According to the Idaho Statesman, the U.S. Air Force has released a draft environmental impact statement indicating that the possible stationing of F-35A fighter jets at Gowen Field would cause “significant” noise in the surrounding area, potentially making hundreds of home unlivable. Boise is a back-up candidate city to the military's first two choices that include Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Madison, Wisconsin, and Dannelly Field Air Guard Station in Montgomery, Alabama.
The statement said 272 households with about 665 people would regularly be subjected to noise as loud as a vacuum cleaner 3 feet away. Those people live on 446 acres stretching from Victory Road to South Federal Way and from West Overland Road to land south of the Boise Airport, which adjoins Gowen. Most of the households are between South Orchard and South Owyhee streets.
Owyhee-Harbor Elementary School, located on Pasadena Drive, was named as one place within that acreage where would sound would be near 65 decibels at an average point — vacuum-cleaner volume. The noise would be even louder on 74 acres closest to the airport that house 83 households, estimated to be 199 people.
Those residents would be subjected to 74 decibels at an average point in the day, and up to 80. Eighty decibels is as loud as a garbage disposal, and eight hours of exposure could damage hearing. The Air Force statement said such volumes would render those acres “potentially incompatible for residential land use.” The jets would have a “negligible impact” on the housing market in Boise, according to the statement, but some Boiseans contest that.
“Most of the housing in that area by the airport is affordable,” said John Gannon, a Democrat who represents Idaho’s 17th district in the Idaho House and is as a member of Citizens for a Livable Boise, a group focused on the impacts of noise from the Boise Airport. “You decide whether the community can afford to lose 272 more affordable houses.”
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