VERMONT'S COUNTER-OFFENSIVE AGAINST THE U.S. AIR FORCE GROWING
By William Boardman Email address removed"> Email address removed
Growing popular resistance to the Air Force plan to base its nuclear-capable F-35 first strike fighter in Vermont has included a public health hearing on the plane's noise impact, a well-attended meeting about legal action against the plan, and the emergence of a new grassroots opposition group, "Save Our Skies from the F35s." But these developments have yet had no discernible impact on Vermont's elected officials, almost all of whom support an F-35 base in Vermont.
In defense of the F-35, a coalition of real estate firms recently published a full page ad in two Burlington papers, claiming the F-35 base would hurt property values, despite the Air Force acknowledgement that at least 1,366 homes were in a zone that would become "unsuitable for residential use." The ad's nine signers base their conclusion on a hotly disputed paper produced last July by the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp.
To reach their conclusion that property values are safe and secure, the real estate group includes statistics for unlivable homes that the Burlington Airport has bought at fair market value, as required by law, and then torn down because they are unsellable because of the noise. Statistically, the sales managed to preserve housing value, and commissions, if not the housing itself.
T he weekly Seven Days quotes one of the signers,
Ernie Pomerleau, as saying: "We're not the outliers here. We stand with Bernie Sanders, Patrick
Leahy, Peter Welch, Peter Shumlin and all the other elected officials who
support the F-35" -- referring to Vermont's two U.S. Senators, lone
Congressman, and Governor.
Congressional Delegation Avoids Public
Engagement
The Congressional
delegation has been unusually reticent of late, having warmly praised
themselves in July 2010 for getting the Air Force to decide to base the F-35 in
Vermont. Now Cong. Welch has no
references whatsoever to the F-35 on his website and Sen. Leahy
has nothing more recent than a year ago.
Sen. Sanders,
who's running for re-election in a not-very-contested race, offers several more
recent news summaries, including
an uncritical report on the real estate ad while noting that opponents called
the underlying study "bizarre."
For all their consistent
support of the Air Force plans, none of the congressional delegation has provided
any substantial analytical basis in support of their pro-F-35 position or in responding
to Vermonters' concerns not just about property values, but noise, health,
militarization, or quality of life in Vermont. None has replied to our requests for such analysis and response.
The Burlington Board of
Health, by contrast, has taken a serious approach to concerns about the health
impacts of the F-35 and is in the midst of developing an assessment and
recommendations to be presented in December.
The first step in that
process was the hearing
on October 11, when the board heard from seven citizens with a wide range of
health concerns that led them to oppose any F-35 base in Vermont. No one spoke in favor of the
base. No reporters attended.
Health Concerns Include Stress, Hearing,
Heart
Several people addressed
both the psychological and the physiological aspects of noise. Psychologically, noise is disturbing
and chronic noise wears a person down, which is one reason it's a basic element
of torture. Physiologically, noise
causes bodily responses that break the body down over time, creating hearing
loss, anxiety, heart disease, or other life-shortening conditions.
As Richard Joseph of
Winooski pointed out, some portion of the people living near the airport now
are already suffering these effects because of the F-16 fighters that have been
based in Burlington for years. He
lamented the uninformed public debate and urged the board to speak up.
Echoing an earlier
speaker who objected to the health effects of bigger jets burning more fuel and
causing more air pollution, Spencer Smith of Burlington added the problem of
increased water pollution, since landing F-16s already dump excess fuel into
Lake Champlain and the larger F-35 can be expected to dump more.
Smith also noted that the
anxiety produced by excess noise would be further amplified by knowing that
nuclear weapons were based in Vermont.
Speaking for what she
referred to as the "invisible people" in the psych ward of local hospitals,
nurse Lee Burch of Burlington emphasized the especially harsh effect loud noise
has on mental patients. She pointed
out that there are others Air Force bases that want the F-35, and those bases
are not in the middle of a metro area of more than 100,000 people, surrounded
by residential areas. Only the
Burlington option will put thousands of people in an "unsuitable for
residential use" zone.
Doctor Raises Higher Violence Rate Among
Military
A family physician from
Winooski, Dr. Ann Gorey lives and practices in the airport flight path. Re-emphasizing the physiological and
psychological impacts, the family practitioner called the board's attention to
the predictable consequence of Burlington becoming more militarized -- that
there would be increased violence against women and children.
Board chair Dr. Austin
Sumner said the board planned to compile the different concerns raised in order
to seek some expert testimony at the board's next meeting November 8. He said the board would continue to
accept comments on health issues by email
The night before the board
of health meeting, more than 100 people came to Chamberlin Middle School in
South Burlington to express their distress about the current noise from F-16s, never mind what the F-35s would
bring. They feel their
congressional delegation has written off their neighborhoods as not valuable
enough, and that's why those officials won't even meet with them.
But mostly they came to
discuss the pending legal challenges
to the basing plan and explore a variety of ways
to move forward either before or after the Air Force announces its decision in
December. Attorney James Dumont
spent more than an hour answering questions about the community's legal options
for blocking the F-35 from coming to Vermont.
New Group Gets No Hope From Leahy Letter
SaveOurSkies.org is the
website of a recently formed opposition group in Winooski, where the city
government has been slow to engage on the issue of F-35 basing, even though
most of the city will be within the "unsuitable for residential use" zone. Based at St. Michael's College --
Sen. Leahy's alma mater -- the group
is promoting "A Conversation on the F-35" at the college on October 17.
SaveOurSkies.org has posted a response letter from Sen. Leahy in which he downplays the noise issue (without mentioning health), downplays the property value issue (based on the disputed report), and spends two vague, largely irrelevant paragraphs on national defense (without explaining what difference it would make whether F-35s were based in Vermont or not).
Then he writes, "I am not willing to sacrifice any Vermont community for a new fighter jet. I have worked to obtain federal funds for community investments in both South Burlington and Winooski, and I would never support a new program that would harm those communities. I would strongly oppose basing the F-35 in Vermont if I believed its noise would make Winooski or South Burlington unlivable. But I do not believe that will be the case." [emphasis added]
The congressional delegation from the military-industrial complex apparently eschews evidence for belief -- and marching orders.
