Saturday, March 08, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Jetliners' rumble rankles residents
Rerouted air traffic springs noisy surprise
By FRANK GEARY
REVIEW-JOURNAL
The Rohrer family moved last year to the southwest Las Vegas Valley for the peace and quiet the rural area provided. But their tranquility was shattered six weeks ago by the roar of jumbo jets overhead.
Without the knowledge of the Rohrers, their neighbors or officials in the unincorporated town of Enterprise, the Federal Aviation Administration in late January altered longtime departure routes at McCarran International Airport, and now airliners depart regularly over the Rohrers' neighborhood.
To sleep at night, Kevin and Erin Rohrer use the hum of an electric fan to drown out the rumble of airplanes. The only time they can ignore the noise is when the volume on their television is turned up, Kevin Rohrer said.
"It's very difficult to get to sleep at night, and we wake up every morning before 6 a.m. because of the noise," he said. "I don't need my alarm clock because I have the air traffic to wake me up."
Kevin Kentsler, a resident of the area and a retired airline pilot, said he and his wife no longer spend time outside with their horses because the noise is so constant. He estimates that at different time periods each day, as many as 10 planes fly over his home within a 15-minute period.
The Rohrers, Kentsler and about 30 upset neighbors last week complained for the first time about the racket to the Enterprise Town Board.
The local board plans at its meeting Wednesday to investigate the allegations that their area has been unfairly targeted and that residents didn't have any input into the revisions before they were made.
The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Enterprise Library, 25 E. Shelbourne Ave., at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard.
"We are trying to find out what has taken place. There have been dramatic changes in air-traffic departures at McCarran," said longtime Town Board member Dave Broxterman, a retired Air Force pilot who for years flew out of Nellis Air Force Base. "I know of no meeting held in Enterprise by McCarran or the FAA, and I would think at a minimum you would have a hearing in the affected area."
The FAA originally was scheduled in October 2001 to change McCarran's 30-year-old airline-departure routes permanently because they no longer are compatible with the increased volume of airline traffic in and out of McCarran, said Dell Meadows, the FAA's air-traffic manager for the Las Vegas area.
However, the final changes have not been solidified. Revisions are still being fine-tuned and aren't expected to be completed for a few more weeks, Meadows said.
The FAA during the summer of 2001 held four public hearings to solicit feedback on the proposed changes, and, as required by law, announced the hearings in advance in the legal advertisements of the Review-Journal, Meadows said.
Clark County officials also were notified in 2001 of the pending changes and the hearings. But Meadows acknowledged that only a few residents attended the public meetings and that members of the Enterprise Town Board never were told specifically of the proposed changes in their area.
"We didn't know anything about it," said John Hiatt, chairman of the Enterprise Town Board. "We need to have all the facts. ... When you take the pain that was shared among all the people and put it on a particular group, that group feels they have an undue burden."
Meadows said the air-route changes negatively affect residents southwest of McCarran but are a plus for the more populated areas to the northwest. Previously, 80 percent of flights leaving McCarran would depart to the west and turn either south or north, depending on their destination.
Since late 2001, however, all planes departing to the west of McCarran have turned south and none has turned north.
Airline noise in portions of the area southwest of the airport has increased for weeks at a time since late 2001 because the FAA has been modifying the departure routes using a cutting-edge, automated navigation system that never has been used before, Meadows said. Those modifications brought the planes directly over the Rohrers' neighborhood starting in late January.
FAA and McCarran officials say they can't promise that noise levels will subside for all residents southwest of the airport, but the noise shouldn't be as bad for as many people once the changes are solidified in the weeks to come.
"We are trying to make it so that they fly over an area where there is no development or where we (McCarran) can control the development to make it compatible with the airport," said Mike Loghides, program administrator at McCarran.
