Aurora City Council members made a significant mistake that could impact future expansion plans at Denver’s international airport and would ultimately hit the pocketbooks of airlines and travelers.

Ignoring a unanimously recommended denial from its own planning commission, the city council approved a land-use change that would allow hundreds of homes as close as a half-mile from a future runway planned by Denver International Airport.

We understand the concept of “buyers beware.” But if there’s anything to be learned from past experiences in Denver and across this nation, it’s that litigious homeowners and cities will sue airports for noise levels and win.

In fact … drumroll please … Aurora is party in an ongoing lawsuit seeking millions from DIA for noise impacts to residents. Now in the interest of intellectual honesty, we must explain that this lawsuit is being brought on behalf of residents who lived near DIA before it was constructed, and the lawsuit alleges DIA has violated an agreement that limits noise levels from aircraft taking off and landing at DIA.

But that 1988 intergovernmental agreement cuts both ways. Although the agreement was made with Adams County, Aurora has annexed some of the land from Adams County closest to the airport. That agreement says Denver and Adams County will minimize impacts by “restricting residential land use in the immediate environs of the new airport and encouraging commercial and industrial land uses.”

But the owner of the land in question is now approved to build single-family homes a half-mile from a planned runway. The land is technically outside the highest areas of expected noise levels, but many things can and will change.

For example, multiple communities have recently sued the FAA because flight patterns made possible through GPS technology have rerouted some airplane traffic to new areas of cities and concentrated other traffic impacting some people more than previously.

Airplanes have gotten quieter as technology has improved. And yet the airport is only going to get busier and part of the increased traffic could include more noisy cargo planes. We would hope that Aurora’s elected officials would reconsider their decision if it is appealed.

But if not, there is another step that could be taken. The City of Aurora should place a noise easement or what is known as “overhead avigation easement” on the land closest to the airport in exchange for single-family housing development rights. The easement, according to a sample document from the F.A.A. could give the airport “unobstructed use and passage of all types of aircraft in and through the airspace at any height or altitude above the surface of the land. The right of said aircraft to cause noise, vibrations, fumes, deposits of dust, fuel particles, fear, interference with sleep or communication, and any key effects associated with the normal operation of aircraft taking off, landing or operating in the vicinity of airport.”

Then it truly would be a buyer-beware situation and the buyer would be on notice from day one that things could get pretty bad out there on the plains, a half-mile away from roaring jet engines. Future homeowners would also know they’d given the airport the right to their airspace and forfeited any right to sue. Residents would still complain, which can be a political force and limit the airport’s development or optimal operation, but with such an easement in place, land values will be depressed sufficiently to make the noise much more bearable to anyone willing to take the risk.

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