It was the late 1990s when a resident whose Field View Drive home backed up on Green Airport, turned to the news media to voice concerns about the noise and fumes of aircraft idling and revving their engines within less than 200 feet of her yard. That house, nor those of neighbors were  initially within the high noise contour for acquisition by the Rhode Island Airport Corporation.

However, state legislators listened and passed legislation requiring air quality testing.

In 2002 twenty-seven homes in the Field View to Palace Avenue neighborhood were included in a $5 million FAA buy package. That was followed in 2008 with release of a study conducted by the Department of Environmental Management finding that of the five test sites around the airport, Field View Drive recorded the highest levels of toxic cancer-causing fumes.

Now, as RIAC learned at last Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting, it does not own all the land its survey shows. Therefore, the board postponed consideration of RIAC’s request for the city to abandon Field View and other streets within the area cleared of homes. RIAC spokesman John Goodman said in an email Friday the survey would be corrected and resubmitted.

But it may not be as simple as redrawing some lines on a map.

Richard Langseth who closely follows airport developments and attended the Planning Board meeting, calls the “fraudulent survey” a serious problem. But before getting to that, Curt Tietze who owns the lot and two abutting homes is questioning why RIAC hasn’t reached out to him and why it represented ownership of his property.

It’s not that the airport never sought to buy the property.

When the Federal Aviation Administration included Field View homes within the high noise contour, RIAC offered Tietze and his mother Gertrude to buy their homes.

Gertrude wanted to stay

 At the time Gertrude was in her 90s and losing her eyesight. Teitze explained his mother’s decision wasn’t based on money. He said she liked the house and questioned moving into a new place where she would have trouble moving around because of her diminishing sight. And as her neighbor was her son, he was there to take care of her and stopped in frequently.

Tietze who was informed of the last Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting by a neighbor, is outraged..

“I pay taxes, on that lot, it’s a buildable lot. They never said nothing. Nobody spoke to me about nothing,” he said Friday. “This is ridiculous. We don’t know what doing over there. They paid all those people to move out of the neighborhood,” he said.

On Saturday Tietze and his wife showed of the adjoining property and the lot. Both are neatly enclosed by a white picket fence with a rich carpet of green grass. Across Strawberry Field Road, partially obscured by a wind screen anchored to a chain link fence, is an expanse of compacted earth.

“They’re not working today,” said Donna, “but when they are the house shakes. I’m afraid they might break a gas line or something.”  She has called the airport but hasn’t gotten a response.

The work being done is in preparation of the South Cargo Facility, a $100 million project that will relocate UPS and FedEx air operations from a 1940s vintage hangar and storage trailers along Airport Road to two long rectangular buildings parallel to Strawberry Field Road to accommodate six large cargo jets on the terminal side of the building and 31 loading docks on the neighborhood side.

“I hope they don’t use Strawberry Field Road,” Donna said of tractor trailers and other vehicles servicing the air cargo depot.

Additional design work

That’s not the plan as presented in the Environment Assessment (EA) as prepared by AECOM for RIAC. That plan shows a road on terminal side of the fence running beside a long- term airport parking lot and connecting with to the Airport Connector. In order for trailer trucks and other air cargo vehicles to access the connector a rotary is planned. On Thursday, the RIAC board approved a $233,722.15 contract with CHA Consulting, Inc. “to perform additional design related services for the PVD South Cargo Ramp Development project.” 

Goodman did not respond to questions as to what would happen to the area once the roads are abandoned by the city including would it be cleared of trees and what extent would the berm and noise wall would be relocated to shield the Palace Avenue neighborhood. Mayor Picozzi pushed for an FAA review of the plan before granting approval on grounds it didn’t show direct access to the Airport Connector, thereby sparing local roads from increased truck traffic. RIAC and the city have yet to sign a memorandum of understanding. Nonetheless, construction is proceeding.

“The project scope of the air cargo facility and the noise wall remain unchanged,” Goodman wrote in an email.

Langseth said the faulty survey would be the subject of a complaint to the RI Department of Business Regulation.

“This is a serious issue because RIAC certified that it owns the project properties when the record shows that to be untrue,” he wrote in an email. “RIAC was pulling a fast one here. I checked out the surveyor’s staking. There was no effort to establish the boundary line for the Tietze property.”

It’s Langseth’s opinion that  the Supplemental EA which was drafted following Mayor Picozzi’s insistence that the air cargo trailer trucks be routed to the connector. Langseth claims the proposed rotary plan  ignores that an excavation is required to make it viable for trucks to clear terminal road  ramps.

Langseth concludes that problems with the rotary are “so severe” that he believes a Federal Highway Administration is warranted.