A suggestion for dealing with neighbors of Tweed airport

Is it possible that, after five-plus decades of intermittent jet service at Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport, folks who have no tolerance for the airport’s operations still choose to move near it? New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker’s November 17th Zoom meeting on the subject of Tweed seems to bear this out.

When jet service was introduced to Tweed in the late 1960s, it was understandably a “shock to the system,” the aircraft of that era being powered by Stage I jet engines which lacked the operational efficiency of today’s engines.

The airport management has attempted to rectify the situation, first by enacting a noise ordinance (in the 1980s), and more recently by soundproofing a number of houses located within the airport’s “footprint.”

Unfortunately, this has resulted in a case of treating the symptoms and not the disease, as generation after generation continues to buy or build houses in close proximity to Tweed, beginning the cycle anew.

Could not the city of New Haven (and the town of East Haven) work with the real estate community to include a document to be signed by a new homeowner within a to-bedetermined radius of the airport recognizing the airport’s existence and acknowledging the airport’s operation?

Sure, there are those who will raise the “due diligence” issue. How has that worked out over the past 50-plus years of East Shore property ownership? At least an official admission of the situation on the part of the property owner may present a clearer legal picture.

Unless and until the two municipalities attack this issue at the root, it will continue to play out for decades to come.

Vincent Perrelli Wilmington, Delaware Member, Tweed Board of Airport

Commissioners from 1991-1995