Photo by ep_jhu.

As we approach Election Day, people admonish us to “Make our voices heard!” Well, turns out that some area folks don’t need that advice—Washington National and Dulles make the list of airports with the most concentrated noise complaints in 2015.

According to a new report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, two individuals at one residence in the Foxhall neighborhood of Northwest D.C. accounted for 78 percent of total complaints submitted to National, amounting to 6,852 of the total 8,760 calls in 2015. At Dulles, the concentration is even greater, even if the calls are fewer. One person in Poolesville, Md. called to complain about noise 1,024 times out of the total 1,223 complaints, or 84 percent.

Mercatus, which calls itself “a source for market-oriented ideas,” is using the data to look at a specific kind of NIMBYism (which stands for “not in my backyard” and sums up citizens’ resistance to certain kinds of change in their communities). The idea is to show that pointing out that National, for instance, has 8,760 separate noise complaints is misleading, because the one household is calling an average of 19 times per day.

A Washington Post story in March first introduced readers to the lopsided nature of the complaints at DCA, in light of a new system for managing air traffic called NextGen.

The Federal Aviation Administration says NextGen will increase fuel efficiency, thereby saving money on gas and decreasing carbon emissions. But there’s a catch: the Mercatus report says the gradual plane landings under NextGen have so far resulted in more noise complaints in airports where the program has been implemented.

Despite the concentration of the calls illustrated in the report, there is a more widespread campaign underway to limit disruption from new DCA flight paths under NextGen. After all, nearly 2,000 calls did not come from that one Foxhall house. As The Post noted, those 1,908 complaints in 2015 are triple what the airport received in 2014.

D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton sent the FAA a letter on behalf of the D.C. Fair Skies Coalition, which complained that switching the routes from over the Potomac River to city neighborhoods was leading to intensified noise pollution.

There are now plans underway for the FAA and Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to tweak flight paths, following public workshops in September. The Georgetown Current quoted some residents calling the changes “garbage” and “BS.”

Airport Noise NIMBYism by Rachel Kurzius on Scribd

Updated to reflect that the FAA is the Federal Aviation Administration, not Agency.