[tap dance routine performed]

>> okay. wasn't that great? [applause] >> i'm going to welcome amy lozardo back to the stage, but we need you to sing along as loud as you can.

[singing "here comes santa claus"] ["you're a mean one, mr. grinch" playing]

[applause] >> gimme that, and thank you for singing my song. and san francisco, could you pipe down? i'm trying to wallow in self-pity here. >> hold on. you're not santa klaus. >> oh, you wanted him? you guys don't like santa claus, do you? [applause] >> santa claus, boo! boo! [applause] >> well, what's to like about him? oh, i know. do you like santa claus because he gives you presents? you do? well, i brought you some presents. >> oh, you have presents? >> i do. >> maybe you are santa claus.

oh, no. unrecyclable plastic. no. no, you're definitely not santa claus. >> you can say that again. >> well, i have an idea again. >> what? >> if you can just be quiet for a second. hey, kids, i think we can get rid of the grinch if you can do one thing for me. if we start chanting santa's name, maybe we can get rid of the grinch? >> no. [chanting "santa"] >> ho, ho, ho. >> i think i hear him.

>> ho, ho, ho. [chanting "santa"] >> it's santa claus, everybody. >> oh, great. >> there he is. your cheering worked. thanks, kids. it's santa claus!

[applause] >> merry christmas, boys and girls! >> yea! merry christmas, santa! >> is that the grinch? oh, grinch. >> that's my name. say it, don't spray it. >> are you harassing the children? >> well, no, we were just having fun till you got here? >> well, boys and girls, don't worry, grinch, i have something very special that may change your mind about christmas. >> i doubt it. >> i have something very special. it's a present, because i know

when you share presents, you always have a good heart. and i know you have a good heart, too, grinch. >> oh, take that back. >> well, here it is. >> there's nothing you can give me -- >> here you go. >> is that really for me? >> it's a present made by the elves. >> oh, how sweet. >> oh, don't cry, grinchy. >> well, what do you say, grinch? >> oh, oh, i love it. >> can we all wish everyone a big merry christmas? >> this is one. merry christmas. >> oh, ho, ho. that feels like christmas to

me. >> well, i don't have any bear food. what am i going to feed this thing? >> hey, i've got an idea. it looks like you both have really warmed your hearts. i think the grinch has turned a new corner. what do you think, kids? isn't he so sweet, so cute and nice? but santa, i know what really would set this night off. should we light this christmas tree? >> oh, that would be good. boys and girls, are you ready to light the christmas tree? >> that's wonderful. i'm so excited. at this point, san francisco, i would like to welcome to the stage some very special people from the mayor's office who helped make this entire event possible. so please, join me in welcoming naomi kelly, phil ginsburg, breanna torres, and mayor

london breed to the stage. [applause] >> welcome, welcome, welcome, one and all. >> the hon. london breed: hello, everyone. welcome to the front yard of city hall, and happy holidays to each and every one of you. make sure that you come back on december 9, sunday. we're going to be having so much fun. a lot of face painting activities and fun things for the whole family. hi, everybody! are you guys ready to light this christmas tree? >> let's do it, boys and girls. >> the hon. london breed: have you guys been naughty or nice? okay. presents for everybody. hi, mr. grinch. >> hi, mrs. mayor.

>> the hon. london breed: hi, santa. >> hi, mrs. mayor. >> the hon. london breed: i've been good this year. >> don't worry. we have a very special gift for you, too. >> the hon. london breed: all right. come on over, everybody. can you help me count? okay. we're going to start with ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] >> the hon. london breed: thank you, everyone. happy holidays. >> merry christmas, boys and girls. thank you for coming out today.

>> the teams really, really went above and beyond and is continuing to do that today. this past year, the san francisco public utilities commission water quality division started receiving many more requests to test for lead in the public school system here in san francisco as a result of legislation that had passed from the state requiring all of the public schools to do lead testing. and so as a result, the public utilities commission and the water quality team in particular was asked to meet with the san francisco unified school district to begin to prioritize which schools to test to meet that state

mandate. >> the team that tests, we're a full service environmental laboratory, and we take care of both the needs of the water quality division and the waste water enter price. and on the water quality enterprise, we have to also have drinking water that meets all federal and state quality regulations. and lead in schools, we're playing a problem in remediating this problem of lead in schools. >> our role here in communications is being able to take the data that we have that we know is protective of public health and safety and transmit it, give it to the public in a way they understand we are really doing our jobs well and making sure that they are safe always. >> the public learned very quickly all the accurate facts and all the critical information that they needed to know, and it's up to these individuals and their agencies and their commitment to the city. >> i enjoy the work because i

can help people, and i can help the utilities to provide a better water quality, make sure that people feel that drinking hetch hetchy water is actually a pride. >> hats off to the water quality team because between them working on late nights, working on the weekends when the schools are closed, and working as a partner in the school district for the times they found a higher lead sample, they worked through to address that, so the team went above and beyond and is continuing to do that today.

all right, welcome, everyone. good afternoon to our joint land use and transportation committee, as well as our airport commission of monday, december 3, 2018. i'm katy tang, chair of the committee, to my left is supervisor safai. we're also joined here today and i want to welcome our airport commissioners, linda crayton, eleanor johns, and richard

guggenhime. thank you for being here today for this hearing item, our clerk is erica major, and our airport director. as well, madam clerk, do you have announcements today? >> clerk: make sure to silence all cell phones and electronic devices. any files should be submitted to the clerk. >> supervisor tang: thank you very much. item one? >> clerk: hearing on airport noise, which is disproportionately impacting the southern neighborhoods in the city and county of san francisco, requesting the san francisco airport commission, director of the san francisco international airport, and chairperson and program coordinator of the s.f.o. round table to report. >> supervisor tang: thank you, and sorry, if we can please excuse supervisor kim from our land use committee. okay, we'll do that without objection. item 1 has been called. supervisor safai, did you want to start off since you called for this hearing? >> supervisor safai: yes, thank

you, chair tang, i appreciate it. i want to make a couple opening statements, but before i do that, i want to also thank all the people participating today. again, i know chair tang recognized our airport commissioners. i don't think this has ever happened before, so i want to thank commissioner crayton, eleanor johns, and guggenhime for participating today in this. i would say that this has been probably years in the making. there was a significant adjustment that was made to the way in which flights are governed, monitored, directed, and essentially implemented in terms of takeoff and landing, but essentially a lot of the conversation today is going to be about takeoff as it impacts san francisco. a few years ago, the next gen system, a computerized system, as i'm sure many of you are aware, was implemented through the f.a.a., and in that implementation, the manual or

the human control during takeoff and decision making was changed dramatically to a computer-generated model. that computer-generated model created, for lack of a better term, a river effect in the flight patterns. so homes, individuals, lives, human beings that were impacted on a much more infrequent basis had been impacted on a dramatically increased basis. we'll get into that for a minute -- in a minute, i'll come back to that. i also want to thank the director of the airport. he's going to be making a presentation today. i want to thank cathy widener for participating and working with our office. we're also joined by elizabeth louis, who's the chair of the s.f. airport community round table, which i am a member of. she's led that group diligently for some time. she represents the town of atherton, so this issue is an

issue that's not just unique to san francisco, but impacts all of the communities along the peninsula and outside of the peninsula on the coast. i also want to thank james castaneda, a.i.c. program coordinator for the s.f. airport. ed mccaffrey, and cathy wentworth is also here from district -- congresswoman pelosi's office, and david latt from congresswoman and soon to be speaker of the house pelosi's office and john murray from senator feinstein's office. i'm going to call them up individually, but that shows you in one small piece the impact that this has. and i can tell you, i volunteered. this is not an outside commission that is necessarily required, but we do have a seat from san francisco. that seat sat vacant for eight

years on the round table, and when i ran for office, and i knocked on thousands of doors in one of the older parts of san francisco. and when i say older, majority of the homes are built prior to 1930, and many of the residents have lived in their homes for 30, 40, 50 years. and to come back to the next gen implementation, when that happened, you had people whose lives had been disrupted in a dramatic fashion. dramatic. and it's different in some ways from some of the other areas along the peninsula, but when you're going from a manual system, where it's much more of a fanned out crossover of flights over the southern parts of san francisco, bayview hunter's point, lake view, going into the sunset, west of twin peaks. these are the areas and to certain extents southern parts

of the mission, and these are the areas that i have received thousands and thousands of e-mails from individuals chose lives, and they will say prior to 2014 or 2015, if i have the date wrong, but prior to the implementation, and it coincided with next gen, when flights were crossing over southern parts of san francisco, it was much more infrequent and somewhat more random. but once a computerized model dictates a consistent flow, just to give you one example when we implemented a noise monitoring system back in september, 1 dublin street daily has 272 flights over that one address. 272 over one address. and that is not unique. so, yes, block by block, supervisor tang and i were talking about this prior, block by block you might may or may not have an impact, but if you happen to be in the pattern in which -- and we'll get into the

presentation from the director of the airport, you'll see a significant increase in area. so i just wanted to highlight the amount of working people, the amount of people that are there, the higher concentration of children and families. we have the second highest concentration, bayview hunter's point is a first, so the highest concentration of children under the age of 18. you'll see a reference, and i think the staff will talk about a study that was done by m.i.t. on the negative impacts of sound and noise on people's -- on their quality of life and how it impacts their overall composition and their mental capacity and the negative effects of that. so i don't think there's any debate, commissioners and general public and staff, whether there has been a dramatic change in the impact of air flights and noise and airport noise since the next gen

system. gotten our senator and our congress leaders to go on record to say now that we are coming into, for one of the first times in a long time f.a.a. reauthorization of their budget, now that we will have the speaker of the house representing san francisco, one of the most senior members in the senate and a tenacious congresswoman who has told me she is going to the mat on this issue, congresswoman speier, we have the ability to change the impact of this and how it affect's people's daily lives. so i wanted to set the context for that. i'd like to call up the director through the chair, if that's okay. >> supervisor tang: actually, i wanted to turn it over to commissioner crayton. >> supervisor safai: yes, please, say a few words. i'm feeling pressured on the time, because i know some commissioners have to leave and are giving an opportunity for the public, but please,

commissioner, thank you. >> commissioner crayton: thank you so very much, and thank you for having us. on behalf of the commission president larry mazzola and commissioners with me today, rich guggenhime and my good friend eleanor johns. not that you're not my good friend. i want to say to the san francisco airport commission is strongly committed to working within its authority to address community noise issues. the airport commission funds these efforts through the noise abatement office, noise monitors in the community, and staff support of the s.f.o. community round table. s.f.o. does not have control, nor influence, over the flight path flown by the airlines or the flight schedules, and that's an important issue. however, this lack of authority hasn't deterred us from looking for other solutions that you will be hearing about today from the director.

while we lack authority in key areas such as flight paths and schedules, we don't lack a voice. and that is why today's hearing is so important. i attended supervisor safai's town hall in october and thanked him for his attention to this issue. what the community heard in that meeting from director satero is our collective voices to put pressure on the f.a.a. to implement flight path changes. and i meant f.a.a. to partner with our airlines so that they are also a party of the advocacy, and to engage with our elected representatives in washington to compel the f.a.a. to engage in a noise mitigation

process. i know this is important to congresswoman jackie speier and i want to thank her for her efforts for the town hall, where director satero was given the opportunity to address the community. and while i know this is frustrating, there has been progress, and i believe there are areas we can work together to achieve a benefit to impact san francisco neighborhoods. so thank you so much to supervisors safai and ronan and katy for sponsoring this hearing, to chairperson tang, of course, and members of the public that came out today. thank you. >> supervisor tang: thank you very much. and so with that said we'll turn it over to director satero for presentation. >> can i get -- there we go. thank you. madam chair, thank you. it's good to be here with you

all. it is a different day for noise and community relationships created by the f.a.a.'s new metroplex, and as it was described, what this has created is basically a freeway in the sky, a very narrow trace that aircraft now travel when they are departing or arriving into s.f.o. that causes a focusing of aircraft activity over very narrow bands of the community. and that has created a tremendous impact to the folks on the ground, instead of what was an impact shared by a much larger segment of the community, and, therefore, that burden wasn't felt and wasn't so impactful to the community. and from an airport's perspective, our role has changed to an extent. i think to a large extent, you know, we see our role as pursuing initiatives that

surround noise that we do control. and we have a history of doing that, and that's noise on the ground, essentially. we also see our role as advocating to the f.a.a. for flight procedures that would have community benefit, and we've been doing that over the years and have had success there. and then also holding the airlines accountable to our fly-quiet program, and those are noise abatement procedures that the airlines fly in order to lessen the impact to the communities as they conduct night operations. as i said, the s.f.o. community round table has existed for over 30 years and has been that connection to the community and to the electeds where they could meet with the s.f.o. leadership and talk about impacts to the community, and it's really taken on a renewed importance, and we certainly feel that, as airport director and as the leadership team at the airport.

we are very much feeling that need to be more connected to the community. so these kinds of opportunities we do appreciate. and the role has become, i think, more of a community advocate to a large extent, to really push the boundaries what we can do under our own control, but also work with the f.a.a. and the airlines to implement improvements that would help the community. so i thought what would be helpful is to set a shared context for this of what the particularly the residence of the southern area districts 10 and 11, what they are experiencing with this new metroplex. and so we have a short presentation that i'd like to walk through. if you all have that available. let's set the framework around s.f.o., and the first image that you'll see on your slides is our airport and the noise contours. and this is -- these different

colors represent the noise that is emanated from airport operations, as well as flight activity. and what you see is as you get further and further away from the airport, that impact lessens to the community. and so these are called cnel lines, and it is a federal f.a.a. measure of how the community is impacted in terms of noise. and we will be referring to that later on, as well. our fly quiet program, what i discussed, this was implemented particularly for nighttime operations to have a benefit for the community, and so there are departures that must follow a certain procedure that lessen the impact to the community, the surrounding neighbors. it is voluntary, because we cannot mandate this, but they are charted procedures and we do

measure the airlines, their compliance with those procedures, and when the airlines are shown to not comply and veer off course, we then get with the airlines and express to them the importance of flying the charted procedures that have the community benefit. and then around next gen, just to set that framework. this was an initiative by the f.a.a. and implemented around the 2015 time frame for the modernization of their system, their national airspace system. it is to increase the efficiency, safety, capacity, predictability of american aviation as they describe it. we were implemented in 2014, the northern california area, and what it did, essentially, was transition ground-based

navigation to g.p.s.-based navigation, so what it gives you is much more discreet location of the aircraft, which allows them to provide for tighter spacings and more defined pathways on their travels. so let's talk about pre and post gen this next gen implementation, and i'll just point everyone to the runways at s.f.o. we have our 1028 runways and we have our 119 runways. and if you'll turn to the next page, this is the activity from our main departure runway, and this runway is the runway that has departures that impact the southern part of the city. and so i wanted to show some kind of framework over the last two decades around aircraft

activity, as well, so you can understand what the history has been around this. and we have august 1999, the flight tracks from departures and those are from the 1 left, 1 right runways, that's what those departures are called. and what you'll see, the deeper red colors is the concentration of flight activities, and you'll see a large percentage of those taking that left turn over the southern part of the city, districts 10 and 11. and then if you turn to the next slide, you'll see that in august 2014, that same kind of broad framework, but not quite as much direct congested aircraft activity over the southern part of san francisco, and this is an important part as i turn to the next frame, because this is pre next gen, and what you have

here is broad dispersion of aircraft. and that's why you see a lot of green and a lot of blue out of the southern part of the city. and then if you turn to post next gen, you see that very much focusing of aircraft in that tight corridor impacting districts 10 and 11 in the city. so this is what it looks like today, is this kind of flight activity. very much focused over the southern part of the city, because it takes a direct turn after passing a new f.a.a. way point, it's called. so the pilots are directed to turn south at the stick way point, it's called. and so it creates a very narrow band of aircraft activity over the southern part of the city. next page talks about all hours of the day. so this is a graph of flight

activity for all of those three milestone years, and 24 hours a day through the month of august from '99, 2014, and 2018. and we've also shown the oakland flights in there, as well as s.f.o., because they are also impactful to the city. and that will be point as we talk about a potential one of the solutions we're looking at. but if you go to -- you can see the august of '99 flight activity, we were busy back in '99, and you didn't have the kind of impact to the community. august 2014, is very similar to '99 in terms of departures and flight activity, but a few more flights over san francisco. and then as far as the altitudes, the altitudes have remained fairly constant during that time period, and august 2018 the flights have increased both at oakland and s.f.o. with

the increased traffic. you see the number of flights over san francisco, too, from s.f.o. increasing. and you see the altitudes going up a little bit, but that's not really the important point. it's not about a couple hundred feet of altitude increase. it's about the narrowing of traffic that has created the impact to the communities. so this is just a set for you, like the total framework of flight departures from s.f.o. and what a large percentage of those do fly over san francisco. i did throw in at the bottom of that chart the 28 left, 28 right departures, as well. these are departures from our other runways that may also fly over the city, depending on what route they are taking, but these are the large international aircraft that are really headed trans-pacific. and then, you know, for the

nighttime, which has been particularly impactful for the residents of san francisco, we've culled out that same activity, and, you know, clearly there are a large number of flights when you think about this year, august of 2018, we had 3,400 departures at the nighttime defined at 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., with 432 of those flights over san francisco at an average altitude of 5,200 feet, if you look at the august 2018 information. and then you can see the oakland information below it, as well. and for noise monitoring, in order to track all of the tracks, the noise tracks that we do collect, you can see there are a number of noise monitoring sites throughout the city, and we do -- we have installed portable noise monitoring in areas that have been really

impacted in the southern areas, as well. so we make that investment to always be able to collect data around the flight information, because we also see ourselves as that credible source of information for the community, and we do get a lot of community requests for flight information and noise levels. >> supervisor tang: sorry, don't mean to interrupt, but on the map it has a number corresponding with the circles. what do the numbers mean? >> the numbers are the identifiers were use for the noise monitoring site. and we have noise monitors also on the southern part of the peninsula, as well. so some of solutions that we've been advocating for are particularly focused on nighttime activities. again, those are 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

and when you see the amount of activity that happens at nighttime and does fly over the south part of san francisco, we see an opportunity to create a departure which moves those aircraft to a track that flies up the bay and out the gate. really remaining over water is key to helping improve the impact to the community. and so you see that the graphic, august 2018, the kind of activity we still have currently, but there are up the bay and that red line you see going up the bay are for eastbound traffic. and then you see the left turn and all the traffic that does fly over the south part of the bay. south part of the city, excuse me. and as i described earlier, oakland is also significant in terms of impact to the community, and so this is their runway 30 nighttime departures.

also flying over the mid and the southern part of san francisco. so the opportunity that we were looking for is to combine these traffics and have them take a more community-sensitive approach and utilize over the bay -- over the bay flight alignment. so the next slide is what we call the night hush departure. and this is where you'll see the line from san francisco international going out to the middle of the bay. this is where the departures would fly out to the middle of the bay and then fly up the bay and then fly out the gate, and you can see on the right side of that line, oakland airport, and they would also join this same departure up and out the bay. and we call this, again, the night hush transition. so those flights that make that

southerly turn over san francisco would follow this track. >> supervisor safai: just a quick question. just wanted to double check. when you say nighttime, what's the time? >> 10:00 p.m. to -- it was 6:00 a.m. 6:00 a.m. >> supervisor safai: just wanted to make sure you said that for the record again. >> thank you. >> supervisor safai: thanks. >> okay. along with this night hush departure, we are aware there are capacity issues in that track and accommodating that kind of traffic, so what we're asking is the next page talks about what's called the 050-degree heading, so with the combination of nite huush departure and this heading, we are confident it can handle the capacity of these evening flights. and what that does is turn flights to the south right after departing and staying over water and gaining altitude.

so in our estimation there's significant capacity to make that happen. i'll say that this has been, with the f.a.a. as a potential solution but stalled in their recent behavior, we've recent sent a letter urging the f.a.a. to proceed with this study of this particular procedure to make sure there are no fatal flaws in it. we've asked for them to really prioritize this as one of their highest priorities. and jackie speier has also recently sent a letter to the same effect. i'll also say there appears to be opportunities under the new five-year f.a.a. reauthorization, and this is -- f.a.a., this is a long-term

reauthorization. they've typically been extensions, so we're very pleased to see a five-year reauthorization, and there are a number of mandated items within this reauthorization within community noise, and i'll just describe it. in particular, there is a noise annoyance study that its goal is to determine whether the impact of noise to the health and well being of the community is different from how it's currently described, which is around that dbcnel number, and the f.a.a. describes that as the 65 decibel cnel which communities are affected. so this noise annoyance study takes a fresh look at that. they have delayed the release of that for months and months, and i think that is one of the first major steps that has to happen. so in terms of advocating for potential solutions, long-term solutions, to me, that's one of

the most important things, is getting that noise annoyance study. so they are obligated under this reauthorization to move forward on a time line to release that and deal with what the potential consequences are there. and so you can see there's a number of other studies that look at the health effects related to aircraft operations, because it is much broader. it's becoming a much broader issue, from noise to quality of life, and we're seeing that firsthand in our communities. so these, to us, are where really meaningful change could happen is the reauthorization. and i would be glad to answer any questions. >> supervisor tang: thank you, director, for that presentation. i know early on in your presentation you mentioned that you have the fly quiet program and it promotes a voluntary approach to comply with noise

abatement, and i do like that you have, you know, making the scores available to the public, you grade the airline performance and make that all known. to what extent do the airlines actually voluntarily participate, again, given that it's voluntary, but you do have some sort of public transparency measures that you've put in place. >> they do fly that. i think all the airlines -- all the airlines fly that procedure at night. some are better at complying with it than others. what we do is, we report every two months to the community round table on the success of those airlines. the ones that fly it well all the time, and the ones that are the bad actors in that, and so it has the effect of public scrutiny on those airlines that don't want to be mentioned as not being good neighbors to the community. and so we use