Mayor, Cove Hold Firm On Tweed

Rachel Heerema got a kick watching from her back deck as planes departed a block away from Tweed-New Haven Airport. Then she took a breath.

“At first it was cool,” she recalled. ​“Then I got my first taste of diesel fuel as I was having a snack. Then it got a lot less cool to sit on my back deck watching the planes take off and land.”

This month — six years after that taste of fuel — Heerema and her neighbors banded together to stop a last-minute effort during the state legislature’s session to pass a bill allowing Tweed to pave more of its runway and seek to attract commercial jet service to more cities. Mayor Toni Harp and city business leaders lobbied hard to get the bill passed; they also courted the neighbors with promises of noise mitigation. The neighbors prevailed and the bill died.

It was just the latest episode in a decades-long battle between two equally determined parties. Business and political leaders are convinced that with just a little expansion Tweed can become a busy airport that jumpstarts the regional economy and creates needed jobs. Morris Covers are equally convinced that expansion will foul their air, poison their soil and water, and rattle their ears and homes — and that expansion efforts will squander millions of dollars and destroy the way of life in a shoreline neighborhood already battling the effects of climate change while offering an oasis for the whole city.

The fight’s not over.

Mayor Harp said that even though New Haven failed to get the state law passed this session, officials will continue lobbying both Hartford and Morris Cove to expand Tweed. The city will strengthen the business coalition pushing for expansion, she said. And it will continue listening to weary neighbors and come up with solutions. One example: She said City Engineer Giovanni Zinn is exploring ways to provide electricity to propeller planes that are otherwise idling (and making a racket) during trips to transport harvested hearts or kidneys to Yale-New Haven Hospital.

“We’re going to continue to work on it throughout the summer, througout the fall. We’re not going away on this issue,” Harp said on her most recent appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Mayor Monday” program.

“As we address problem by problem, the more people that have their homes retrofitted, the fewer voices that you will hear against this. Will there be a small group of people who are going to be against this no matter what we do? Absolutely. But that group diminishes with time if we address [concerns] .… We can’t just take into consideration those folks who say, ​‘not in my backyard.’ Every home that was built there was built after there was an airport.”

Three organizers behind this month’s successful Morris Cove anti-Tweed campaign — Heerema, Sean O’Brien, and Tania Giacomini — offered their side, and responded to criticism of their efforts, during their own appearance on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program.

No matter how many houses get soundproofed or other carrots the city dangles, O’Brien said, the neighbors won’t support expansion. ​“I don’t think we should bargain away the neighborhood,” he said. ​“We can’t trust them.”

Big vs. Small

Heerema bought her house in the Cove in 2012 based on an assumption: Tweed would remain a small airport without expanding with more commercial flights.

She made that assumption based on a peace treaty struck in 2009 between Tweed and the mayors of New Haven and East Haven. (The airport sits partly in both communities.) They agreed to have more of the airport’s runway paved to accommodate more flights, in return for a permanent moratorium on any more expansion attempts. At the time city and business leaders predicted the expansion would lure new commercial service while the peace treaty would resolve decades of enmity between the airport and its neighbors. The agreement was enshrined in state law.

Nine years later, the airport still struggles to meet its bills. And the only commercial flights connect to Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, airport boosters have now for three years sought to pave the runway another 1,000 feet (or 500, depending on whom you ask) in order to accommodate the 737s they’re now convinced hold the key to luring flights to D.C., Chicago, and Orlando. Their efforts culminated in the addition of an amendment to an unrelated state bill this session (dealing with solar power) that would amend the 2009 deal and allow the further paving.

“There is a big difference between a small commercial airport with occasional service to Philadelphia” and a busier daily connector to multiple airports elsewhere, Heerema said.

At the request of state legislative leaders (the most important of whom, State President Martin Looney, lives near the airport), officials hastily organized neighborhood meetings (which turned contentious), discussed improvements like the widespread noise-proofing of homes, and succeeded in speeding a resolution through the Board of Alders supporting the state proposal.

Meanwhile, O’Brien — a Yale IT specialist and cybersecurity expert by day — kept neighbors up to date and organized online. He, Heerema, and Giacomini, among others, parried the airport boosters’ claims with data and with polished arguments.

Heerema focused on environmental dangers: She spoke of how a six-foot drop from the northern to the southern ends of the paved runway already creates a ​“water chute” that channels soot, and carcinogens like deicing agents and leaded gas, into Morris Creek Nature Preserve, then into New Haven Harbor by the main beach area of Lighthouse Point Park. More paving would send more pollution into the water and ground, while further destroying wetlands and tidal marshes, she said.

The latter fact is why it would cost $25 million to pave a mere 1,000 feet, she said in the ​“Dateline” interview: ​“You’re paving a sponge.”

Especially as climate change raises sea levels, Morris Cove, and New Haven, needs those ​“sponges,” she argued.

(Airport Manager Tim Larson later responded that Tweed would have to do ​“environmental assessment planning” in conjunction with a new runway and obtain permits that take into account impacts on wetlands, noise, and air quality. He also said Tweed has done work alleviating flooding.)

Heerema acknowledged that the newer ​“whisper” jets at Tweed make less noise than before when they land. ​“But the takeoffs are much louder,” she said. Officials told her that’s because they need to use more engine power to accelerate — thanks to a too-short runway. Given a history of broken promises, she and O’Brien said, they don’t take him at his word that a longer paved runway would solve the problem.

Nor do they see the fact that Tweed has been soundproofing homes as a reason to support expansion. The Federal Aviation Adminsitration already established funding for that soundproofing before 2014, they noted. And they said they still hear the planes. (Tim Larson later responded that soundproofing is ​“voluntary at the airport’s discretion. It’s an available program to only Part 139 Airports. A pool of funds is generated by the ticket costs by airlines. The program is subject to the availability of funds in that pool. Tweed applied for this funding and we are fortunate to have been selected by FAA.”)

“You Smell The Jet Fuel”

Giacomini grew up in the Cove; her parents bought a home there in 1959. She focused on health dangers, speaking of particulates that endanger her child’s breathing and the plants in her garden. ​“When a jet takes off, you smell the jet fuel,” said Giacomini, who lives on Townsend Avenue near the Pardee Sea Wall. ​“It smells like diesel fuel.”

O’Brien grew up near the airport on the East Haven side. She remembers watching the planes take off and land. As an adult, he moved with his wife to within a block of the airport on the Morris Cove side. He loves the neighborhood, he said, and he’s willing to preserve its beauty and quality of life.

He bristled at being cast as an impediment to progress for doing so, and being questioned why he moved to the Cove if he didn’t want to live near a bigger airport. He likened asking that question of people who live in the ​“path of industrial expansion” to questioning the right of immigrants to live in their new homes.

O’Brien often made the political arguments for the crew, against the charge of holding the economy hostage for NIMBY reasons. He cited the broken promise of the 2009 agreement. (Mayor Harp argued that as a state senator she understood the argument to allow future paving under new industry conditions.) He cited the history of failed attempts to lure enough new commercial flights to make Tweed profitable, along with the current trends harming smaller airports like Tweed. (Mayor Harp called those trends cyclical, arguing that the city should invest to capture a future market.)

O’Brien was repeatedly asked why he would oppose the expansion if he was so sure it would fail.

His answer: The expansion still costs millions and harms the environment. He also questioned the idea of equating ​“progress” and ​“innovation” with continual growth and paving over nature, rather than including quality of life and the environment in the calculation. He cited then-Mayor Dick Lee’s mass demolition and construction projects during the mid-20th century urban renewal era; that didn’t make New Haven better, he argued.

“Citites are surrounded by projects that are destructive that leave a footprint that cannot be removed. Once the pavement goes down, it does not come back up,” O’Brien argued. And Tweed would still need 240,000 annual emplanements a year to break even, he argued — compared to the 28,000 it now hosts. (Emplanements peaked at 134,000 in 1992, according to Larson, who claimed that no ​“current forecast” exists for a break-even figure.)

“What is innovative about pre-recesison style growth ideology? That’s not to me innovative,” O’Brien remarked.

“It is not innovative,” agreed Heerema, ​“to destroy the enviroinment and wreck the health of New Haven residents.”

Click on the audio file above or Facebook Live video below to hear the full interview with Morris Cove’s Sean O’Brien, Tania Giacomini, and Rachel Heerema on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.”

Click on the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below for the full episode of ​“Mayor Monday” on WNHH FM. The discussiona bout Tweed begins at the six-minute mark

This episode of ​“Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.