Posted by In this case the California State Supreme Court ruled that a municipality that owns and operates an airport is liable on a nuisance theory for personal injuries sustained by nearby residents and caused by noise from aircraft using the facility
inverse condemnation – a situation in which the government takes private property but fails to pay the compensation required by the 5th Amendment of the Constitution
nuisance – causes offense, annoyance, trouble or injury; private or public
Statute of limitations – I have read that before, that courts apply that. And the whole nuisance thing of if you seem to be OK with it then let it continue. I wonder if and how this can be communicated: unaided vs. aided awareness. No one has any idea planes are intentionally routed lower–in this case there is altitude involved too–right over their house, all the time, forever. Nor (might) or would they have any idea what to do about it. I think it is fair to say government programs often have public informing components, like public service announcements or mailings. In larger programs there may even be a public or user measurement component, or management may do this on their own. In my particular case I may have noticed something fairly systematic eight or nine months ago; I said to Andrea at DIA “this has been going on for a year” and maybe that is what I first suspected. Her reply was “It has been going on longer than that.” Personally, I only suspected something was up when I could hear the noise and more or less see the planes following each other. My home looks out over the Rocky Mountains. How many people can even see that far?
And there has to be something unprecedented in terms of NextGen–no one could have imagined it is or was what it is. I am approximately 60 miles from the airport. After weeks of asking questions I still don’t know when it started or how much worse (irrelevant) it will get.
In this day and age–NextGen complaints all over–is it reasonable to hold local officials or intransigent FAA employees responsible?