Our group, Citizens For Quiet Skies, was formed in 2011 in response to excessive noise from skydiving operations at Vance Brand Airport in Longmont, Colorado. A combination of noisy aircraft and 12-plus-hour days of nearly constant noise on summer weekends created intense frustration in our community. The 23-passenger Twin Otter turboprops were considered to be particularly annoying and inappropriate for constant use over residential areas. In that same general time frame, there was a lot of controversy over the proposed airport expansion and runway extension, which was unanimously approved (7-0) by the Longmont City Council. The runway extension has not yet begun. For several years we have asked city council, as the airport proprietor, to adopt reasonable regulations to address noise concerns. And for several years, they have repeatedly said “no” - there is nothing they can do, the FAA has full authority. So, this past Saturday morning, after being rudely awakened by a plane at 5:07 am traveling from Longmont to Colorado Springs, I pondered the situation further. How will the expansion affect our community? Perhaps you wouldn’t mind a flight at 5 am. How about 4 am, or 3 am? How about helicopter training, and more pilot training? A few jets would probably be ok. How about a lot of jets coming and going at all hours of the day and night. In talking with city officials, with a wink and a nod they promise that the airport expansion is our solution – meaning that the expansion will crowd out the skydiving operation and the noise problem will be solved. This assertion, of course, is a complete lie. Our problem with skydiving planes may seem different from flight training touch and goes, night flights and botched NextGen rollouts, but they stem from exactly the same fundamental problem – ineffective and nonexistent regulations to protect local communities. If we are serious about solving “our problem”, we cannot proclaim that “only the skydiving planes are a problem”, or “only noise at commercial airports is a big enough problem deserving attention.” We absolutely must be willing to stand together and demand reasonable regulations that protect all communities from excessive aviation noise. For those who are currently unaffected, please know that you are just one decision away from being in the flight path or in the Airport Influence Zone of a recently-expanded airport, with no rights or recourse to protect your quality of life. Let’s commit right now to standing up for our own communities, and our neighbors as well. -Kimberly Gibbs Founder and Director, Citizens For Quiet Skies in Boulder County, Colorado At the risk of being long-winded, I would like to share an excerpt from the insightful book “Take Back the Sky – Protecting Communities in the Path of Aviation Expansion” by Rae Andre’. Chapter 2 - The Airport in My Garden “The story of how my town and three neighboring towns are fighting the commercialization of the local airport is typical of struggles against airport expansion nationwide. Like so many others, from rural communities to urban centers, our communities are stacking up their relatively meager local resources against one of the most powerful special interest in the world, and they are losing. … I had lived directly in the flight path for Hanscom Field for two years, and it had been no big deal – little planes cruising overhead, the occasional military transport lumbering beyond the trees. It reminded me pleasantly of my childhood, as I’d grown up near a small airport. So the next day, in an auction among five bidders, I bought the house. We took possession in November, and during the following year I put my own stamp on the place. I had not owned a house for many years, and installing bird feeders was a pleasure. One morning in the summer of that first year we were awakened by planes practicing for the biannual air show hosted at Hanscom Field. … Afterward we went back to business as usual, tending the garden and watching the frequent flying hobbyists and the occasional corporate jet overhead. In June of 1999 I read in the local paper that a start-up commercial airline was applying to fly out of the airport. I thought, That is just ridiculous. You can’t have airlines flying this low over people’s homes and schools. You can’t diminish the historic sites of Lexington and Concord – places like the Old North Bridge, the Battle Road, the Louisa May Alcott House, and Walden Pond. You can’t have even more planes flying over the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge. Massport, the state agency that manages air transportation, will take care of it, I thought. They have promised to keep the airport as it is – for small planes. They will turn down the airline’s application. I, like many of my neighbors, went away on a summer holiday. When we returned, the local newspaper informed us that Massport had not, in fact, turned the airline down. On June 7, Massport notified the community tha the airline was proposing to start up service at Hanscom Field and gave the Hanscom Field Advisory Committee only two weeks to response. … In 1999, the new airline at Hanscom Field started up slowly, with a mere four flights, as announced in its publicity release. Actually, as we experienced it, there were four flights in and four flights out of the airport for a total of eight “operations” per day. … One evening I could hear that planes were landing at an enormous rate, and I called the airport to find out what was happening. The polite woman who answered the phone informed me that Hanscom Field is a twenty-four-hour facility operated by Massport and that planes may land any time they wish. … For many Americans, the fact is that if an issue does not touch us personally, there is little incentive to get involved, and there are so many reasons not to. We are busy with jobs and families. The airport is in another part of town. When it comes to holding government accountable, our intention to be good citizens may fall in to the same category as the wish to change a bad habit – fervent but ineffectual. … As I joined the effort to stop the expansion of Hanscom Field, I wanted to understand the extent to which unbridled commercial interests have come to dominate our government and our lives. How can our beloved communities be held hostage to self-serving corporations? What can we do to make the aviation industry more environmentally responsible? These are questions all American citizens should ask themselves, because if powerful commercial interests have not yet come to your community, they are on their way.”