The Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport’s recent growth has chafed surrounding communities in the midst of a boom of their own, and as the facility poises for a potential shift over the coming decades into the commercial market it is already finding itself having to reconcile with its expanded footprint.

“We cannot go outside our house for more than five minutes without hearing a plane go overhead,” Sherry Sommer, a Louisville resident whose home sits in the path of Rocky Mountain’s local plane routes, said.

When Sommer purchased her home in 2012, “the only thing I’d hear at night was coyote howls.” Today, as the far away hum of a plane often turns into a momentary roar above her head typically well into the night, the idea of wildlife noise now has almost a quaintness to it.

As the situation “comes to a head,” in the words of both town and airport officials, the possibility for even further strife is likely only years away. With Superior poised to add thousands of more homes to its inventory, the airport is planning to update its masterplan for the property, one likely to spell another slate of growth that may ultimately result in the introduction of commercial airlines frequenting local airspace.

A community meeting hosted at Superior’s town hall in early May laid bare those dualities: a presentation by Rocky Mountain officials of the organization’s recent and projected growth over the next decade, joined by a consultant’s report detailing the sheer amount of complaints surrounding neighborhoods have levied over the onslaught of plane noise.

The issue’s impetus is one perhaps easily enough diagnosed, officials say; a suburban housing boom along the Front Range that has outpaced in recent years original zoning around the airport combined with policies that are strained by Federal Aviation Administration regulations. Finding a resolution is decidedly more difficult.

Affected residents haven’t been shy about lodging their concerns; statistics compiled by ABCx2, LLC — the firm hired by Superior last fall amid the resident outcry to monitor the state of things and draft some solutions — and residents’ anecdotes suggest the bulk of complaints are concentrated in Superior’s Rock Creek neighborhood, where residents say they’re plagued primarily by the airport’s frequent touch-and-go flights.

‘Can’t open windows’

Rock Creek resident Diane Marsella says such flights often last all day in five-minute intervals, often beginning as early as 5 a.m. and well into the night. The airport is open 24 hours a day, with private jets sometimes leaving in the early morning hours, officials say.

“It’s gotten to the point where you can’t open windows up and if you’re out in the yard you need to constantly go back inside (to avoid the noise),” Marsella said.

“If I’m going to go for a walk I’m walking away from this part of the development or I’m leaving town,” she added. “It sounds like Would War II sometimes.”

Marsella and Sommer are hardly the only neighbors who have taken up opposition against the airport in recent years. Of nine communities surrounding the airport, complaints over the last decade from Superior have hovered above the rest, with a massive spike in the last two years, though the data is skewed somewhat by singularly aggrieved households.

According to the submissions, a single household was responsible for nearly half of the 2017 noise complaints; 865 of the 1,735 complaints in 2018 came also from a single Superior household.

Despite the outlier, complaints are trending upward, with Superior averaging 316 every month. Louisville accounts for the second highest among the communities straddling U.S. 36, registering more than 100 complaints per month over the last eight years.

As residents plead for new policies to be put in place to mitigate the noise, airport officials suggest the facility is largely restricted by federal regulations that err on the side of safety typically over its neighbors’ quality of life.

“I think it has come to a head but I don’t think it’s any different from any airport in America right now,” Rocky Mountain Airport Manager Paul Anslow said. “When the economy is good people want to learn how to fly people and want to fly their private planes.

“At the same time they are building houses closer and closer to the airport.”

Operations destined to increase

Rocky Mountain serves as a reliever airport for DIA, allowing passenger-carrying jets to land on its 9,000-foot main runway, though it is officially defined as a general aviation airport.

The airport’s operations have increased dramatically over the last eight years. In 2010, Rocky Mountain recorded roughly 120,000 operations; last year, the facility saw that number climb to more than 170,340, according to the consultant’s report.

According to a 2017 calculation, Rocky Mountain’s Development Coordinator Ben Miller said the facility housed 425 aircrafts, and officials “believe there is a significant demand for additional hangar space based on our hangar waiting lists and frequent inquiries.”

The airport has nearly 50 businesses operating on the field, ranging from flight schools, aviation maintenance shops, fixed-base operations, aircraft manufacturing, and restaurants.

The airport manages approximately 1,700 acres of land.

Trends suggest the airport could double its operations over the next decade, though Anslow is mum on what that growth could actually look like apart from the potential for widening runways or developing some of its remaining land. Indeed, a masterplan is inherently vague, mapping out guidelines for what its subject could incorporate over the delineated timeline, though the mention of the airport moving into the commercial sector has been enough to raise concerns.

“A commercial air terminal is 10 years away at the earliest,” Anslow said.

A solution for the growing noise woes is unlikely to be found in any sweeping policy changes that run afoul of federal regulations, officials say, who suggest the best course of action may lie in a best practices approach to mitigating its impacts.

Examples include potentially shifting the altitude at which planes fly locally, changing flight patterns with sharper turns that avoid concentrated areas of residents and “long range,” Anslow said, the airport may examine possible changes to departures and landing routes.

“We’re willing to do what’s legal,” he added. “There’s certain things that we are not allowed to do and sometimes the town doesn’t understand that.”

Consultants are scheduled to return with a list of recommended mitigation solutions to the town later this year.