Pleasanton council responds to concerns about Livermore Municipal Airport

The Pleasanton City Council called on the city of Livermore to address noise concerns coming from the Livermore Municipal Airport, transition away from lead-based fuel and find ways to better enforce its voluntary night flying curfew during Tuesday's council meeting.

While the city of Pleasanton does not have any direct authority over the neighboring airport, members of the dais expressed their support for taking some sort of action — which will most likely be in a letter of concern — in the hopes that Livermore officials can do something to address the concerns that Pleasanton residents, and even some from Livermore, are telling them about.

"I think we as a city need to address — with Livermore — this issue, because it is a very big impact to the quality of life for many Pleasanton residents," Councilmember Valerie Arkin said during the meeting.

The airport noise discussion was brought to the council after several Pleasanton residents spoke during the May 16 council meeting and expressed their anger over what they said was unbearably loud airport noise coming from the Livermore Airport.

"I started jotting down the times and found that a plane went over on average every five minutes," Pleasanton resident Sharon Piekarski told the council Tuesday night.

Piekarski, a longtime resident of Pleasanton, said that noise from the airport has gotten worse over the years since she first moved to Pleasanton and that the pandemic has only made it worse due to people using the facility to charter private jets.

Constant comments like this and the ones from the May 16 meeting prompted the council to ask city staff to bring information regarding the status of the airport's draft leasing and development policy back to the dais during matters initiated by the council.

Becky Hopkins, assistant to the city manager, told the council that she and the rest of staff had barely received supplementary information that same day with the latest version of the leasing and development policy as well as a compilation of public comments and responses related to that policy.

"Last night, the Livermore Airport Commission met to consider the leasing and development policy. Eight people were in attendance and four people spoke," Hopkins said. "The outcome of last night's meeting was that the airport commission voted to approve the leasing and development policy and forward the policy to the Livermore City Council for consideration at their June 26 meeting."

Hopkins also mentioned Livermore city staff were notified about the discussion item and agreed to listen in on what the Pleasanton dais and residents had to say about the now approved policy — which mostly revolved around the idea that the policy lacked in addressing the noise complaints.

"I was one of the eight people who attended the Airport Commission hearing yesterday," Livermore resident Donna Cabanne said. "None of the 120-plus emails sent in by the public were given to the commissioners. The new development policy does not address noise at all, or set noise limits."

Arkin, who arguably was one of the loudest supporters for the airport to address these issues, said that given that she lives in the northeastern part of Pleasanton — which is closer to the airport — she feels strongly that the city should not only point out the noise concerns, but also concerns regarding the lead-based fuel that could potentially harm residents and PFAS chemicals that the airport might or might not be using.

PFAS chemicals were brought up because while it is not known whether the airport currently uses these chemicals for things like fire retardants, members of the public were worried that the newly updated policy does not include anything on monitoring those chemicals.

"We should request monitoring of PFAS use and that should be a public document as well," Mayor Karla Brown said. "I am hopeful they don't use it at all but I don't know that and I don't want to guess."

Brown also touched on the need to draft up some sort of letter of concern not just for the PFAS and noise issues, but because the lead-based fuel flies directly over schools that could affect children.

"When I think of leaded fuel being used over Mohr, Fairlands and Hart, it's concerning to me," Brown said, referring to schools in town. "Planes normally take off to the west. They're accelerating to the west and that's through our Pleasanton community and three schools; so that's concerning."

Arkin also said that there needs to be a bigger emphasis from Livermore to increase its public engagement process throughout these discussions after having heard from one resident that feels like the Airport Commission and Livermore council comes off as dismissive when he complains about the noise.

Even though federal law, "prohibits (Livermore) from restricting or regulating airport access to any kind, type or class of aircraft that can safely use the airport," according to the Livemore website, both Pleasanton residents and the council hammered down on the point of enforcing curfews.

"I think recent information that we found out is that they aren't (Federal Aviation Administration) bound by just saying it's voluntary. They can enforce the curfews," Arkin said. "So that's, I think, one point we really need to drive home because of the effect of the noise on our residents, that those need to be enforced. And apparently Livermore has the ability to do so."

The Pleasanton council will also be seeking some way to see if they can get a representative from the city on the Airport Commission so that there is more collaboration between the two cities.