The main neighborhood drama made MSNBC! I’ve included the article below for posterity. For reference, Dee is a sweet lady who lives 3 houses down from us, she’s further from the end of the runway. Unfortunately I was traveling and missed attending this meeting.

Relief sought for airplane noise in Key West
Keysnews.com

Homeowners near airport cite inequities in soundproofing policy
BY ANN HENSON Citizen Staff

Dee Atwood can recite the schedule of Key West airport takeoffs and landings because she hears them every day. “There’s one at noon and then at 3 p.m.,” she said from her home on Linda Avenue last week. The noise will continue to roar inside and outside her home, because there is no federal money to help with soundproofing. Neighbors with homes on surrounding streets have taken advantage of a Federal Aviation Administration program to retrofit their homes for noise prevention. “They’ve done Riviera Drive and up by the high school and now are doing Staples Avenue. Why aren’t they doing my street?” asked Atwood, who has lived in her house for 53 years.

Atwood and some of her neighbors took their complaints to a meeting of the Ad-hoc Committee on Airport Noise on Tuesday at the Harvey Government Center. There, Deborah Murphy Largos, senior project manager for air transportation with URS Corporation and in charge of the noise prevention program, explained that in 2000 Linda Avenue was part of the program. “About a year or two ago, the FAA said some of the areas approved no longer met the criteria and they would not pay for them,” she said. Participating homes, determined by an average of day and night airplane noise decibels, receive the mitigation including new soundproof windows, increased insulation and central air conditioning for those with window units, paid for by the federal government and taxes collected on airplane tickets. “In 2005, legislation introduced by [U.S. Sen.] Trent Lott, [R-Miss.], took out the last contour, which in Key West amounted to 100 homes,” said Peter Horton, airport director. He agrees that the 30 homes on Linda Avenue should be included in the $50,000 to $65,000 worth of soundproofing.

So far, 200 homes near the airport have been retrofitted for sound, which cost about $15 million, Horton said. “It looks like we might get another 50 homes done that are outside the [noise] contour because we used new maps that dealt with sound from airports near water,” he said. But that would still leave Linda Avenue, which is near the Salt Ponds, out of the program, he said. Horton believes that when a parcel is near or touches a noise contour that receives the noise abatement work, the entire neighborhood should get it. He tried making that case to the FAA. “We said it’s for neighborhood equity and we wanted to do it all,” Horton said about Linda Avenue. A pastor’s house at the end of the street, but not accessible by Linda Avenue, has been retrofitted. But so far, the FAA, which takes its orders from Congress, is not budging on the rest of the 30 homes on the street. “Congress took them out and only Congress can put them back in,” Horton said.

Key West International Airport sees 250 takeoffs and landings per day. “At times, they do have planes flying over their homes, although they are not supposed to,” he said. While single, loud events make more of an impression, the FAA won’t noise-proof homes based on occasional loud noise. Key West Parks and Recreation Director Randy Sterling said the contour maps are incorrect. “The flight pattern they showed is wrong. They come right over Garrison Bight Marina, not east and west over the high school. They don’t do that,” he said. Largos said she is trying to obtain Navy radar records to prove that flights go right over the Linda Avenue homes. “We need to supply the FAA with as much information as we can,” she added. Contributing to the noise factor is the Delta regional jets that since 2000 take off and land at the airport, Largos said. Because the runway is so short, the pilots must put on the brakes and rev up the engine to maximum power at the end of the runway, then release the brakes and the jet takes off as if being catapulted out of a slingshot. When the air gets hotter and denser, it takes more time to rev up the engines, she said.

* The prior news-worthy drama for our street was of the unfortunate variety. Also from the Key West Citizen, courtesy of GoTo Key West as sadly the Citizen doesn’t keep their archives public:

Welcome to the block

Apparently nosy neighbors called police last week saying a black man with dreadlocks was trying to get into a home on Linda Avenue. After police arrived with their guns drawn, it was determined that a man and woman inside were new rental tenants.

This SO makes me cringe, and has sparked off theories as to which of the unfriendly neighbors was the racist a**hole.