in Burlington is estimated to bring an increase in noise across 289 new acres, the McEntire basing would would have reduced noise levels over 2,728 acres, largely because of reduced flight operations.

Burlington’s estimated hangar and infrastructure upgrades were estimated to cost twice as much as at McEntire. The South Carolina base also has better airspace, sleeker facilities, more temperate weather and a longer runway than Burlington.

An internal military score sheet from 2010 ranked Burlington lowest of the potential Air Guard bases. But that score was later changed to favor Burlington, and in December 2013, the Air Force announced that Burlington had been picked.

In the Air Force’s Record of Decision to base the planes in Burlington, officials said the base presented the “best mix of infrastructure, airspace and overall cost to the Air Force.” The justification of cost savings was predicated on the notion that the Air Force would save money because Burlington’s F-16 fleet would be retired, and therefore wouldn’t incur moving costs to be based somewhere else.

The record prompted deep frustration inside the Air Force. Before the Record of Decision was publicly released, one official overseeing the basing process tore apart the justifications for Burlington in an email, charging that it was “inaccurate” and “misleading.” Another official communicated to leadership that some employees thought the language “underestimates the environmental impacts for Burlington.”

Unnamed officials were quoted by the Boston Globe as saying the process was “fudged” through various means, including a significant underestimation of the potential adverse noise impacts for Vermont residents.

As things stand, the first F-35s are set to arrive in Burlington next September or October.

Deslauriers, the King of Delaware Street, said the new planes don’t bother him personally. As long as he can live by himself, he’s staying put. But he recognizes the F-35s could have a negative impact on the area.

“I support my military. I’m ex-military,” he said. “But I’d rather support my military in a different location.”

Read Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of our special series on the F-35 debate.

Hear extended interviews and more in our Rough Landing podcast: