Efforts seek to curb airport noise
Massport taking steps at Hanscom
Noisy smaller jets taking off and landing at Hanscom Field in Bedford are always the subject of criticism by officials and residents in the four towns adjoining the airfield.
Now, though, the Massachusetts Port Authority, owner-operator of Hanscom, is active on two fronts to combat excessive noise and to measure more accurately noise levels of all aircraft using the Bedford airport.
Massport's efforts to curb noise won the praise of airport officials in Manchester, N.H., and North Andover. Local officials and leaders of two grass-roots groups also said the agency's actions are encouraging.
Most notably, Massport is backing federal legislation that would ban the use of older business and charter jets, commonly called Stage 2 craft, which create a disproportionate amount of noise at airports nationwide.
In 2005, these jets accounted for "less than 1 percent of all operations at Hanscom but [created] 23 percent of the noise energy produced by civil aircraft," Massport chief executive Thomas J. Kinton Jr. said in a Dec. 5 letter to US Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat.
Lautenberg introduced a bill at the last session of Congress to do away with the Stage 2 jets, and is expected to reintroduce it at the session beginning this month.
There were about 32,000 jet operations at Hanscom Field in 2005, most of them involving newer, quieter jets, said Richard Walsh, Massport's chief spokesman for Hanscom.
Jets operated out of Hanscom by
Many of the older, larger jets operating today have been "hush kitted," or equipped with mufflers, said Jim Peters, a regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
But a 1990 federal law that mandated the use of Stage 3 jets by Dec. 31, 1999, exempted Stage 2 jets that weigh 75,000 pounds or less, Peters and Kinton pointed out.
"Senator Lautenberg's proposed legislation would close the omission from the 1990 law," Kinton said.
Media representatives for Lautenberg were unavailable for comment.
The noise created by Stage 2 jets is dramatically different from that of Stage 3 jets, Walsh said. For instance, he explained, a Stage 2 Lear 24 jet taking off for an ascent of 15,000 feet generates 115.2 decibels, compared with 91.2 decibels created by a Stage 3 Lear 35 jet.
"Once you go over 100 decibels, you're talking about noise at close range that's similar to a rocket takeoff or an engine room in large ships," said Mike Bahtiarian of Bedford, who is vice president of Billerica-based Noise Control Engineering.
Bahtiarian is also a former chairman of the environmental subcommittee of the Hanscom Area Towns Selectmen Committee, made up of officials from Bedford, Concord, Lexington, and Lincoln, the towns surrounding Hanscom Field.
By the end of this year, Massport will have in place at Hanscom a state-of-the-art noise-monitoring system costing $276,000, said Walsh, adding that a similar system is being installed at Boston's Logan International Airport, which the agency also owns and operates.
Furthermore, a section of the agency's website (Massport.com) will list all planes taking off from Hanscom and their decibel levels, Walsh said. This section is expected to be operating by the end of the year, he said.
What Massport is trying to accomplish in the noise-control area "is to be applauded," said J. Brian O'Neill, an assistant airport director for Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. The New Hampshire airport, he said, deals with very few corporate jets.
A Concord-based historic preservation group, Save Our Heritage, has often been at loggerheads with Massport over Hanscom Field issues. But the agency's support of federal legislation is a move in the right direction, said Neil Rasmussen, president of the group.
"While we appreciate Mr. Kinton's decision to support Senator Lautenberg's bill, the fact remains that this is a small and overdue step that was adopted over 10 years ago in Europe," he said, referring to the outlawing of Stage 2 jets.
"We certainly hope that America will lead rather than fight the future Stage 4 regulations, which promise to make a much more meaningful difference."
