"Go beyond FAA criteria, planner says"

Friday, September 12, 2003

Go beyond FAA criteria, planner says 
By PAUL MUSCHICK 
The Greensboro (NC) News & Record


WINSTON-SALEM -- Local governments should not limit themselves to Federal
Aviation Administration standards when preparing for growth around airports,
High Point Planning Director Lee Burnette told his peers Thursday at a state
conference.

"That is the minimum which you should be looking at," Burnette said at the
annual N.C. Planning Conference in Winston-Salem.

About 330 planners, students, attorneys, bankers and others involved in
growth issues attended the conference. It included a session about FedEx
because the hub is an example of a large project that requires coordinated
planning from several cities and different levels of government, said
Rosemary Deemer, a Winston-Salem-Forsyth County planner and an officer with
the state planners association.

"It is a significant development project that will have regional impacts on
numerous levels -- transportation, future land-use development, noise, storm
water and economic development," Deemer said.

FedEx wants to open a $500 million cargo-sorting center at Piedmont Triad
International Airport by 2009. Supporters say it would create jobs.
Opponents say its overnight flights would wake people. High Point had to
plan extensively for FedEx because most of the flights are projected to fly
over the city. It chose not to use the FAA's noise standards because the
city believed they were inadequate, Burnette said. The FAA measures the
daily average noise of all flights to suggest where residential development
is inappropriate near airports. High Point wanted to focus on only the
individual night flights.

So, the city hired a consultant who provided better information about how
FedEx's night flights could affect city residents, leading to stricter
standards. Other governments should seek similar help, Burnette said.

"I wish we had done that earlier in the process," he said.

The consultant's information led to a plan that bans residential development
near PTI. The city also requires builders to tell buyers of new homes in
north High Point about the potential for noise. And it will be sending
controversial letters to current homeowners declaring their property to be
potentially noisy so that future buyers of the homes will know. Burnette
suggested that planners in other cities begin preparing for potential
airport expansions now. "You need to be looking further down the road,"
Burnette said.

Also at the conference Thursday, PTI Executive Director Ted Johnson outlined
the hub's financing, its environmental reviews, job potential and noise
impacts. Walt Druce, a FedEx opponent, discussed the three-year process of
writing a regional growth guide for the airport area and what influenced
recommendations such as banning residential development near PTI. "It serves
no purpose to plan conservatively," said Druce, who helped lead the citizens
panel that wrote the guide. "The airport's only going to get larger."


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