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This plane is among dozens kept at the NSB Airport. |
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Cindy Rhatigan is excited about the noise planes will be making Saturday, Aug. 16., at the New Smyrna Beach Municipal Airport with a series of takeoffs, landings and aerial maneuvers. After all, she's put up with the noise for four years now.
Why should this particular date be any different.
Well, the reason being is that noise will be on purpose so city officials can get a better handle on the complaints of airport neighbors who say they are tired of what they are calling noise pollution.
"That's what it is," said the 49-year-old Rhatigan, who lives a mile away on Scarlett Trail.
"Had I known the tower was going in, I would have never bought here," she said of the $215,000 below-market home on 1 acre she and her husband purchased in February 2004. She said it wasn't so much that the home was near the airport that made it so affordable as much as the owner wanting to sell.
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A pilot reviews paperwork at his plane at the NSB Airport. |
Since the tower was built later that year, air traffic has increased considerably since then, she and others say.
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The city has agreed to utilize federal funding for a noise study and after a few meetings with neighbors, officials will see for themselves the situation at hand on Saturday, Aug. 16.
New Smyrna Beach Mayor Sally Mackay, who has been at the forefront of this issue said she is pleased that city noise abatement measures proposed by Frank Ayers at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach and members of the NSB Noise Abatement Committee include the following:
# Voluntary end to Sunday Flight School training flights;
# Voluntary restriction of Flight School training flights before 8 a.m. and into evenings;
# Lessening number of planes allowed in training flight patterns;
# Redesigning routes of flight patterns so minimal impact on residents below ( purpose
of Aug. 16 field workshop).
"Notification of the voluntary measures, if approved, would be placed in aircraft cockpits and on the NSB Airport Web-page listing us as a Community Friendly Airport," Mackay said.
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Third photo: The tower at NSB Airport was built in 2004. |
A series of aerial flights will be conducted to get a better handle on the noise issue and how to deal with it, the mayor said.
Rhatigan said she, for one, is pleased with the mayor's efforts.
"She does seem to be a reasonable woman who is trying to find a balance -- to seek a solution," Rhatigan said.
Rhatigan said she understood living near a municipal airport would be noisy, but not to this extent.
"Once that tower opened and they put lights on the runway, you had a lot more (air) traffic day and night," she said. "Before that, once in a while, you'd get a renegade up there that would irritate you to the point where you would put your fist in the air, but now there's too much."
The airport provides the city eith $756,000 annually in revenues and the city receives another $1.05 million in federal grants. The airport provides 100 local