Discussion Board #2: Community Connection Next Steps

Please move to Volk Field. Madison is too populated. We are home to many vets with PTSD. The incredibly loud 35’s are triggering. Thanks.

Personally, I would like to see some full afterburner takeoff’s followed by unrestricted climbs. I think that would make the community feel more connected with the F35 and the 115th.

WI Air National Guard needs to take responsibility for its contamination of ground and surface water in the area. They should be fully financially responsible for preventing future contamination and for paying for the filtration systems that need to be installed on the cities drinking water wells.
Revise the contract with the County so the ANG takes on all of the expenses of having the Fighter Wing at Truax.
Stop using fire-fighting foams containing PFAS. Do not take any more flights than absolutely necessary for training – each flight uses extensive amounts of fossil fuels and creates unnecessary emissions.
Avoid take-offs to the south and west where the noise is impacting large portions of the city.

There is no upside to f-35s if you live in the flight path. There is plenty of accepted science that shows the harm caused by the kind of noise they cause. My home is permeated with sustained vibrations multiple time most days. Even cushioned furniture vibrates along with feeling the pressure in my body. I am especially worried about those living closer to the airport than me. I can’t imagine being a child in school with these frightening assaults multiple times a day.

If the 115th wants to improve its relationship with the Madison community it needs to move the base to a less populated area, such as Volk Field. The paltry and slow moving efforts to remediate buildings will do nothing people who open their windows and go outside. The jets are too frequent and too loud.

I am a big fan of the F35’s and the 115th Fighter Wing being in Madison. I love watching the jets take off, fly around and land. I live and work in the flight path and I think they are great! To me, the military presence and those jets flying over is a symbol of our freedom every time I see and hear them. It never gets old to me.

I’m grateful for this community forum. I agree and support almost all the comments and smart suggestions here. I would like to emphasize the following:

—What does the military have to say about their impact on THE OUTDOORS. While I appreciate the focus on insulation and houses, for me, the worst of it is that the impact of increased noise sends people inside. There is not a single sector of human activity (community, neighborliness, health, economic activity, connection to ecology) that would not interpret this as a negative. Please address this head on. How do you do the calculus that shows how you are understanding the relative impact on this very busy, populated and outdoor oriented community?
–your impacts on the Eastside are extreme in part because the ever expanding Dane County airport is adding flights every month. I would like both the commercial airport and the military to work *together* to communicate. This includes acknowledging the numbers of flights, and their timing, inn terms of both duration and decibels. This is all about DATA not platitudes.
—Clean up your relationship with Dane cty airport, stop wheeling and dealing about sharing fire fighting equipment and contamination. Work together as if you really cared about the community around the airport not shirking a job someone has to do or pretending you don’t have resources. I know where my tax dollars go.
–I love the comment that people are down on what they are not up on, Denny Behr (Navy Command Master Chief ret.) To me, being up on something is having all and regular data graphically presented and accessible. Where are the updated decibel maps?
–Publish a schedule for goodness sakes so people can plan. Flights SHUT DOWN all communications while they happen. Absolutely nothing else can go on when they fly near my house. People work at home and have meetings in which they are presenting online and sometimes to hundreds of people (not an exaggeration). Kids live here and have regular nap times. The uncertainty triples the impact. The lack of any notice on flights creates huge tension around not knowing when it will happen and where the flights will be. The sound from the runways alone is an attention grabber.
—I would like to calculations on the impact of the loss of public space and invasions of private space. What does it cost when professionals have to stop talking for 30 seconds while you go over? What does it cost when someone has a child wake up too early from a much needed nap? What is your ecological impact, especially on the migratory birds?
—Plan around the wind, and don’t practice when the wind patterns bring you over the most populated areas.
—MINIMIZE practicing over our city. NEVER fly on weekends, almost never fly at night. Stop all helicopter flights. Make all your decisions as if you are aware that this area is already carrying an enormous decibel burden. This burden needs to be seen as a service to the larger community and burden on the quality of life and the value of property. NOTHING has ever been said, or explained, about this differential impact. My west side friends have no idea what an F-35 sounds like. And I have never heard any communications that connects to our community especially. If you want people to be “up” on this, you have to address with data real and obvious concerns rather than some assumption that it’s all ideology and can be changed with a superficial public information campaign.
— I absolutely agree Tammy Baldwin needs to show up. The costs here include so much more than the military can alone address, and as a representative she needs to be accessible on this specific topic to some really diehard fans. That said, there’s plenty the military can do, and if they did it and publicized how they both listened and responded, I would respect that. In the meantime I’m seeing F-45s put up in Christmas lights along John Nolen Dr.(talk about irony) and reading articles in the newspaper about haggling with the airport people whose only option for me is a complaint form titled “ecomentality”. Right.

I live in Waunakee, not for from the airport, and I don’t think the F-35s are any louder than the F-16s they replaced. I can tell they are trying to minimize the sound (no afterburner takeoffs) which I appreciate. I am happy the Air National Guard is near. It’s a great employer for many of my neighbors and (if I understand correctly) has a history here that predates most residents and houses in the area. The occasional noise doesn’t bother me and I see it as a necessarily mild inconvenience.

Greetings, I lived on Myrtle Street in Madison in the 50’s and the 60’s. I loved seeing the jets fly over the house. I even found the sonic booms interesting even though I didn’t know what caused them. When I graduated high school, I joined the Air Force where I served for four years and was honorably discharged. I love jet noise. I always look up. I now live in Cottage Grove and wish you’d fly over my neighborhood. Thanks for flying the F-35’s.

We are in the Carpenter-Ridgeway neighborhood. When we first moved and the F16s were flying it was annoying but manageable (we’ve lived near train tracks in the past). The F35s are much louder. My kid is really noise sensitive and he freaks out when they fly over if we’re outside. When I’m on Zoom meetings, I’ve been interrupted many times with the flyovers either making me wait to contribute or making it so that I miss parts of the conversation that have to be repeated. There’s been plenty of times where they fly over during school pick up at Hawthorne, and kids/parents can’t hear teachers or crossing guards which is a safety issue.

This could be solved by having a schedule of planned flights available to residents (or if they happen at regular times), AND if the fighter wing could work to schedule so they aren’t taking off during school pick up/drop off times. I also keep hearing that there will be noise mitigation steps, but when is that going to happen for residents and homeowners? It’s nice if there will be standards for new builds, but what about those of us in older homes and apartments? Where is the money and resources for us to improve the insulation/sound proofing in our homes? I have yet to get communication about when this is happening and how it can be accessed.

Quite frankly, I don’t get people who say they “feel safer” with the planes there. Doesn’t having these jets here make Madison a military target? While one would imagine it’s unlikely, are there any kind of emergency plans in place? What stakeholders are part of those plans? How would this get communicated to residents?

Listening sessions are only useful if there are concrete actions taken from them and I’m not confident that will be the case.

I live on the South side— supposedly far from the flight path. But occasionally the F-35s fly even over my neighborhood. (I am just on the south side of Lake Monona near John Nolen Drive. I always notice them because they are so much louder than other jets. They do not come over my neighborhood very frequently but the sound is deafening. I feel really bad for the people on the North side who live near the flight path. They must be terribly disruptive. I generally stop what I am doing until they are gone. I do not think my views are political because I do not object to the other military jets. I think Madison is unfortunate to have these. I feel particularly bad because the North side is one of the few affordable areas of town— especially if you want to buy a house. Now this!

There is so much open land just a bit further outside of Madison. The jets are more than disruptive; it is actively harmful to our little kids, as the volume of an F-35 is nearly double the maximum recommended exposure for little ones. I’ve seen people on here say that this is no worse than F-16s, which might be true, but those are also harmful to kids hearing. And none of this gets into veterans living in the area affected by PTSD, or any other individual who is uniquely affected by loud noises (such as neurodivergent individuals). Someone on here recommended Volk field and I think that’s a great idea.

I see that there are a few people on here who enjoy the F-35s as a kind of patriotic display. That’s totally fine, and I would encourage them to go watch them wherever the new location is. This isn’t about support for the military or our troops. The point is that the jets do active harm, especially in largely populated areas. And so if the air base cannot be moved at all, at the very least, jets should take off and fly in from north/east of the airport, which are less densely populated, although I imagine the people of Sun Prairie wouldn’t be thrilled about that either.

Steven,

Thanks for your comments. I would also recommend the msnsound.com site, and appreciate the data captured from the listening stations and graphed in real time.

I moved to Madison in the past year, so I don’t have the experience of the previous F-16s to compare to. But the noise from the F35s do appear to greatly exceed the regular commercial flights and frequently, if not usually, exceed 100 dB.

If the 115th fighter wing actually cares about the Madison North and East side communities, please leave Madison. We do not want a “connection” with you. We want you to get out. I do care about freedom. I want the freedom to live in peace within the sanctity of my own home. I want the freedom to walk around my neighborhood on a pleasant day without having to cover my ears. The presence of the F- 35s is a removal of our natural right to live our lives normally, without fear-inducing, house- shaking noise.