This was written for a journalism class my senior year, and as such I don’t think it was ever published. That said, it remains one of my favorites as far as the research process went: although I had delved into the UW Libraries and the UW Archives in the past, this was the most I had ever engaged with them. And what fun it was! This was the first time I had ever used a microfilm machine, and the whirring and buzzing of the motors as it spun the reels evoked memories of the really old VCR we used to have when I was a kid. I ended up with a folder of a dozen or so clippings of archived Seattle Times editions and then 56-page document of scanned articles from other sources.
It also exposes one of my favorite parts of the job: the way something as simple as background on a pollution lawsuit leads down the rabbit hole of airport history; a cascade of learning about the relationship between our airport and the city it serves. All this to build background on the administrative side of the fight against SeaTac’s third runway — very little of it could fit in the article while remaining focused on the immediate news peg. In a way, it also ties back into the longstanding aviation focus that you can also see in the CubeSat article.
By Matthew Hipolito
A class-action lawsuit filed last month in King County alleges that the Port of Seattle and two large airlines negligently turned a blind eye to “dangerously high levels of pollutants” near the airport as a result of passing jet traffic – and is the most recent in a series of battles, many of them highly pitched, between the airport and nearby residents going back decades.
But some of those affiliated with the Port’s adversaries from those contentious years say that the Port today has a different temperament than it did then.
Some of the earliest and most heated of these fights came during the 1970s. Community members of the noisiest areas, naming themselves the Zone 3 Committee after their designation on a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) map, thronged public meetings by the hundreds, demanding the Port of Seattle either fix the noise or buy out their homes.
“Community noise ordinances for residential areas generally recommend 50 dBA [or decibels A, which measures approximate loudness as perceived by humans, factoring in pitch] for a daytime limit and 45 dBA for a nighttime limit,” a 1972 report by the state Department of Social and Health services reads. “The median peak noise level measured within Zone 3 exceeds these limits with a relative intensity of over 10,000 times.”
Relenting to the intense pressure from both community groups and local municipalities, the Port of Seattle not long after earmarked tens of millions of dollars for purchasing more than 1,000 homes in the areas most affected by noise.
However, even during this period, the Port of Seattle had anticipated a continued rise in air traffic. On December 4, 1991, first approval was given to a draft proposal that would open a new runway before 2000 – a prospect that alarmed several neighboring municipalities.
“We used to meet as mayors once a month or once in two months,” said Dr. Arun Jhaveri, who was elected the first mayor of Burien when that city incorporated in 1992. “After we found out that the third runway was proposed by the Port of Seattle, the frequency of meetings went really quickly because we were all concerned about the impacts.”
That informal collaboration soon took on a formal name – the Airport Communities Coalition, or ACC – and began urging the Port of Seattle, through all available means, to reconsider the need for a third runway. Instead of expanding SeaTac, the ACC supported an earlier idea considered by the Port – expanding existing airports around the region.
The ACC further alleged in multiple lawsuits and community efforts numerous procedural errors and missteps throughout the planning process for the third runway.
“We realized that the Port of Seattle had made a pre-decision or decision without going through the full impact assessment study or meetings and getting comments from communities across the board,” Jhaveri said. “And when they did do a few ones, as required by FAA and federal legislation, they were not very comprehensive.”
In 2004, opponents of the third runway dropped their final legal attempt to block the project.
Although the Seattle Times at the time characterized the decade of resistance as “futile,” those communities had stalled the third runway for years.
“Port of Seattle decided that for the long term, it was a good idea for them to come up with some kind of compromise,” Jhaveri said. “They never had shown any kind of interest in helping ACC out on the communities and the people impacted by that during the course of the litigation, four or five years. I think finally they realized that so many people who work at Port of Seattle, at SeaTac Airport, they live in our communities and have their own families and children.”
Some of that Port of Seattle money went to the Highline School District, who built new schools and upgraded existing ones.
“In general, the port has made a great effort to be a good partner and a good neighbor to the school district,” Catherine Carbone Rogers, chief of communications for the Highline School District, said. “That’s not to say that the people who live in this community aren’t impacted by the airport. They are, but I do see the port working toward trying to mitigate that in ways that they are able to.”
Rogers added that the Port contributes significantly to the Highline Schools Foundation nonprofit and helps fund scholarships and special programs.
“What I want to see in my retirement is a three-legged approach, which is balanced equally,” Jhaveri said. “One-third environmental stewardship, one-third economic prosperity, and one-third social justice. We need to make sure that the decision makers, whether out of Seattle or cities or counties or PSRC or whoever, they focus on these three entities equally.”
Jhaveri thinks SeaTac’s imperfect past might help inform a better present.
“I think after 30 years, I can tell that the Port Commissioners have become much more sympathetic or at least sensitive to a project like that third runway, which would have created a monster for the communities around it,” Jhaveri said.