Two Letters Seek To Deliver Wake Up Call, Citing Substantial Deficiencies In Oakland’s Draft EIR
The City Of Alameda and a long standing community group concerned about Oakland Airport expansion plans, The Citizens League for Airport Safety and Serenity (CLASS), aligned in common cause as each, separately and serendipitously, sharply challenged much of Oakland Airport’s (OAK) Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR).
The DEIR, along with the Alameda City Response Letter (CRL) and CLASS Response Letter (CLR) reveal a deep, data driven divide between them and Oakland Airport that goes far past Oakland Airport’s web page statement regarding expansion plans.
The OAK posting broadly seeks to justify the proposed, possibly massive, expansion on grounds that, “the terminals do not meet current industry standards and were not designed to serve the number of passengers using OAK prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
OAK’s general outline goes on to say that “air travel recovery as well as a growth in passengers at OAK are expected in the future. Due to the age, condition, and size of the existing OAK terminals, development is needed to modernize OAK facilities, meet industry safety standards, improve operational efficiency, and accommodate an increase in passengers.”
As all three documents reveal, things are a lot more complex than just that glossy, superficial characterization.
In mid October, Alameda issued a pointed, over 42 page long rebuttal to the DEIR after The City Council ordered that the original draft be scrapped and strengthened for lack of substantive technical data bolstered by relevant case law, statute, and expert opinion.
Not long after, CLASS delivered the DEIR another broadside, with its own, separate, 60+ page letter whose 10/16 release was timed to coincide with the close of the public comment period for the DEIR.
Both letters display a vast range of concerns and accusations about faulty assumptions, technical and legal flaws and omissions in the DEIR.
In the largest sense the two letters express concerns about significant, increased noise, air pollution, and public safety impacts associated with an increase in overflights.
Other impacts include an increased risk of water pollution and traffic impacts and noise pollution
It is the last of these elements that causes the most immediately recognizable impact for most persons who are in the general proximity of Oakland Airport and hear the manifold sounds of jet engines, especially when at increased thrust for takeoff.
LETTERS SAY OAK NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO SLEEP ISSUES
It’s one thing to hear the noise during the day, but when it comes to nighttime impacts of aircraft noise involving sleep disturbance, both letters underscore a specialized concern that many a resident of the Harbor Bay Isle community can take to heart.
The CRL states that “Substantial evidence supports a conclusion that noise from overflights results in an adverse effect on residents of the surrounding communities. A number of residents expressed concerns about increased noise at the October 3, 2023, City Council meeting.”
From a more visceral, immediate experience perspective both criticize the DEIR for lacking transparency and sufficient data measures regarding sleep disruption impacts.
“Aircraft noise-induced ‘awakenings’ (are) expected to increase as part of the project”
–CLASS Response Letter
“The DEIR’s ‘informational’ evaluation of the Project’s potential for sleep disturbance is buried in an appendix which is inadequate under CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), ” it says.
The CLR asserts parallel concerns regarding sleep impacts, and accuses the DEIR of tiptoeing around the sleep issue.
“The little information that is disclosed about overall nighttime flights is concerning as substantial increases in the quantity of nighttime flights is anticipated,” before raising the criticism that sleep impact information is tucked away down in an Appendix to the DEIR.
“Appendix M divulges that aircraft noise-induced ‘awakenings’ (are) expected to increase as part of the project, (but) it provides no evidence to demonstrate that such increases in the proposed NAWR (Noise At Work Rating) “ are not going to rise to a legal level of being “significant,” it reads/
The CLR prefaces that charge in the broader context that the DEIR does not “make a good faith effort to disclose the impacts of the Project, both at the Project level and at the cumulative level…(which fail) to meet even the most basic objectives of CEQA.”
BOTH LETTERS CLAIM THAT OAK’S SOUND MEASURES ARE UNSOUND
The next major battle line that both the CLR and the CRL draw with the DEIR concerns the different means by which aircraft noise is measured and which should be relied upon to forecast noise impacts.
The CLR faults the DEIR for failing “to include any night time SEL” (Single Exposure Level) noise event information in OAK’s noise analysis,” choosing, instead to primarily rely what is known as a CNEL (Community Noise Equivalent Level) noise measurement metric
CNEL is a noise blend of sorts, a composite reading of the average noise level during a 24- hour period. While very loud single noise events are integrated as part of that overall picture, they do not stand out as isolated, individual noise events.
In common sense terms, it is akin to producing an average of noise levels during a day sprinkled with thunder booms.
While each thunder clap will stand out as a particular, major noise event, an average of those packaged in with typical ambient noise events over a five or 24 hour period will produce a reading much lower in the decibel range and will not fully account for the impact of each boom.
When it comes to really loud jet engine noise emissions, the typical person is likely to be affected by that one, discrete sound level and its duration, not an average, with which the CLR takes issue on the part of OAK’s sound analysis.
CNEL measures in excess of 70 are generally considered unacceptable under precedent and are considered “conditionally acceptable” in the 60-70 range.
The CLR acknowledges that OAK’S CNEL analysis puts expected noise levels in the conditionally acceptable range of 65 but challenges the adequacy of that measure.
“Although (aircraft) noise contour maps show that there would be no residences within the 65 CNEL contour under future project-based conditions, the methodology does not account for single event/night-time noise, which results in sleep disturbance,” the CLR states before citing case law to bolster its stance.
The CLR also takes issue with another averaging measure used by OAK, the Average Annual Day (AAD) metric. The argument is that AAD further weakens the number signifying the noise result by not recognizing the day-to-day or seasonality of noise impacts.
“OAK’s noise metric measure is flawed,” says the CLR. AAD numbers mean that the most extreme noise events are averaged out over the course of 24 hours and their impact is diluted, in a similar outcome to the CNEL.
Court precedent, aka case law suggests that CNEL does not comply with legal standards, which also might invalidate AAD measures.
A California Appellate Court ruling held that reliance on the CNEL standard precluded “any meaningful analysis of existing ambient noise levels, the number of additional nighttime flights that will occur under the [project], the frequency of those flights, to what degree single overflights will create noise levels over and above the existing ambient noise level at a given location, and the community reaction to aircraft noise, including sleep disturbance.”
The CLR letter then goes on to allege a host of potential negative health consequences, other than sleep disruption, including stress, cardiovascular impacts, cognitive impairment in children and so on.
PROJECTIONS OF NOISE INCREASE FROM ADDED NORTH FIELD FLIGHTS LOOM LARGE
The CRL asserts that there is a strong likelihood of major increases in flights and noise emanating from increased use of North Field –commonly thought of as a smaller, less use, less noise emitting airport that handles air cargo, general aviation and corporate jet activities.
The CRL bases its increased North Field noise projection on the use of “noise contours from the South Field, (being) transposed onto the North Field,” before claiming that expanded North Field use “would extend well into residential neighborhoods.”
Since flight paths out of North Field differ from those of South Field, that portends more jet air traffic and noise flying over wider swaths of Harbor Bay Isle, including areas in and around Maitland drive, which neighbors parts of the North Field perimeter.
The CRL’s hypothesis is that terminal construction is “likely to require or at least encourage diversions of passenger and freight air traffic to the North (Field)” and points to the impact of runway maintenance at the South Field between 9/22 and 9/25 of this year. “North Field use often comes on short notice and for extended periods of time.”
The underlying assumption is that, since OAK will continue to operate during the five year period of reconstruction, the possible expansion of passenger loads and the number of flights taking off and landing needs to be better accounted for when it comes to considering overall noise impacts, including those at night.
OAK estimates that demand for flights and passenger loads could increase far above the current level of around 9 million per year to as much as 30 million forecast for 1025.
Though that is an astronomical and, according to CLASS, probably unrealistic forecast, Southwest Airlines, which typically accounts for over 90% of OAK travel, “sees the Project as necessary to maintain and expand their passenger operations,” according to the CLR.
The “DEIR lacks any information about the use of the North Field,” and “The DEIR fails to evaluate (the impact of possible increased) aircraft operations,” says the CRL.
Current North Field noise events of 80 decibels or above, generally considered “loud” to “very loud” by most health hearing experts, average about four every night when measured by “sound pressure” using the SEL metric.
While it is hard to specify in writing what noise levels actually sound like , 60 db (decibls) is typical for normal conversation.
Anything at or above 70 db is considered “loud” and noise at 90 db or above, as the sound emanating from a power tool is considered “very loud.”
Other comparisons, provided by The Hearing Health Foundation, put the noise levels of an electric vaccuum at 80, a noisy restaurant at 85, a hairdryer at 90 and a crowing rooster at 95 db.
A db measure of 85 is 15 times louder than one of 70 to provide a reference point.
MAKING MORE NOISE ABOUT THE DEIR, INCLUDING CONSTRUCTION
Other noise elements include the claim that OAK minimizes “diverse noise impacts on locations” other than residences by providing “inaccurate” and incomplete information.
These involve, for example, “six noise-sensitive land uses” such as transient lodging/ hotels.
The CRL says OAK fails to describe “where in relationship to the Project those (six) sensitive receptors are located” and argues that OAK ignores case law requiring them to provide complete, accurate and readily accessible information.
Then comes the matter involving construction noise impacts if OAK’s prediction of a major airport expansion or modernization overhaul takes place.
The CRL asserts that OAK’s proposed construction noise mitigation measures are unclear, unenforceable and implicitly recognized their own shortcomings.
The CDRL focuses on the “tepid language” of proposed mitigation measures as the “use of quiet-design equipment where feasible,” and asks whether such steps could even be implemented or enforced in the first place.
It then moves on to further challenge other elements of overbroad or fuzzy wording in the DEIR.
“Adding insult to injury, the DEIR offers a vague statement that ‘additional or different measures are available and if necessary … to ensure the threshold is not exceeded,’ leaving decision makers and the public “ in the dark about “what those additional or different measures may be.”
Then, according to the CDRL, there is the matter of “truck haul” noise and traffic impacts that will result from as much as five years of transporting an estimated 450,000 square feet of demolition debris.
The CDRL takes to task OAK’s statement regarding the matter in its claim that ““off-site construction noise is not anticipated to result in an increase of 5 dB or greater since project construction traffic would not result in a significant increase on area roadways.”
In other dimensions, Alameda and CLASS take aim at inconsistencies and imprecisions in Oakland Airport/Port Of Oakland’s (OAK) estimates for increased future air traffic and passenger demand, clarity and accuracy of information provided in the DEIR, the use of outmoded or irrelevant past data, non alignment of expansion aspects with its own Master Plan, air pollution issues, and more.
All told, both letters ask OAK –as it continues to deliberate the objections and negotiate with Alameda and CLASS—to revise and recirculate in order to, as the CLR puts it, “fully analyze the Project’s facilitation of future operational growth (passenger and cargo) at OAK and the corresponding significant direct and indirect impacts which must be mitigated to the maximum extent feasible as required by CEQA.”
In short, that means that the matter is far from settled and there is more news to come as the matter is still up in the air.
STAY TUNED FOR MORE STORIES TO COME