No matter where in Park Ridge you may live, it seems like all of us are susceptible to airplane noise as some time or other.
Where once the noise tended to track the northeast to southwest paths of runways 22R and 22L, the construction and opening of east-west runway 9L/27R has shifted the noise bombardment to areas of town that never had it before – although the old runways are still used on days when wind conditions or runway maintenance dictate. And there’s another new east-west runway on the drawing board that also will impact Park Ridge.
The new runways are part and parcel of the O’Hare Modernization Program (“OMP”), the evil brainchild of former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley (a/k/a, “Shortshanks,” a/k/a “Li’l Richie,” a/k/a the “Dumbest But Best Name Recognition”) and designed to help replace the revenue Li’l Richie gave away to the Spanish consortium that bought the Skyway, and to a Morgan Stanley-led partnership that bought Chicago’s parking meters.
When the OMP was still in the planning stage, Park Ridge was governed by mayor Ron Wietecha, an O’Hare-obsessed buffoon who deluded himself into believing that he could make Shortshank’s blink. Wietecha didn’t even try to get Park Ridge a seat at the O’Hare bargaining table, preferring instead to blow well over $1 million taxpayer bucks on battling O’Hare as part of a Suburban O’Hare Commission (“SOC”) even as it was losing members faster than the Black Knight lost limbs in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Wietecha was followed by interim-mayor Mike Marous, who didn’t give a rat’s derriere about O’Hare because he was obsessed with Uptown Redevelopment. Park Ridge no longer was wasting money on SOC during his administration, but feel free to thank him and his rubber-stamp council for saddling Park Ridge taxpayers with the $23 million in red ink the Uptown TIF is projected to produce by 2027.
Marous’s successor, Howard Frimark, was so clueless he didn’t even know what the OMP was until it opened up the new runway in 2008 and irate taxpayers began bombarding him with complaints about “Mayor Daley’s Air Force” strafing the 5th and 6th wards.
That brings us to the present.
Mayor Dave Schmidt and the Park Ridge O’Hare Airport Commission have been trying to get Shortshanks’ lapdog, the O’Hare Noise Compatibility Commission (“ONCC”) and its long-time chair-princess, Arlene Mulder, to support Park Ridge’s request for a supplemental Environmental Impact Study (“EIS”). We wrote about Mulder’s obsolescence in our 08.07.14 post, and we have every reason to expect that Mulder will continue to do whatever she can to frustrate Park Ridge’s bid for noise relief that might possibly result in more noise over her Arlington Heights home/political base.
A supplemental EIS could qualify Park Ridge residents for various forms of noise relief, including soundproofing. And it might also give us some leverage for turning “Fly Quiet” from a mere suggestion into an enforceable mandate.
While those aren’t perfect solutions by any stretch of the imagination, they would be a significant improvement over anything the Wietecha, Marous and Frimark administrations achieved.
Tomorrow morning (September 5) at 8:00 a.m., the ONCC will be holding an open meeting at De Paul’s O’Hare Campus, 8770 West Bryn Mawr (just south of the Kennedy and west of Cumberland). Park Ridge Mayor Dave Schmidt will be there to renew Park Ridge’s request for ONCC support for the supplemental EIS.
And this time he has an additional arrow in his quiver: a letter from Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D. Ill.) advocating Park Ridge’s position on the supplemental EIS, even if she does appear to bend over backwards to kiss Mulder’s and ONCC Executive Director Jeannette Camacho’s derrieres.
Rumor has it that residents of other OMP-impacted communities (e.g., Norridge, Harwood Heights, Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood, Wood Dale, et al.) will be in attendance to support the supplemental EIS. You Park Ridge homeowners hit especially hard by the OMP’s new runway could do worse than showing up in support of the supplemental EIS and other forms of relief from the airplane noise that has bedeviled you the last few years.
Because that may be the only realistic chance at meaningful relief from new O’Hare runway noise we’ve got.
UPDATE (09.06.14) We hear the crowd was so big at yesterday’s ONCC meeting at DePaul’s O’Hare Campus that more people may have been turned away than typically attend those meetings. And from the accounts we received of the meeting itself, we wish there were a video of it – because viewers could have laughed and cried about what passes for the quasi-government of the ONCC.
Chair-princess Mulder was her customary obstructionist self when it came to Mayor Schmidt’s call for an ONCC vote in support of the supplemental EIS (“SEIS”) instead of waiting for a “re-evaluation” that FAA rep/Chicago shill Barry Cooper claimed was a prerequisite to any SEIS – a re-evaluation that is not scheduled to be finished until Fall 2015. Not surprisingly, Cooper could provide no legal authority for his re-evaluation claim when challenged by Schmidt, presumably because there appears to be none.
As we understand it, the FAA can order an SEIS whenever it chooses, if only to allay the communities concerns about noise and health/safety.
Despite the efforts of Mulder, meeting chair Frank “Empty Suit” Damato (a former Chicago alderman and Crook County commissioner, go figure), and ONCC executive director Jeanette “Just Empty” Camacho (somebody important’s “niece”?), Schmidt was able to muster enough support to get the SEIS vote on the ONCC’s October meeting agenda.
Between now and then, expect all sorts of behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the ONCC’s executive committee – headed by Mulder, Damato and Camacho, the meetings of which are not even listed on the ONCC website – to kibosh a favorable SEIS vote. But even if it is held and prevails, it is not binding on the FAA.
That’s when we’ll get to see just how serious Rep. Schakowsky is about looking out for her noise-oppressed constituents.
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