Save The Sound Weighs In: Urges FAA To Order More Detailed Tweed Study

NEW HAVEN, CT —On the last day of the Federal Aviation Administration's deadline for public comment on the Tweed New Haven Airport expansion plan, Save the Sound wants the agency to dig deeper. The Airport authority in March submitted its cursory environmental study called an Environmental Assessment. Some have said that study does not go nearly far enough.

Monday, Save the Sound filed its comments FAA, "urging them to require a full Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed expansion of Tweed-New Haven Airport."

"An EIS is needed because the current draft environmental assessment is deficient in numerous areas," it wrote. Those include: "Failure to assess a taxiway extension impact on tidal wetlands; failure to meaningfully analyze significant impacts on wetlands, water quality, shellfish, finfish, and an endangered bat population; and inclusion of a deeply flawed projection of decreased flights, which leads to flawed analyses of impacts on air quality for nearby communities, climate change, and local and migratory wildlife."

Last week, the South Central Regional Council of Governments voted to support the Tweed New Haven Airport's proposed $100 million expansion plan.

The Airport Authority submitted its 206-page draft Environmental Assessment to the Federal Aviation Administration in early March. East Haven Mayor Joseph A. Carfora, among other local and state leaders, as well as Save Our Sound and Friends of the Farm River Estuary, have called for a much more robust study. The argument is that the assessment does not dig deep enough into the potential effects of the expansion on wetlands, marshes, wildlife, and the ecosystem in general.
Carfora told Patch that he "aggressively objected to the council taking any action at this stage in the process, and I again called for a more detailed Environmental Impact Study."

The airport's expansion calls for moving its terminal to the East Haven side of its property while extending its runway by more than 1,000 feet. The Airport Authority and the city of New Haven inked a 43-year lease in 2021, and in August, the deal was sealed between Goldman Sachs-owned Avports and the Authority, over East Haven, and myriad others', strong objections. Read that story here.

Read the full Save the Sound letter to the FAA here.

Save the Sound Tweed EA Com... by Ellyn Santiago

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