Plenty Of Noise Swirling Around Beverly Airport Manager Search

BEVERLY, MA — As the Beverly Airport Commission moves ahead on a revised noise abatement protocol designed to help ease persistent complaints from nearby Beverly, Danvers and Wenham residents, State Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) is pushing the Commission to make responsiveness to neighbors an expressed priority for the pick to replace departed Airport Manager Gloria Bouillon.

"I think it would be a shame and a missed opportunity for action," Kerans said of a failure to tie the new manager to efforts to mitigate neighbors' growing frustrations with airport volume and potential air pollution. "(Sunday) was hellish for people (in Danvers neighborhoods) and probably over in North Beverly too. Horrible noise. Horrible. So to not take this opportunity to say that the airport will begin to enforce its own good-neighbor policy, and that begins with the manager, that's a missed opportunity."

Exactly how to make things more amenable between airport flight schools, airport management and residents that have become more and more incensed each week about repeated "touch-and-goes" and emissions from the leaded fuel still used in aircraft remains a question.

While much of the focus from a recent Danvers Select Board forum on the complaints has been on enforcement mechanisms behind a strong "good-neighbor policy," Airport Commissioner Jeffrey Schlichte said during Monday's monthly Commission meeting said that the noise abatement protocols are the better place to direct flight patterns and times allowed to use the runways that affect residents, while the good neighbor policy is more of a general state of intentions to be considerate with little practical ramification for not doing so.

"The noise abatement procedures are just that," Schilchte said. "They are specific procedures to me as a pilot to mitigate noise to the best that I can safely do so. It's common to the vast majority of airports in the country. The good-neighbor policy read to me as a mission statement that could easily be the homepage of a website."

The Beverly Airport Commission is revising the noise abatement policy for the first time in 12 years at the same time that it is involved with the selection of the new director. The timeline coming out of Monday night's meeting was to have the revisions ready for a full commission, public and stakeholder review in time for next month's meeting ahead of potential ratification.

Still, Schilchte allowed that even a stricter noise abatement protocol may only go so far as to ease the angst of those in the line of flights that are allowed under the Federal Aviation Administration's rules and capacity limits for Beverly Airport.

"These concrete actions (in the revised abatement protocol) are still just firm, concrete suggestions at the end of the day," Schilchte said. "However, how can you say: 'You have to avoid these areas, they are noise-sensitive if we don't outline them specifically and we don't outline suggestions to avoid them?

"That's the noise abatement procedures and that's where we will have the most direct and immediate effect — assuming that we are able to raise the level of compliance. Once we really define what it is we are asking people to do, we need to take it to them and implement it. I think there is room for improvement and I'm confident that we can do better than we have historically."

Airport Commissioner and Danvers Land Use and Community Director Aaron Henry said that revising the noise policy is an important step ahead of directing the new manager to help steer it. The Commission said there were 17 candidates who applied for the opening following Bouillon's resignation this fall.

"We want our next manager to understand that the noise issue is a priority for us and that we want to do better than we have done in the past," Henry said. "If we don't have a policy statement to guide that conversation, it's just talk. So, for me, I want to start with the policy so that as we hire that person and bring that on board there is something to point to that we can say: 'This is the Commission's policy.'

"My mission is to get these policies reviewed and updated if that is the will of the Commission, and then, obviously, building that relationship with the new manager so we are kind of starting from a place of understanding of what we're looking for in the next manager."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)