Will Mayor Emma Mulvany Stanek enforce the existing Burlington Aviation Ordinance?
The city's aviation ordinance makes F-35 training at Burlington International Airport illegal
“One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Burlington has a just law: An aviation ordinance that requires city officials to restrict the use of the city-owned airport to aircraft that meet the standards set by the FAA.
If city officials complied with their legal and moral responsibility to obey and enforce this just law, working-class and ethnic minority neighborhoods in the cities of Burlington, South Burlington, Winooski and Williston would be freed from the suffering imposed by thousands of 115-decibel F-35 training flights each year.
The City’s aviation ordinance says,
3-1 Use of airport restricted to aircraft meeting standards of FAA and other agencies.
No person shall use the Burlington International Airport for the operation of any aircraft unless such aircraft is airworthy and complies with the requirements of the Federal Aviation Agency. . . Violation of such laws or regulations shall be deemed to be sufficient ground or reason for refusing further permission to use the airport.
Since the 1970s the FAA has banned civilian aircraft from operating on US territory that fail to meet its aircraft-noise standards. Even the first of the FAA standards from the 1970s was strict enough to require all civilian aircraft to be significantly quieter than the F-35. Since then the FAA and aircraft manufacturers have done a remarkable job to further decrease aircraft noise.
The results were reported by the FAA: “Since the mid-1970's, the number of people exposed to significant aviation noise exposure in the U.S. has declined from roughly 7 million to just over 400,000 today." That means the reduction in civilian aircraft noise ended the suffering of 94% of the people who live near airports.
The Burlington Airport is a singular exception
The area around the Burlington airport is a singular exception because the FAA lacks authority to regulate the noise of military jets. Here the F-35 training expanded the oval-shaped noise-suffering zone around the runway to include 2,963 households where 6,663 Vermonters live. (The “baseline” in the chart below was itself boosted when the previously-based F-16 jets started using their afterburner for takeoff in 2008 in anticipation of the F-35).
In its 2013 F-35 Environmental Impact Statement, the Air Force itself warned of the danger of training with F-35 jets in a city: It said that repeated exposure to aircraft noise at the level of the F-35 can cause hearing loss and can impair the cognitive development of children:
Chronic exposure to high aircraft noise levels can impair learning. . . Researchers have found that tasks involving central processing and language comprehension (such as reading, attention, problem solving, and memory) appear to be the most affected by noise. . .It has been demonstrated that chronic exposure of first- and second-grade children to aircraft noise can result in reading deficits and impaired speech perception. (US Air Force F-35 Environmental Impact Statement Vol. II p. C-29).
6,663 working class and ethnic minority Vermonters, including more than 1,000 children, live in the oval-shaped extreme noise danger zone identified by the Air Force, where they are physically assaulted by thousands of 115-decibel F-35 training flights each year.
The failure of city officials to obey and enforce the city’s aviation ordinance is nothing short of sociopathic. It is class and race prejudice on steroids.
Mayor Emma Mulvany Stanek has what it takes to make the airport safe for thousands of Vermonters now suffering in the flight path of the 115-decibel F-35: she is brilliant, articulate, and talented. She has leadership skills. She has long experience in state and local government. She served as Chair of the Vermont Progressive Party. She holds one of the most powerful elected positions of authority in the state.
Plus she has a powerful political mandate from the people: at town meeting in 2018 the voters of Burlington adopted a resolution calling for cancelation of the planned basing of the F-35 at BTV. 55.4% voted in favor. The city councils of Burlington, South Burlington, and Winooski recently passed resolutions calling for replacement of the F-35 with a mission for the Vermont Air National Guard that is compatible with its location in a city.
What’s more, Mayor Emma won election into office campaigning for public safety as a top priority of her administration. Complicity with the ear- and brain-damaging F-35 training is incompatible with that campaign promise.
Furthermore, consistent with Martin Luther King’s call in 1967, the city has a long tradition of opposing militarism. For example, in 2005, 65.2% of Burlington town meeting voters adopted a resolution to “advise the President and Congress that Burlington and its citizens strongly support the men and women serving in the United States Armed Forces in Iraq and believe that the best way to support them is to bring them home now.” That resolution won in every ward of the city.
Moreover, the city has a powerful economic incentive: halting the F-35 training permits rebuilding housing on the 44 acres of now-vacant city-owned land near the airport. Because the land is city-owned and because changes to zoning now allow high density development, this land alone, just by itself, can solve the city’s affordable housing crisis once the F-35 training stops.
The city has power as airport proprietor that the FAA itself lacks. Congressional legislation only allows the FAA to apply its aircraft noise standards to civilian aircraft. But the courts and the FAA recognize that municipal governments that own airports have broad authority to establish standards for aviation safety at their airports. The only limit on exercising this authority is that airport owners must apply their safety standards to all aircraft using the airport without favor or discrimination.
City officials in Burlington blatantly violate that mandate by not applying the city-ordinance standard uniformly to all aircraft using the airport. Instead, the city illegally allows one aircraft—the F-35—to violate the standard while all others comply.
Furthermore, the military has no basis to avoid compliance if the ordinance is enforced. This is not just because of civilian rule. It is also because training with the F-35 in a city violates the military's own discipline. It also violates US law and international law: (1) F-35 jets in a city violate distinction because they target civilians. Also because they use city-dwellers as human shields for the F-35. (2) It inflicts unnecessary suffering on civilians. The F-35 was not designed for life in a city. It was designed for war, not to be used for training pilots in a city where it would hurt civilians. (3) There is no military necessity to train with F-35 jets from a runway in a city. (4) Proportionality requires feasible precautions to be taken to protect civilians, and none were. It will take 25 years or more before all 2,963 households are sound-insulated. Furthermore, (5) training with the F-35 in a location where the Air Force itself said children are hurt dishonors the unit and its commanders. The best thing the Mayor can do to get the Vermont Air National Guard back on track with its own discipline is to enforce the city’s aviation ordinance.
Under the militia clause of the US Constitution, the training of the national guard and the appointment of its officers are under the control of the states. Federal authority is limited to organizing, arming [also called “basing”], and disciplining. There can be no federal preemption if, while not interfering with the basing, the city enforces its ordinance barring training flights by any aircraft, including those used by the Guard, “unless such aircraft is airworthy and complies with the requirements of the Federal Aviation Agency.”
Nor will state officials have basis to complain: Vermont state law expressly empowers local governments to enact ordinances to protect “the public health, safety, welfare, and convenience” of citizens regarding “the operation and use of vehicles of every kind.” And that includes the F-35.
The Mayor needs no one’s permission to enforce this city ordinance. She has the legal and moral authority to act now.
In his letter from the Birmingham jail in 1963, Martin Luther King wrote:
For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never." It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Four years later, in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech at the Riverside Church in 1967, Dr. King went further:
If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.
Call the mayor at 802-865-7272
Send an email to Emma, Mayor of Burlington <mayor@burlingtonvt.gov>
A request for comment to an earlier version of this article that was sent to the Mayor and her staff on the morning of January 21, 2025 elicited no response.
Please ground this mission damaging my health