Noise From New Flight Patterns At O'Hare Costs Family $15K Nest Egg
CHICAGO (CBS) -- As they saved up $15,000 over the course of more than a decade, Colleen and Peter Mulcrone dreamed of renovating their Jefferson Park home, with a new kitchen and other upgrades, but the city's expansion of nearby O'Hare International Airport prompted them to put those dreams on hold.
The couple has lived in Jefferson Park for 11 years, and loved it there until the new runway configuration at O'Hare started sending hundreds of planes over their house.
"When the runway opened, and we had all this noise, we kind of looked at each other, and said, 'We need to do something about this,'" Colleen said.
The Mulcrones have two young children, and with the family unable to sleep at night, their longtime plans to renovate their house came to a halt.
They learned they, like tens of thousands of others in Chicago and suburbs surrounding O'Hare, aren't in the official noise contour map established by the O'Hare Noise Compatibility Commission – meaning they can't get help from the city to pay for soundproofing, even though approximately 300 planes fly over their home every day.
"It was like waking up to a highway of planes directly over our heads, coming about every 90 seconds to three minutes," she said.
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Colleen said it's "mind-boggling" that they and other people who live under the new flight paths at O'Hare aren't eligible for soundproofing provided through a federally-subsidized noise abatement program.
"I have 300 flights a day coming over my house. My dishes are rattling," she said.
They ended up spending $15,000 on soundproofing instead of their plans for renovations.
"This is what we were saving up for; to make the house really the house that we had dreamed of," she said.
Colleen said it shouldn't have been necessary to spend their own hard-earned money for soundproofing, when the increased jet noise was the result of the city's O'Hare expansion plan.
"The city of Chicago is the owner and operator of O'Hare Airport. They owe all of these constituents a conversation. It boggles my mind that the mayor can ignore, willfully ignore, all of these people," she said.
However, the noise contour map for O'Hare won't be changed to reflect the new flight patterns until the O'Hare expansion project is completed in 2020 at the earliest, and subsidized soundproofing won't be available until 2025.
