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.. c ~. ~:~ A~ 6 M1 F A~ ~-, COMMENTS REGARDING R~R2-7 „~, GATEWAY NORTH INDUSTRIAL AIRPORT DRAfT '°R ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT DOCUMENT Submitted by Paul Sitz 6521 154th Lane NW Ramsey, Minnesota 55303 April 28, 1988 I attended .the public hearing held April 14, 1988 regarding the draft environmental assessment document for the proposed changes to Gateway North Industrial Airport. I am especially concerned about the assessment in two areas. First, the techniques used to assess noise impact are very strongly biased toward reaching a conclusion favorable to airport expansion. "Average" noise is not a real phenomenom. The noise from an airport is due to discrete events. It is the impact of those events which should be assessed, not some average which has the effect of minimizing the apparent impact of very high-impact events. The effect of an aircraft passing over a home at a low altitude once an hour is not significantly mitigated by 59 minutes of relative peace. Evaluate the actual reality not a phantom average. Second, the draft document does not provide a valid assessment of the Induced Socio-Economic Impacts. The cost/benefit analysis showed a ratio of about 5 to 1 for benefits vs costs. That analysis suffered from the following deficiencies: a) Only those costs directly assessed to Ramsey were considered. The direct costs assessed to other governmental units were ignored in the cost/benefit analysis. Any development project can be justified by spreading the costs over a wide base, limiting the benefits to a select few, then assessing the economic impact by considering the effect only on the select few. As a Ramsey resident who is also a citizen of the United States of America and a resident of the State of Minnesota I object to this sort of technique. This technique does not lead to wise use of government (i.e., my) resources. b) The claimed economic benefits are distorted by a similar myopic view. A substantial direct economic benefit was claimed as a result of "operations" at the airport. In fact, increased airport operations in Ramsey do not a prior i provide any economic benefit at all. For example, merely moving an existing airport "operation" from somewhere else to Ramsey may in fact be an overall economic cost rather than a benefit if the effect on the other place as well Ramsey is considered. There may be reasons for this kind of 1