Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Proposal could bring roar in the night

By Chatham Forbes

The federal budget crunch now impacting Moffett Field is threatening the peace and tranquility of Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, and several other cities that lie under the flight path into the former military air base.

Under serious consideration at NASA's Ames Research Center is a proposal that scheduled air cargo service be instituted at Moffett to help pay the cost of flight operations. The departure of the U.S. Navy has left the airfield with a serious financial shortfall.

One version of the air cargo plan would have big cargo planes flying express mail in and out of Moffett on a 24-hour-a-day basis. This means that high-powered jets would roar day and night down a flight path from Los Gatos to Mountain View-Sunnyvale on a steady descent from an altitude of 3,100 feet.

Roger Graham, a retired airline captain who lives in Monte Sereno, has studied the problem and believes that noise would be a definite annoyance for two miles on either side of the flight path. This would affect Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Saratoga, Campbell, San Jose, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale, plus contiguous unincorporated territory. Graham has presented his analysis to the "Alliance for a New Moffett Field," a newly formed group of concerned citizens which meets in Mountain View. The Alliance now shares Graham's concern.

Another version of NASA's plan calls for dawn-to-dusk flight scheduling, but would still result in a considerable increase in air traffic and noise overhead. The Alliance is strongly recommending that Los Gatos, the other cities, and the county insist that NASA impose the same noise safeguards presently in force at San Jose International Airport. These include a curfew governing such flights, restricting them to daytime and evening hours.

The Alliance has taken no firm position for or against NASA's air cargo plans, but is expressing concern over the possibility of nighttime and high-volume operations. These issues should be discussed in open public meetings where NASA's budgetary anxieties can be balanced against the quality of life under the flight path. Federal and state legislators must be brought into the public debate also.

The historical importance of Moffett Field and NASA-Ames can hardly be overstated. Moffett represents the first successful joint effort by the Bay Area coalition to persuade Washington to grant a major federal project to this region.

Although the Navy preferred a San Diego location for its West Coast dirigible base, a strong Bay Area coalition prevailed, and the base was established here in 1932. The Ames Research Center was founded at Moffett in 1939. The site was bought piecemeal in a countywide effort and sold to the Navy for $1.

In the 64 years since, the Navy, Air Force, and NASA have developed an important military and research facility. Ames has played a seminal role in the rise of Silicon Valley as a world-class center of technical industry. In spite of its current problems with Congressional budget-cutters, NASA-Ames remains in the forefront of aerospace research and development internationally. Even with the Navy gone, Ames and Moffett Field continue to be a major asset to the Santa Clara Valley economy.

Civic organizations, such as the Alliance for a New Moffett Field, have a vital part to play in the present decision-making process. It was joint action by local governments and private groups that created Moffett Field and Ames in the 1930s. Today, joint action by a similar mix of public and private entities can produce a new Moffett complex suited to a drastically changed situation.

The special concerns of local citizens should be part of the discussions now ongoing that are deciding the future of Moffett.

It may well be that the needs of the federal government are not incompatible with a reasonable quiet airspace above a valley that now has far more people than fruit trees. The Moffett site may accommodate a Baylands Park alongside the air and space activities. A "Smithsonian West" aerospace museum in historic Hangar One, new private housing, selected industry and business, and appropriate nonprofit institutions in abandoned buildings on the base may all be possible neighbors of the government activities.

But the chances of such ideas becoming realities are slim if private citizens do not insist upon a democratic process of open public discussion at all levels of government. Responsible citizens working with responsive public officials, federal, state and local, can produce solutions with which all parties can be reasonably satisfied. For communities like Los Gatos and Monte Sereno, directly under the low-altitude flight path to Moffett Field, reasonable satisfaction has to include relatively tranquil skies, especially at night.

A Los Gatos resident, Chatham Forbes is a professor of history at the California History Center, De Anza College. He flew in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II, has taught local and regional aerospace history, and is a founding member of the Alliance for a New Moffett Field.