PHOENIX β Residents near Davis-Monthan Air Force Base have asked a judge to order the Air Force to conduct a full-blown environmental impact study of flight operations. Their attorney says theyβve been treated with βcontempt.β
In new court filings, attorney Joy Herr-Cardillo noted the military did a less formal βenvironmental assessmentβ in 2012, concluding there would be no significant impact on those living in and around the flight path of the Tucson base.
But she told U.S. District Court Judge Javier Soto the assessment was flawed because it used 2009 as a base year for comparison. That failed to consider the cumulative impact since 1978 when D-M became the center of βOperation Snowbirdβ training operations, she said.
What the Air Force did acknowledge glosses over, and ignores, the impact of flight operations on children who live in the area and go to school there, Herr-Cardillo argued.
The Air Force, in a previous response after the lawsuit was filed last year, denied it has done anything wrong and asked that the case be dismissed.
This new filing claims there is evidence the military did not comply with federal environmental laws.
Attorneys for the government have until May 15 to respond.
There have been questions and complaints for decades about noise from the base.
Herr-Cardillo said reports that there would be F-35 training at the base prompted the lawsuit. The latest generation of jets is known to be particularly noisy. As it turned out, Tucson was passed over as an F-35 training site.
But she said neighbors discovered in researching the issue that much has changed since the original Operation Snowbird operations started in the 1970s, the last time the Air Force fully looked at the impact of its operations on the baseβs neighbors.
Operation Snowbird was originally designed to provide training time for pilots from northern states during the winter.
But since then, according to Herr-Cardillo, Operation Snowbird became a year-round activity. The type of aircraft used also changed.
She said the Air Force never considered the effect of all that additional air traffic on neighbors, something she said it was required to do.
In the Julia Keen neighborhood, immediately north of the runway, the increase in noise from the original operations resulted in a schoolβs closure in 2004, she said.
Even when there were proposals for F-35 training at Davis-Monthan, βthe Air Force has not been inclined to recognize, let alone ameliorate, the direct harm it is inflicting on its neighbors,β said Herr-Cardillo.
She cited an email from Scott Hines, who was the baseβs representative on the cityβs Military Community Relations Committee, to Lt. Col. Kevin Eilers, commander of the training squadron at the base. Hines suggested the Air Force was βoverreactingβ to noise issues and that the influence of those who oppose operations at the base βhas lessened by their own continued rhetoric.β
Herr-Cardillo told the judge he should consider that in determining whether the Air Force has complied with federal laws.
βThis obvious contempt for the members of the community most affected by the baseβs proposal to further expand visiting unit operations by the very person that the Air Force has designated as its community liaison certainly calls into question whether the environmental assessment was prepared in good faith,β she wrote.
If nothing else, the attorney said the Air Force is required by law to consider what it can do to keep the effects on residents to a minimum. She particularly cited areas where noise levels are 70 decibels, described as similar to the noise of a television set on loud or a vacuum cleaner.
βCertainly at this point, the people living in what is now a 70db zone are entitled to have the U.S. Air Force, at the very least, consider whether there are any measures it might take to mitigate the noise that it has foisted on those residents,β she wrote.
