A few people are making most of the noise about the noise at Denver International Airport, and at airports across the country.
The Mercatus Center think tank at George Mason University reviewed airport noise complaints nationwide, and the numbers are all kinds of out of whack. Time and again, thousands of complaints came from just a few people.
Consider the statistics in Denver:
- There were more than 4,800 noise complaints last year.
- One single guy in Strasburg, Colorado, was responsible for 73 percent of the calls. That accounts for 3,500 of them. He averaged 9.7 calls for each day of 2015.
- His name isn't listed in the reports, but we know he lives about 30 miles from the airport.
- And perhaps even more surprising, 96 percent of the noise complaints about DIA, came from just four people. 96 percent.
- And if you're still not stunned, all of the calls combined came from just 42 households in 2015, and that's down from the previous year, when the complaints came from 66 households.
The trend holds true in other large American cities, like Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where the vast majority of calls were phoned in by just a handful of people.
The Mercatus Center writes in their report that policymakers should consider these numbers before rushing to make airport changes, which are based on the volume of noise complaints.
For the record, we actually do something like that here at Next. We only count the first angry email you send us.
