Northern Hills Homeowner's Association

2001: An Airspace Odyssy?

Jan 17, 2001

As Candidates announce plans to run for mayor, please ask your candidates about their stand on the issue of the San Antonio Noise Abatement plans.

Mr. Baanwolf, Mr. Garza should be asked point blank ''What will you do about the current FAR 150 Study Recommendations?'' When they dance around the answer, tell them you cannot support them. When they say emphatically that they do not believe the noise should be moved, tell them you will vote for them. It really is that simple.

A look into the future?
Published Wednesday, January 10, 2001

Minneapolis house gets $122,108 of jet-noise insulation
Dan Wascoe Jr. / Minneapolis Star Tribune

Sally Polkinghorne says that she wasn't all that upset by the jets that roar over her house near Lake Nokomis, but that she and husband Gerald were delighted to accept $122,108 worth of noise insulation from the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) -- the largest single-house expense so far in the agency's nine-year program.

Although the Polkinghorne case is an exception, the entire insulation program has grown more costly as it has moved into neighborhoods with larger houses. The average cost has risen from about $17,100 per house in 1995 to $43,900 last year.

So far, the MAC has awarded $164.1 million in contracts to insulate 6,174 houses. It expects to spend $30.6 million this year and could spend up to $43.6 million more by the time it completes the work in late 2002 or early 2003.

Funds for the program come from several sources, including the Federal Aviation Administration, assessments on airlines and the passenger-facilities charges that most airline customers pay on their tickets.

On the Polkinghornes' house, Socon Construction, one of the MAC's contractors, replaced 61 windows and four of five doors, officials said. The fifth, made of ''nice, heavy oak,'' didn't need replacing, Polkinghorne said. Only minor work remains.

To put the cost of the work in perspective, the house's value for property taxes paid in 2000 was $205,600, said the Minneapolis assessor's office -- before the insulation was installed.

The Polkinghornes, who raised three children during their 35 years at 5014 Woodlawn Blvd., also received central air-conditioning, which was installed in the attic, she said.

Most of the installation was done last spring, and although minor work remains, life is ''much quieter now,'' Sally Polk inghorne said. ''You don't even hear street noise.'' Even so, she kept some windows open during the summer because the jets from nearby Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport weren't all that noisy.

She and her neighbors applied for the program after getting information at a public meeting, and they've been ''thrilled'' with the results, she said.

The program has refitted more than 5,800 houses, mostly in Minneapolis but also in Richfield, Eagan, Bloomington and Mendota Heights. All have met the basic criterion of exposure to jet noise averaging 65 decibels under a complicated measurement formula.

The agency is preparing to ask federal officials to lower the noise threshold to an average of 60 decibels, which could make thousands more homes eligible for insulation, though perhaps not as much insulation as those subject to louder jet noise.

John Nelson, who manages the insulation program, said one other house has received more than $100,000 worth of noise mitigation. That was on Cedar Avenue on the west side of Lake Nokomis.

He said that in the program's early days the MAC established a $25,000 limit per dwelling but that it was abandoned in the face of difficulties involving rising costs and decisions over which parts of a house to insulate.

In some houses, replacing windows, doors and moldings and installing air-conditioning ducts means working with decades-old plaster and other
fragile materials. And in rare cases such as the Polkinghornes', custom work on rounded windows and moldings drive up costs, he said. Even so, he said, a program priority is to ensure customer satisfaction.