Bedford Minuteman
June 30, 2005

Letter: Opposes Hanscom Field expansion

To the editor:

With all the recent attention paid to keeping Hanscom Air Force Base
open, Massport's expansion plans for its civilian airport, Hanscom Field,
which abuts both the Air Base and Minute Man National Historical Park, have
gone almost unnoticed. Despite the good news that the base will remain open,
there's not such good news about the civilian airport.

Massport has been greatly expanding its facilities to handle more
corporate jets. The latest is a new development that would more than double
the size of the old MIT Hangar 24 it replaces, expanding the current jet
hangar and office space by more than a third. Crosspoint Aviation Services,
LLC (a subsidiary of Eastern Development, LLC of Woburn) plans to build a
91,000 sq. ft. facility, which includes hangar and terminal space. Since the
year 2000, 250,000 sq. ft. of hangar and corporate jet terminal space has
been added at Hanscom.

Massport's game plan for Hanscom is to increase corporate jet
operations, and indeed, jet operations have more than tripled in the last
ten years, increasing on average 13.5 percent a year. At this rate of
increase, in ten years there will be one jet plane overhead every three
minutes! Right now, jets cause 80 percent of the noise at Hanscom - imagine
the incremental noise pollution as jet operations continue to climb
exponentially.

Jet aviation is already very disturbing to our communities and to the
historical sites in our midst. Increases of this magnitude will be
devastating. Massport doesn't care about destroying the environment here,
but Governor Romney is on record opposing expansion at Massport's Hanscom
Field. He should be held accountable before it is too late. Please log onto
our Web site (www.shhair.org) to see what you can do to limit expansion at
Hanscom's civilian airfield.

Lori Eggert
Bonnievale Drive
ShhAir Board member

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