Monterey Peninsula Airport Noise

Monterey County Herald
Letter to the Editor
April 2001

Airport expansion a bad idea

It was with a shudder that I read in The Herald about the planned expansion of the Monterey Peninsula Airport.

As a longtime resident of Pacific Grove, I have seen and heard the tremendous increase in air traffic and noise since United pulled its flights due to lack of customers. Strange, eh?

Ever since last July we have been awakened every morning by aircraft landing at the airport. The drone of an airplane is now the background noise of life on the Peninsula.

How long and how much expansion until airplanes supplant butterflies as the symbol of Pacific Grove? Not long, I am afraid.

The noise pollution in the air mirrors the TCE/petro pollution in the ground. Both are ludicrous and the result of poor planning by people who did not appreciate this great area for what it truly has to offer.

Whose plan was it to have the flight path over the most populated area of the Peninsula? At the least we need a curfew like San Jose has. We need our sleep.

At best we would move the airport east while there is still open land. A drive of even 10 miles would not be a great inconvenience and would spare our communities from the industrial grade noise that is becoming endemic to life here.

Mark Healy
Pacific Grove

Rough Landing - Monday October 23, 2000

Wayne Thorn, 65, pilot of this Piper Cherokee Arrow single-engine plane,
escaped injury Monday afternoon after he came down with the aircraft's
gear up at Salinas Municipal Airport. Salinas fire Capt. Ken Logsdon, left,
and Battalion Chief Lloyd James survey the damage. The Federal Aviation
Agency is investigating the incident.

Monterey County Herald
Letter to the Editor
October 31, 2000

Tackle water contamination

Editor:

If the toxins in the perched water table adjacent to the airport moved into the lower water table which serves drinking water to Seaside and Monterey, it would be devastating to our current tight water situation!

The Seaside aquifer, which could easily get contaminated waiting for the Army core of engineers to act 10 years from now, supplies a large part of the Peninsula.

Trichloroethene, one contaminant, is heavier than water and fault line cracks may follow. Its low solubility in water makes it difficult to detect in monitoring wells.

Fault maps of Seaside show lines between water tables, but I have not seen maps of the impervious layers impounding contaminated water and which show the perched water table bends sharply uphill towards Seaside.

We must elect officials who will tackle the details immediately. Monterey and Seaside city governments must jointly find experts to assess the danger. Court action must occur by either or both cities if the danger to the main drinking water aquifer will increase within 10 years. As a member of the Seaside Water Committee in the 70s, I asked Steven Ross to show concern for the aquifer contamination from the surface. He didn't.

Hebard Olson
MA Natural Science, (Chemistry, Physics, Biology), Monterey

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