Are Short Flights Polluting Your Neighourbood?
With the Windsor Star reporting today, that our mayor Edgar (aka Eddie) was back in Germany maybe he should have read this article and new report below first!!
Are Short Flights Polluting Your Neighborhood?
A major air hub, with constant take-offs and landings and dozens of vehicles and large buildings is an obvious source of pollution. These huge airports may be strains of the atmosphere as a whole, but their immediate impact on our local airspace, thanks to mandated buffer zones, is usually fairly small.
Regional and general aviation airports, however, have much smaller buffer zones and, according to a new study, are responsible for much more local air pollution than was previously thought.
The airport in question was surrounded by dense residential areas, separated only by vary narrow buffer areas. The airport’s proximity to the neighborhoods, and the small size it’s the buffer areas, allowed high levels of pollutants to spill into residential areas.
Furthermore, pollution in these communities was higher than that in similar neighborhoods adjacent to major highways. Though an elevated concentration of ultrafine and lead particles was present in both areas, the neighborhood next to the airport had levels five to eight times higher than the one next to a highway.
These regional airports tend to service shorter routes that could be easily replaced with trains.
Tags: Air hubs, air pollution, airports, Eddie Francis, Neighborhoods, Treehugger, Windsor Ontario, Windsor Star
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Maybe you should have looked at Santa Monica Airport in Google Maps with Satellite view? Quite a difference between that airport and Windsor Airport. Windsor Airport has a much larger buffer area than Santa Monica Airport.
The cargo village idea is one of Edgar’s worst proposals. The city can’t afford to “own” this endeavour, the logistics behind the idea are entirely flawed, Hamilton is further ahead than Windsor in developing their comparative advantages, the US has negated advanced customs clearances, and we can see that the economy has decimated the business in Romulus, MI, while Ohio has a huge advantage in terms of its duty free status.
Add to it now that the immediate area pollution risk as reported above. Isn’t that same risk the reason Edgar has whined and complained agsint the Windsor-Essex Parkway design?
“Stop the Cargo Village” group anyone?
Worst proposal? like any proposal its idiocy when it fails, incompetence if it adopted and then is poorly implemented and its genius when adopted, executed and successful.
Worst proposal for me has now become the canal plan. I was hoping the canal plan would at a minimum lead to a discussion on a housing market demand study but it seems that it was shelved before anything good came of it. My support of it was based on garnering any whatsoever attention to residential intensification in the core and a study of whether this architectural feature or any amenity could effect change. (also a downtown marina with a matching dock to the U.S. for ferries) Now all I have is egg on my face for my support
(A housing market demand study would show what incentives, amenities would be required to get windsorites to want to live in the core, what price point and style of housing they’d want)
I haven’t seen anyone discuss what a successful cargo village is? how much cargo or flights or business generated is considered a success. Maybe the mayor has a much lower threshold for success than the sometimes unreasonable high standards of Windsor’s Bloggers
Mark,
The canal was never a good implemented plan or design. The only real benefit I saw was that Fahria was given the land tax free for two years exactly where the canal would end. Coincidence or strategic planning?
Toss in Jeff Watson pushing for it even though it is not his riding, and the makings of a fiasco planning are in high gear. Perfect.
The mayor wants to spend a lot of money as long as it’s not his.
This council is bordering on incompetence and possibly some corruption with the strike leak coming out.
The public needs to step up the pressure, and do it quickly.
The latest scam is a one day trip to Germany. One day? Please don’t insult my intelligence.
And as for the airport polluting, the aircraft cannot compare to the tends of thousands of cars around it. That article was written without merit or any link to a study.
Mark,
“The canal was never a good implemented plan or design. The only real benefit I saw was that Fahria was given the land tax free for two years exactly where the canal would end. Coincidence or strategic planning?”
Actually the potential benefits of the Canal Plan were many:
1. a marina with a potential ferry dock to match the $7million dollar one being built on the detroit side.
2. A focus on creating a new residential neighborhood on the City Center West Lands. Residential intensification and different types of
3. A housing market study that would have been required to determine the
what amenities WIndorites wanted downtown
4. That above study would replace useless political anecdotal evidence of what people don’t like about downtown with actual statistical fact.
5. A focus on our downtown and the core’s importance to the entire city.
The canal itself was an architectural feature that the mayor thought would emphasize our waterfront. Personally I don’t care what architectural feature we decided upon, as long as we proved beyond a doubt that an architectural feature was the thing that potential home buyers wanted.
Thats my reasoning, flawed as it may have been, hopefully you can see the allure
Mark,
I’m not sure you should have egg on your face for support of the ditch. It had some good components to it, but overall the plan wasn’t a good one.
The downtown marina to me sounds like a good idea. When I heard that the canal was no longer going to connect to the river and incorporate a marina, I knew that it was definitely a bad idea. We can have a downtown marina without the canal.
I also agree with you that a housing market demand study sounds like a good idea. We have a broken city here. We don’t have a viable downtown, and there is a cycle that needs to be broken to fix that (People don’t want to live in the current downtown, a downtown isn’t viable unless it has people who live in it, spend money & time in it). Can we have an urban village in the downtown without a decent grocery store for them to shop at?
If you want to see a marina/canal that does work (IMHO), you should take a look at Paynesville, Victoria, Australia (via GoogleEarth/GoogleMaps). Zoom in on the higher density areas of the southwest portion of the canal. A vacant lot in Paynesville sold in 2001 for $185,000 and resold in 2004 for $450,000. But a canal that isn’t connected to the river certinaly would not be a canal that would work. Further, even if a workable canal was built… would people come to use it? Paynesville is a holiday/tourist area… I’m not sure that it always has been though.
Mark, I said “one of Edgar’s worst ideas”; he’s had many. But how do you measure success? By most people’s standards, success is is a product of how well you achieve the goals set forth at the beginning of the project. Some could be job creation, profitability, economies of scale, and good will, to name just a few. Throwing tax payer money at a high risk endeavour may pay off, but how many times is Edgar going to play with our money without a plan?
If you base your decision on a consultant with vested interests, you get what you deserve. If you search out independant soucres of information then you are in a better position from which to develop an informed opinion.
In so far as Windsor Bloggers having ” unreasonable high standards” I can only speak for myself. People should be holding this mayor and council to a higher standard than the one they’ve failed to deliver at thus far. If you’re happy with mediocrity then by all means jump on the cargo village band wagon and watch your money get flushed. I, however, believe that the citizens of Windsor deserve better representation, and more respect, than this mayor has been providing.
I don’t look to government to solve my problems. Government mostly creates them, and not any particular one, they all do.
Windsor will not be saved by this mayor nor any other. Windsor will only be saved by Windsorites stepping up.
Bloggers are mostly armchair quarterbacks whose hindsight is 20/20. Bloggers have some amazing researchers amongst them that educate but we also have the “uniblogger” who poisons the well and cheers for failure.
LOS, you seem like you will be stepping up and getting involved next municipal election. Regardless of whether I agree with you, it will make for some great debate.
P.S. you think we got it bad. look at another detroit example. For 4 months municipal candidates have been beating on a drum against strip joints. I’m assuming they double end the deal. THey get the votes from the ministers and they get the brown envelopes from the club owners. Tuesday after the election they decide to drop the issue.
Windsorites gotta stop looking for the political class for solutions. I’ve never really seen one work in my lifetime
Yeah and when politicians do something, its because citizens made it impossible for them not to. Thats how the system works. THey dont do anything without pressure from the public
Re: The cargo village.
The development of employment lands is important. Is the cargo village the ticket or is it simply overblown hype to demonstrate action of some kind?
The latter is consistently repeated on many an issue. Community improvement plans, anyone?
Where I will agree with the Mayor is that serviceable lands need to be developed - but we don’t need countless consultants reports with an obvious self-interest to justify actions that have been deemed necessary for over a decade.
Again, if private enterprise deemed a cargo village worthy, why wasn’t it done? Why weren’t a portion of the lands serviced by not only this council, but by the prior council’s of Mike Hurst? Why weren’t the funds set aside previously?
We did it for the Brighton Beach lands; and have now been repaid those funds.
Why are we now begging at the trough of the Province to do this for us?
Government cannot solve problems - I agree completely. The role of Government is to facilitate and/or create the environment to encourage solutions.
It is through this lens I evaluate the current council and future council candidates.
When politicians attach themselves to anything - it does become political - and yes Mark, you’ve said that before and now fully appreciate that sentiment.
If we’re going to provide employment lands these lands need to protected for that purpose.