Why not us?
Don't we fly all the time? Why shouldn't we host an airport in our community too?
It's true, we fly all the time, and airports have to be close to something. But East Haven is an especially bad place:
1 - The state of Connecticut designated the area around Tweed a "distressed" community because it already has high levels of cancer, asthma, etc. due to prior exposure to pollutants.
2 - Tweed New Haven airport is fewer than three miles from downtown New Haven, while Bradley airport is ten miles from downtown Hartford. Air & noise pollutants from Tweed aircraft will affect more of our metropolitan area. (see How Tweed Affects You).
3. Tweed airport is not situated with easy access to a highway. Expanding Tweed by 10-20 times its current size will turn residential side streets into major roads. There has been no provision for this.
3. New Haven already has access to several airports. Why not simply improve access to those?
4. This expansion is being done as part of a privatization agreement. The agreement takes control out of the hands of our government and into the power of an entity whose priority is profit. The goals and needs of our community will not be prioritized.
Do we really want to live in a community people have to live this close to planes this big?
Environmental Impact Statement
I'm not really a tree-hugger. Why should I care about an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)?
An Environmental Impact Statement is an analysis conducted by the Federal Aviation Authority to understand how a proposed airport expansion will impact the surrounding areas -- natural environment, humans, local commerce,
Crucially, an EIS is a comprehensive study which brings in other governmental authorities (an EIS looking into the extension of LA Guardia's Air Tran collaborated with 18 government authorities) and emphasizes community input.
An EIS is not to be confused with an Environmental Assessment (EA), which is what New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker has said he supports. In the words of the FAA: [in addition to standard EA analysis], an EIS should also contain measures that avoid, minimize, and/or mitigate environmental impacts when possible. An EIS is typically much more detailed than an EA, and the EIS process requires more prescriptive and intensive public involvement and participation.
The Tweed Airport authority is conducting a basic assessment right now. We understand that this assessment is based on data modeling, not collecting real information from the surrounding areas. Our data shows air particulates & noise pollution in excess of what the Authority claims to cause, due to their "modeling".
For more detail on why an EIS is crucial, please see East Haven Mayor Joseph Carfora's letter to the FAA here.
Sign a Change.org petition requesting an EIS here.
We've recorded decibel levels that surpass the US definition of torture from homes near Tweed HNV.
Expansion Plan
What's the Expansion plan, exactly?
Good Question. As East Haven Mayor Joseph Carfora noted in his letter to the FAA, the details of the expansion are being kept under pretty tight wraps. They also seem to vary by document.
Number of Flights/Passengers
In 2019, Tweed Airport flights carried a total of 50,000 passengers, or "enplanements."
The expansion proposal mentions the capacity to carry up to 1 million annual enplanements, or a 20-fold increase. We brace ourselves for this size, since a private operator will be driven to maximize revenue.
The documents submitted to the FAA mention 500,000 enplanements. We believe the numbers have been deliberately deflated to avoid additional FAA scrutiny.
The initial proposal to local mayors in the area said ~250,000 enplanements. We believe these numbers were also deliberately deflated, with the (successful) goal of letting mayors believe that the expansion wouldn't impact their communities much.
Bigger Planes
The expansion proposal also includes a plan to extend and re-position the runway. The extension will allow huge passenger planes -- 747s -- to fly in and out of Tweed. View the image of an Avelo flight taking off over East Haven and imagine if that were a full-sized passenger plane.
Another plane flies perilously close to houses near Tweed New Haven Airport