Aviation Conspiracy: More Air Cargo For NY's Stewart Airport?
Bill Mulcahy
http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/newsletter507.htm
Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter
#507...........................................................................................Dec
28, 2008 Past newsletters can be accessed at:
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Quote of the Week: "Is it going to be the next JFK? No. But it can have a
more vibrant cargo component." Michael Bednarz, manager of air cargo
business development for Port Authority of New York and New Jersey on the
plan to increase air cargo at upstate New York's Stewart Airport
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More Air Cargo For Stewart Airport?
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As Bill Sees It (Editorial): "Environmentalist" Democrats Push Upstate New
York's Stewart Air Cargo Expansion?!!! It always amazes me how easily
people are fooled by political con men like New York congressmen Maurice
Hinchey and John Hall. These two con artists, like almost all democrat
politicians, are very quick to flaunt their concerns for the environment for
all to see. Yet, when it comes to worst environmental impact ever to assault
their districts, a heavily night-operating air cargo airport, they are doing
everything in their power to bring it about!!! The two politicians
apparently aren't worried about the health impacts on their constituents
occurring from the loss of sleep from nighttime overflights. Hall and
Hinchey aren't worried about the increased deaths from strokes and heart
attacks caused by the proven increased levels of blood pressure that comes
with more aviation or increased cases of asthma from aviation air pollution.
How do I know these congressmen don't care? Before the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey took over Stewart Airport to turn it into a "forth major
New York City metro area airport" I wrote to them asking for them to at
least have a public hearing on this major expansion. They totally ignored my
request and there was no public hearing on the expansion just as there will
be no public hearing or health impact assessment on the latest plan to turn
Stewart Airport into an air cargo airport. These two con men keep getting
reelected year after year by fooling their liberal constituents with their
support for solar power, alternative energy and other phony environmentalist
ploys. This should be a warning to those environmentalists that think there
is going to be a change with Obama.
FAA Rats Wins A Court Decision On Logan Airport Overflights!!! A story this
week told of a Massachusetts town that lost its fight to stop increased
noise from the expansion of Logan Airport. Unfortunately they waited until
the FAA approved the change that impacted their community. That should be a
lesson to other communities to be get involved early in the airport
expansion process. All is not lost as fighting the FAA is something that
more and more communities look upon as a never ending battle.
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New York "Environmentalist" Congressmen Push Air Cargo For Stewart
Airport!!! STEWART AIRPORT - Long before regular passenger service arrived
in 1990, Stewart International Airport already was home to a number of cargo
operations.Port Authority, which has been running the airport almost 14
months now, says it wants to nurture that part of the airport's operations
as part of an overall recipe for Stewart's success. "Is it going to be the
next JFK? No," said Michael Bednarz, manager of air cargo business
development for Port Authority. "But it can have a more vibrant cargo
component." Port Authority already sees some hopeful signs. Cargo volume at
Stewart is up 3.1 percent over last year. Port Authority spokesman Pasquale
DiFulco said that bucks the trend at the agency's other airports, which have
all seen percentage decreases in their cargo volume during 2008. A large
part of the freight that has come through Stewart in recent years has come
via Federal Express, United Parcel Service and DHL. With DHL discontinuing
its domestic service, Bednarz is hopeful the other two companies will pick
up a good deal of DHL's Stewart volume. Then there are the animals. Yes,
aside from what comes in on FedEx, UPS and DHL planes, one of the most
notable types of cargo that comes through Stewart is animals, bound for the
U.S. department of Agriculture's Animal Import Center off state Route 747
(formerly Drury Lane), west of the airport proper. They're quarantined for
certain periods while they're checked for diseases and infections. Bednarz
said most of those are horses - race horses, show horses - from places like
the United Kingdom and the Middle East. There are maybe eight or 10 charter
flights for such horses each year, he said. Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains,
whose district includes Stewart, believes the airport can grow, so long as
it's a "limited and careful expansion ... so there's no sudden increase in
the overflight noise. Editor's Note: Hall doesn't want a sudden increase in
health damaging noise pollution....just a gradual increase.
Effects Of Airport Expansion: Airports are known to be major sources of
noise, water, and air pollution. They pump carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), volatile
organic compounds (VOCs), and nitrogen oxides (NO x ) into the atmosphere,
as well as dump toxic chemicals--used to de-ice airplanes during winter
storms--into waterways. But determining the extent of airplanes'
contribution to local, national, and international levels of pollution is
difficult--cars and airplanes entering and leaving airports produce roughly
equivalent quantities of ozone precursors. Auxiliary power units (APUs),
little jet engines in the planes' tails that power appliances while the
planes are at the gate, and ground support vehicles also produce quantities
of pollutants. And competing local and national political forces make
airport pollution hard to regulate; much of the air pollution is local, but
automobile and airplane emissions are regulated both nationally and
internationally. Noise also may interfere with learning. In a 1975
Environment and Behavior study of children who attended a school situated
beside some railroad tracks, Bronzaft found that students who spent the
entire six years of elementary school on the side of the school closest to
the tracks were a full year behind students who had spent the entire six
years on the quieter side facing away from the tracks. After later becoming
a consultant to the New York City Transit Authority, Bronzaft was able to
get that agency to install a noise abatement system on the tracks. She later
retested the children and found that the reading level had become identical
on both sides of the building. In a 1993 review of the effects of noise on
children, published in Children's Environments, Gary Evans, a professor in
the department of design and environmental analysis at Cornell University in
Ithaca, New York, found a variety of problems in children exposed to noise
compared to children not exposed to noise: blood pressure elevated by 4-8
mmHg, learned helplessness, deficiencies in ability to discriminate words
(possibly due to tuning out noise), and possible delays in cognitive
development. Evans cautions that "there is a total lack of prospective,
longitudinal designs in this research area," as well as a lack of precision
in two aspects of procedural conditions during testing: uniformity and
quiet. http://www.ehponline.org/docs/1997/105-12/focus.html
Nevada: Groups Fight Air Force Planes Sonic Booms!!! The Air Force wants to
carve out airspace over 1.6 million acres of eastern Nevada for an extended
supersonic operations area, but environmental groups and others say frequent
sonic booms and training operations would harm residents and the
environment. The White Elk area is north of Ely and adjacent to the current
Utah supersonic operations area. Opponents said operations would skyrocket
from a current level of 400 flights per year to as many as 9,590 flights per
year, an increase of about 2,300 percent. An Air Force environmental study
concludes the military operations would have "no significant environmental
impact" on eastern Nevada. Opponents say the jets and litter associated with
fighter pilot training could harm humans and animals and pollute the desert
landscape.Grace Potorti, director of the Reno-based Rural Alliance for
Military Accountability, said the Air Force will "carpet this area with
sonic booms, up to 2,000 supersonic events each year, and yet the
(environmental impact statement) attempts to obscure and negate the obvious
impacts of their proposed actions by failing to properly analyze noise
impacts." The booms would affect hundreds of square miles of land, she said,
including the communities of McGill and its elementary school, Cherry Creek,
Lages Station and Currie in White Pine County. Other areas affected by
overflights and sonic booms include 87,203 acres of wilderness and
wilderness study areas, she said. "The use of this new airspace would
probably damage property and would certainly decrease property values,"
Potorti said. "It would disrupt sacred ceremonies of the Goshute Indian
Tribe, would be harmful to the health and reproductive fitness of wildlife,
and would lower the boom on tourism."
http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=9565684&nav=menu549_2
Massachusetts:: Town Unable To Block Logan Airport Flight Path Changes:
MARSHFIELD - Marshfield has lost its fight to prevent changes to the flight
paths of planes using Logan Airport. The U.S. Court of Appeals last week
denied the town's appeal for a review of a Federal Aviation Administration
decision to change airport flight paths over the South Shore. The town filed
the appeal last year after the FAA approved changes recommended by the Logan
International Airport Community Advisory Committee, a group of residents
that advises the Massachusetts Port Authority. The town said the new flight
patterns would adversely affect residents and should not have been
implemented without further environmental review. The town spent more than
$100,000 on the appeal, hiring attorney Andrea C. Ferster of Washington,
D.C., who specializes in environmental and transportation law, and Schomer
and Associates Inc., a consultant firm specializing in acoustics and noise
control. The new procedures are intended to reduce noise from flights in and
out of Logan. Flight paths will be shifted farther east over Massachusetts
Bay, so they cross the South Shore at higher altitudes. Planes would be
4,000 to 5,000 feet higher when they passed over the coast, officials said,
but southern Marshfield could also see some increased traffic. Marshfield,
which says it was not represented on the committee that recommended the
procedures, sued the Massachusetts Port Authority in July 2007 to head off
flight path changes. In December 2007, the town asked the U.S. Court of
Appeals to review the FAA's approval. The recommended changes represent the
first phase of the Boston Overflight Noise Study, which was ordered after a
judge allowed MassPort to construct a sixth runway. The first phase only
considered alternatives that would not require the FAA to do a full
environmental review. Some of these procedures have been implemented, FAA
spokesman James Peters said. The second phase, which began last year,
involves more environmental review. There will also be a third phase.
Marshfield did not send a representative to the Logan Airport Community
Advisory Committee meetings until after the group made the recommendations.
Officials said they were never told that the proposed flight paths could
dramatically affect them.
http://www.wickedlocal.com/marshfield/news/x512364483/Marshfield-unable-to-block-Logan-Airport-flight-path-changes
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Important Aviation
News Stories This Week
For Stewart Airport, cargo could be key to success Port Authority officials
hope to expand freight operations By Michael Randall December 22, 2008
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081222/NEWS/81221022/-1/NEWS
Times Herald-Record
STEWART AIRPORT - Long before regular passenger service arrived in 1990,
Stewart International Airport already was home to a number of cargo
operations.
Port Authority, which has been running the airport almost 14 months now,
says it wants to nurture that part of the airport's operations as part of an
overall recipe for Stewart's success.
"Is it going to be the next JFK? No," said Michael Bednarz, manager of air
cargo business development for Port Authority. "But it can have a more
vibrant cargo component."
Port Authority already sees some hopeful signs. Cargo volume at Stewart is
up 3.1 percent over last year. Port Authority spokesman Pasquale DiFulco
said that bucks the trend at the agency's other airports, which have all
seen percentage decreases in their cargo volume during 2008.
A large part of the freight that has come through Stewart in recent years
has come via Federal Express, United Parcel Service and DHL.
With DHL discontinuing its domestic service, Bednarz is hopeful the other
two companies will pick up a good deal of DHL's Stewart volume.
Then there are the animals.
Yes, aside from what comes in on FedEx, UPS and DHL planes, one of the most
notable types of cargo that comes through Stewart is animals, bound for the
U.S. department of Agriculture's Animal Import Center off state Route 747
(formerly Drury Lane), west of the airport proper.
They're quarantined for certain periods while they're checked for diseases
and infections.
Bednarz said most of those are horses - race horses, show horses - from
places like the United Kingdom and the Middle East. There are maybe eight or
10 charter flights for such horses each year, he said.
Rep. John Hall, D-Dover Plains, whose district includes Stewart, believes
the airport can grow, so long as it's a "limited and careful expansion ...
so there's no sudden increase in the overflight noise."
And one area he thinks Stewart can do more in is cargo.
"JFK (airport) has a severe congestion problem, and a lot of that is
cargo," Hall said in a recent interview. For companies that are "tired of
their trucks being stuck in traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway" going to and
from JFK, Stewart "would be easier and quicker," and by increasing cargo
operations here, that also could create more jobs, Hall said.
DiFulco said there's "an economic benefit for the community" in expanding
cargo operations. A general formula in the industry holds that every 1,000
tons of cargo an airport handles represents about 30 jobs, $1.85 million in
annual wages, and $4.5 million in annual sales.
Looking ahead, Bednarz said he'd like to develop a cargo drop station at
Stewart, and maybe a common-use cargo facility for all shippers.
There's no timetable for such things right now, but as Bednarz notes,
"Stewart is a long-term project for us."
About 91 years, to be exact. That's the time left on Port Authority's lease
of Stewart.
mran...@th-record.com