I'd like to respond to some of Joe's points in his recent piece on "balance". He asks:

"Are waterfront condo vacancy rates rising in response to residents leaving the area as traffic increases?"
and
"-Are residents leaving Wards island as the area is becoming increasingly affected by air traffic?"

The suggestion is that an answer of "No" to these questions is evidence that the growing traffic at the Island Airport doesn't bother waterfront residents. This is a completely scurrilous line of argument. How would prospective condo owners know about the full extent of the noise problem until they actually move in and experience it on a daily basis?

As for moving away, that's clearly a last resort. The fact that people aren't moving away from the waterfront doesn't mean there isn't a problem. It means that we love our homes and our neighbourhoods, and that we still have some faith in the future. We prefer to stay where we are and fight to keep the Toronto waterfront a green, liveable place - which it won't be if the Joe's projection of planes landing and taking off "only" every 4.5 minutes comes to pass.

Kathleen McDonnell