Joe, with all due respect to you and appreciation for your posts that help us understand technical aviation issues, your livelihood depends on aviation, which may lead you to underestimate its effects, and you don’t live in the affected area.

I also suppose that you don’t have a son whose asthma medication was increased twice in the first year after moving here, that you didn’t have pneumonia for four months and now live with a chronic lung disease, and that you don’t have a history of cancer and fear of environmental pollutants, many emitted by the airport. These conditions are not unusual here. Many residents do not have the option to move, and Dr. Pieter Jugovic says that airport expansion is “contributing to this community’s burden of disease”.


This month’s Cleveland Clinic Heart Advisor takes very seriously the effects of air pollution on heart health and advises vigorous outdoor activity only at times of day when particulate matter is low. Along the central waterfront, that would be after 11 p.m. and before the airplane engine run-ups begin at about 6:35 a.m.

So we are not as sanguine as you are, Joe, about the airport. Along the waterfront, most of us voted to oppose any fixed link in order to oppose airport expansion. We also deplore the way the TPA runs roughshod over community concerns. As a public body, it should represent the public, but it operates behind closed doors and seems mired in cronyism. It cheerleads for private interests and sues our city and community activists. In contrast, CommunityAir and Brian Iler have devoted years of unpaid work to defending a clean, green waterfront for everyone. They deserve our thanks.

Brenda Roman