Float plane noise turns cranks in Willow area

WILLOW —Steve White has several float planes, a $500,000 hangar, a 44-year state lease and a big worry. He and the other two family partners who own Willow Air Service await results of a state-sponsored noise study that could impact —or eventually kill — their float plane business.

Increased residential development has reached the Willow area, White said. A lake designated by the state in 1964 as a float plane area also looks attractive to home builders and recreational users. The state will hold a meeting next month and try to find a happy medium where float planes take off and land and residents can live with the noise. The Department of Transportation has final say over whether float planes or cabins will stay in the contested area if the choice becomes one or the other.

“Buy the people out or close the lake,” White said. “You can’t operate a loaded [aircraft] without making noise.”

The White family has owned Willow Air Services for 11 years. The business opened in the 1960s and three years ago White expanded it with a new hangar facility that has a 44-year lease with the state. Talk of possibly closing one of the state’s major float plane lakes due to homeowner noise complaints is problematic for White, who sought state assurances before his expansion that the lake was not going to be shut down to float planes for commercial uses.

“About all the houses came after the planes,” White said.

A report on the contentious issue of float plane noise levels on Willow Lake gets a public unveiling Oct. 10. State Department of Transportation and Public Facilities Project Manager Mark Mayo said the much-anticipated study will be discussed at 5 p.m. in the Willow Community Center. The state commissioned the Willow Lake Noise Study because some residents who live on the lake have complained about float plane noise levels at recent community meetings.

“Some people at the meetings have said there’s too much noise, other people say it doesn’t bother them at all,” Mayo said.

The state hired consultant Harris Miller of California-based Miller and Hanson Inc. to measure decibel levels on the lake. It is the same firm that took round-the-clock summer and winter noise measurements at Ted Stevens International Airport and designed its noise mitigation plan. The firm has worked on many civil and military ground noise mitigation projects as well as noise measurement and mitigation for railroads and entertainment venues.

Mayo said the study will map out where the noise comes from and which areas it falls upon.

“If they fall on residential land uses we’ll try to address those issues,” Mayo said.

The issue is not a chicken and the egg question, or in this case whether the float planes or the homes in question arrived first on Willow Lake. If the state’s consultant finds people’s homes are being impacted there will be changes attempted to mitigate the noise, Mayo said.

Options begin with the simple fixes, such as changing details in the way float planes use the lake, to more complicated scenarios, he said.

“One extreme is we may have to buy property around the lake,” Mayo said. “Another extreme is we might have to shut down float plan operations on the lake. We’re not there yet.”

Mayo said there are many options in between the most extreme ones, adding that the report has not been completed.

Debate over competing uses has been around for years and was noted in Willow Area Community Organization Chair Linda Oxley’s September recap of recent issues posted on the WACO Web site. Oxley wrote of an August town hall-style event called by two state legislators, “Much discussion occurred about the use of Willow Lake by both boats and planes.”

The lake has long been designated as a float plane base, and commercial services have been ongoing there since the 1960s. That aviation zone includes Willow Airport across the Parks Highway, a facility built during World War II by the U.S. Army Air Corps and later given over as a state airport.

White has attended many meetings about transportation issues and aircraft noise. He said the noise study unfairly targets his business and appears to use a mathematical methodology that will amplify the data and make Willow Air appear to generate more noise than it does.

Willow Lake also hosts other planes besides White’s, including planes that fly in for maintenance at businesses across the Parks Highway at Willow State Airport, White said.

Contact John R. Moses at 352-2270 or john.moses@frontiersman.com .