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I loved that scene in The American President, where the couple argues about fighting the fights that you can win vs. fighting the fights that are worth fighting. With hope and real concerns, I’ve picked up a good fight.

Our tiny public airport has proposed expanding dramatically and handing over long-term management to a Virginia-based subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

The proposal includes eminent domain options and increased numbers of flights, size and weight of aircraft, plus paving additional wetlands habitat. If approved, the privatization deal would last for nearly a half-century and degrade regional residents’ health and quality of Life.

To accomplish this deal, the memorandum of agreement brokered in 2009 between the Town of East Haven, the City of New Haven, statewide environmental advocacy groups, and the State of Connecticut was torn up. The Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority launched a courtroom battle that ran all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with the upshot that neither local nor state governments have control over what goes on inside the boundaries of public airports. Only the Federal Aviation Administration does; its mission is “the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world.” The critical missing pieces are environmental sustainability and the health of people.

Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority members then found private money as a further end-run around the will of the people – local residents have been very clear all along in our opposition to the proposal. Airport Authority planners cited “regional business needs” for expansion, while actual plan documents show only increased leisure travel. Unsuspecting Tweed proponents are excited by the promise of low-cost promotionally-priced flights to Orlando, while the new airline has yet to release destinations or long-term pricing structures.

That low-cost ticket would fund:

  • Increased asthma rates and cardiovascular illnesses,
  • Increased flooding of homes and streets,
  • Destruction of protective wetlands,
  • Expanded use of eminent domain to take private homes,
  • Threats of toxic chemicals in our water (PFAS),
  • Speeding traffic on local roads,
  • Noise pollution along the extended flight path,
  • Destroyed habitat along a critical section of the Atlantic Flyway, a major U.S. bird and butterfly migration corridor,
  • Increased carbon emissions and artificially propping up a fossil fuel industry, and
  • A destroyed coastline that, if left natural, could help protect us from storm surges and sea-level rise.

The egregious greenwashing message is that the new terminal (to be built on wetlands alongside 585 total parking slots) will be carbon neutral. Um, no thanks.

A sustainable planning process called ‘Multisolving’ balances competing needs, finding possible compromise and overall healthy solutions. Focus areas include Food and Water, Jobs, Industry, Health, Well-being, Safety, Connection, Climate, and Resilience. Community planning brings all the stakeholders together to clarify and prioritize regional needs:

Few of these powerful drivers of quality of Life have even been given lip service, let alone any serious review or consideration. Any sustainable and equitable future planning requires such inclusion.

The threat is not just to the immediate surrounding areas of New Haven, East Haven, and the East Shore: Morris Cove, Annex, Momauguin, Morgan Point, Fair Haven Heights, and Fair Haven. It’s also a financial threat to New Haven County and the State of Connecticut. The operations of Tweed-New Haven Airport Authority are financially reckless.

As a quasi-public state entity, FAA grants are guaranteed by city and state promises of repayment. Tweed continuously operates in deficit and routinely shifts its indebtedness to taxpayers. The 43-year deal is exclusionary and secretive, and would result in major regional damage and significant financial risk. Sited on a coastal floodplain, the airport threatens the environment and the health of residents and all Life in this sensitive and vulnerable natural area. FEMA forecasting indicates the runway shall be underwater by 2050, making these investments “sunk costs” indeed.

We can stop it. We, the residents and citizens, can prevent this short-term profit churning and long-term regional destruction.

The Governor’s Council on Climate Change has a ‘Working and Natural Lands’ committee with these vital goals:

  • Make CT’s vulnerable communities more resilient to the impacts of sea-level rise, coastal and riverine flooding, and drought while creating and enhancing ecosystem services, and
  • Move the state to net-zero emissions through carbon sequestration and storage in forests, wetlands, and agricultural landscapes.

This Council has not met since June 2020. (If it had, perhaps we could have reminded the members that this area floods because it is a coastal floodplain with marsh and wetlands.) Significant water displacement, sprawl development, and low-level roads are vulnerable to climate disorder. Increasing this sprawl and decreasing protective wetlands will only worsen matters. Mother Nature will win the water wars.

The City of New Haven published a Climate and Sustainability Framework in January 2018. It made no mention of Tweed Airport, and it did not set coastal resiliency goals for this highly-indebted parcel and its coastal floodplain. The City launched a Climate Taskforce in December 2020, but it has never convened. Instead of reducing carbon emissions, the City stands alongside Tweed-New Haven Airport to rain sooty carbon ultrafine particulate emissions across the city and increase stormwater flooding in homes and streets.

The Town of East Haven has both a Flood and Erosion Control Commission and an Inland Wetlands Commission. All members have been silent; no engagement nor reviews of the Tweed Master Plan or lease agreement have been scheduled.

In CLP, we center in values. The last several years, I’ve awoken to a deep sense that the way we treat each other is parallel to the way we treat our bodies and the way we treat the Earth. To intervene in one link in this chain is to break intergenerational cycles of harm.

The all-volunteer group I co-founded, 10,000 Hawks, has over 200 members deeply committed to a high quality of Life for all Life in our communities. We value clean air, clean water, reduced noise pollution, walkability, healthy public parks where we can connect, habitat protection. This effort requires long-term and holistic thinking and planning. Please join us.

The airport expansion is not a done deal – there are meetings this month that decide whether this problematic deal moves forward. Airport officials are preparing for the New Haven Board of Alders to consider the 43-year proposed agreement.

New York residents faced a similar proposal to privatize the Westchester County Airport (by the same company, Avports). They worked together and stopped the privatization, the increased noise, and the low-flying aircraft over residential neighborhoods. We can do the same here. Airport privatization has been a failed experiment nationwide because it has no basis in residential health, environmental or economic sustainability. Please learn more and get involved.

Even if none of what’s written here changes your perspective on Tweed Airport expansion, I hope you agree there must be thoughtful review of long-term development of this magnitude. There should be no vote by the New Haven Alders on the 43-year deal until there’s a significant project labor agreement, a climate resilience plan, an environmental assessment, clarity on transit air cargo, and a sound study.

“Action on behalf of Life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer, in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

Learn more about 10,000 Hawks, an all-volunteer group of neighbors committed to saving the coastline and wetlands of New Haven and East Haven and maintaining the health of the neighborhood for future generations.

To reach Rachel directly: rachel@greenrachel.com

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