What Boulder voters need to know about Boulder airport

By Anne Wilson

In the last two months, the Camera has published three opinion pieces by Jan Burton praising our city-owned Boulder Municipal Airport (BDU). Readers should understand Burton’s financial and personal interests: She rents a BDU hangar for her personal plane.

The Airport Neighborhood Campaign is circulating two initiatives to get on the November ballot to let the voters decide whether to repurpose the airport.  

I strongly support this effort so that the community can make a truly informed decision. Historically, BDU proponents, backed by statewide and nationwide aviation interests, have controlled the narrative. I believe voters deserve complete, honest information. 

Let’s talk about the airport with respect to Boulder’s core values.

Equity

BDU occupies 179 acres of city-owned land valued at over $350 million. BDU serves 101 tenants owning private planes. Only 40% of these tenants are Boulder residents.  

Other airport users are pilots from elsewhere who use BDU facilities at no cost.  Flight schools around the region use BDU regularly for touch-and-go training, repeatedly taking off, looping back, touching the ground, and taking off again. This severely impacts the surrounding community.  

The airport hosts only 13 businesses. In contrast, this same land could be neighborhoods, including over 2,000 homes and over 250 businesses. This usage would provide far greater contributions to our economy, our environment, our well being, and to science. For alternatives, there are three other regional airports within 10 aerial miles of BDU.  

The vast majority of Boulder residents will likely never even go to the airport, let alone benefit from it.  It is a serious inequity to devote this much of a community-owned, precious resource to a tiny percentage of people who engage in private flying and externalize their costs on the community.

Community Health and Safety

Regarding emergency response, the ballot initiatives provide for emergency helicopter services to remain. Helicopters do not need runways.

Lead is a known, serious human health hazard. BDU sells leaded aviation fuel. A 2021 study at Reid-Hillview airport in California directly correlated children’s blood lead levels with regional airport activity, finding levels on par with children in Flint Michigan at the height of their water crisis.  Residents of Rock Creek, at the end of the RMMA runway in Broomfield, have documented evidence of lead dust on windowsills and found elevated blood lead levels in an infant and adults.  The EPA recently issued an endangerment finding for leaded aviation fuel.

Another health impact that is often trivialized is noise. Noise has documented negative impacts on both mental and physical health. Ongoing, uncontrollable noise is the worst.

I bought my home at the east end of the airport runway in 1997. About six years ago noise intrusions became noticeable and problematic. Now I hear every loop of every touch-and-go. The touch-and-go practice has been compared by local residents to having a motorsports arena over their home or being under a WWII dogfight. My requests, comments and complaints have been dismissed. The noise only increased. It has become intolerable. I have decided to sell my house. This is a deep blow emotionally and financially. My well-being has been taken by the airport. I personally know seven other families that have moved because of airport noise. 

BDU is an unacceptable source of lead pollution and noise adjacent to schools, playgrounds, recreational fields, Valmont Park, open spaces and family homes, including two mobile home parks. 

Governance – who decides?

The FAA grants that fund BDU come with crippling strings attached. The FAA forbids the city from sensibly regulating plane operations and impacts including lead dust and near-constant noise. The FAA allows only voluntary harm-reduction measures for negative impacts like noise and lead. Our airport’s voluntary noise guidelines are toothless and violated repeatedly every day of the year that planes are flying, according to airport data.

We taxpayers are prohibited from governing our own land that we provide. Some members of the U.S. Congress have even tried to include language in the FAA Reauthorization Act preventing communities like ours from ever closing our airports. 

Why now?

BDU is about to start developing its next Master Plan. The Master Plan process is funded and directed by the FAA and is about growth and development. If the city takes money for Master Plan development, it incurs yet another 20-year obligation. The airport will literally be cemented into place for decades, or forever.  

Let’s vote on it!

Hosting the Boulder Municipal Airport causes real, consequential harm to individuals, families, businesses and the environment while benefiting a privileged few.  

Now is the time to change this land use for the benefit of Boulderites. I urge you to visit AirportNeighborhoodCampaign.org, sign the initiative petitions, and get this issue on our November ballot. Let’s keep talking.  

Anne Wilson is an organizer of the Airport Neighborhood Campaign. Wilson lives in Boulder.