Lincoln Journal
Thursday, July 24, 2003

Letter: Airport watchdog takes Coull to task

To the editor:

Massport board member James Coull's claim that there is a "local effort to shut down Hanscom Field" is simply not true. No one is suggesting, or has ever suggested, that Hanscom be shut down. The only thing the communities and the citizen activists have ever tried to do is limit the airport's growth, so that it can be operated in balance with its sensitive surroundings. Massport has rejected all efforts to secure such limits, refusing to acknowledge that there could ever be a level of airport operations that would have an unacceptable impact.

Mr. Coull then complains that Minute Man Park is being used as a "pawn." In fact, in their public comments on Massport's environmental reports, the past and current park superintendents have said that Hanscom negatively impacts the park; that the ongoing incremental growth of the airport has worsened those impacts; and that Massport's environmental reports have utterly failed to address these problems.

Mr. Coull uses these untrue assertions to set up the main point of his argument - the claim that "local leaders who allowed the region to lose its rural flavor and become a congested residential and commercial center" are to blame. To refute this, one need go no further than the independently prepared HATS Draft Master Plan, which states that "the character of the land use within the HATS planning area is not defined by its non-residential portions but by its well designed residential and public and private open spaces, and its conservation lands."

There are over 8,000 acres of protected public open space within three miles of Hanscom. The beauty and historic character of this area is the chief reason that people want to live and work here. The towns have always taken this into account when dealing with development issues. But Massport can do at Hanscom whatever it wants, whenever it wants. It has allowed corporate jet operations to triple since 1995 and is promoting the construction of more jet infrastructure even now. The tremendous resulting increase in noise, which Mr. Coull doesn't even mention, will continue unabated until such growth is controlled.

The national park, Walden, and the other nationally important sites surrounding Hanscom will never be secure while the expansion of this airport remains unlimited. These places belong to all Americans, and their future should not be in the hands of a development agency that is accountable only to itself.

Anna Winter
Executive Director
Save Our Heritage

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