O’Hare hearings held outside areas due for high air traffic

None of three hearings to gather public input on proposed O’Hare International Airport runway changes were held in areas predicted to be hit with an onslaught of heavy air traffic under the plan, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis indicates.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it followed the rules on legally required public hearings before approving the $8 billion O’Hare Modernization Program, which has triggered skyrocketing O’Hare noise complaints. But critics — and one U.S. congressman — are crying foul.

The FAA’s failure to hold any required hearings in areas due for onerous air traffic “calls into question the process, and it’s aggravating,’’ said U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-5th, of Chicago.

If rules allow the FAA to avoid adversely impacted areas as hearing sites, the rules should be changed, said Quigley, who has urged city and federal officials to address new noise beefs.

“I am planning to analyze this and put forward meaningful changes that will require sufficient hearings focused in areas most impacted” by airport changes, Quigley told the Sun-Times.

Last Oct. 17, O’Hare switched from using mostly diagonal runways to mostly parallel ones. The Chicago Department of Aviation said the move was critical to expanding flight capacity at the nation’s second-busiest airport and to reducing O’Hare delays that were bottling up the U.S. air traffic system.

After the big switch, O’Hare noise complaints soared to record levels.

Jet noise topped a list of O’Hare project concerns gathered in 2002 by the FAA to prepare for its environmental impact hearings, agency documents show. “Noise contour” maps posted a month before the hearings showed the runway changes would produce jet noise loud enough to qualify homes for sound insulation directly east and west of O’Hare.

But the hearings were north and south of O’Hare, where heavy noise was expected to diminish.

Elmhurst, host to one hearing, has experienced the biggest drop in O’Hare noise complaints since the flight path conversion, a Sun-Times analysis indicates.

Other hearings were in Elk Grove Village and Niles.

About 1,500 residents showed up at the three hearings — a turnout even the FAA conceded was “very light given the dense population” around O’Hare.

By the end, reaction ranged from 3-1 to 4-1 in favor of the city’s proposal, FAA documents note.

“You don’t need to be a brain surgeon. If you want positive feedback, go to the people that will be in your favor,” said Norridge Village President James Chmura.

Norridge has experienced the biggest jump in noise complaints since the shift in flight paths, a Sun-Times analysis showed.

“Nobody wanted any yelling or screaming. That’s probably why they had [the hearings] outside the affected areas,’’ said Chmura.

The hearings on the FAA’s draft Environmental Impact Statement were a key required point of public input in the O’Hare overhaul. The hearings were held nine years ago, but the result of those hearings — a dramatic shift in flight paths — didn’t launch until last October.

The FAA went “above and beyond” the guidelines by holding three public hearings on the environmental impact of the O’Hare work — two more than required, said Chicago-based FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro.

However, Molinaro said, FAA guidelines don’t say where a public hearing has to be held.

Molinaro said a host of environmental impacts were outlined at the hearings, not just jet noise fallout.

Although the FAA had identified jet noise as the top concern, Molinaro said “location was not dependent solely upon the noise contour topic.’’ Plus, the FAA wanted banquet facilities that could hold 1,000 people and contained three rooms.

The agency was seeking a certain kind of venue and an FAA order on public hearings doesn’t cite where they must be held, Molinaro said.

The three hearings covered more than jet noise and were “spread out geographically around the airport” so residents from 14 communities around O’Hare could easily attend, he said.

The FAA hearings, in February 2005, preceded what one federal inspector general called “one of the largest and most costly reconfigurations of an airport in the United States” — at the time, a mere proposal stretched across millions of web pages. Eight years later it started bearing air-traffic fruit.

Source:   http://norridge.suntimes.com