ASU Professor’s Study on Impact of F-35 to Property Values is Flawed
A recently released study created for the city of El Mirage that attempts to connect the basing of the F-35 at Luke Air Force Base to lower property values in the West Valley is merely the researcher’s opinion and not based on relevant facts.
Federal law requires the Air Force to conduct a formal Environment Impact Statement (EIS) process before any decisions are made on assigning new aircraft to Luke AFB or any other military installation. This comprehensive EIS process is currently underway at Luke and nine other sites identified by the Air Force in October. As part of the EIS, jet noise is one of the many items that will be studied and analyzed.
But rather than waiting for and analyzing Luke-specific noise data and noise contour maps that will be publicly released as part of the EIS process, ASU professor Tim Hogan made a lot of assumptions and educated guesses in developing his study’s findings. Here’s how:
- Use of Inflated decibel levels for the F-35 – In the study, Hogan assigns a 10-12 decibel increase in noise levels for the F-35 compared to the F-16. But noise data collected by the Air Force Research Lab, shows only an estimated 1-2 decibel increase for the F-35 during take-off and landing, based on a F-35 acoustics study conducted at Edwards AFB in 2008. Increases beyond 1-2 decibels are associated with the F-35 at full military power, which is not required for flight operations at or near Luke AFB due to the aircraft’s higher-powered engine.
- Use of inflated decibel levels for the F-35 to develop new noise contour map – Hogan provides a new noise contour map in his study to assert the impact of the F-35 will be significantly larger. Since there is no current site-specific noise contour map for the F-35 (a new one will be developed as part of the EIS process), the contour map included in the study merely reflects a “best guess” based on the inflated decibel levels (as described in the first bullet) that Hogan used in the study.
- Comparing the impact of commercial airports to a military base – In his study, Hogan compares flight operations at commercial airports with a military installation to draw conclusions on property value impacts. This is akin to comparing apples to oranges because the number of flight operations from major commercial airports that he used in his analysis is significantly higher than the number of flight operations at Luke AFB. In addition, the setback of a military base’s flight line is significantly larger than those found at commercial airports.
- There is no evidence that shows how the F-35 basing has reduced housing values – The F-35 has not been assigned to any base yet, other than at Eglin AFB for initial testing. Thus there is no empirical data that supports Hogan’s claim. Thus, Hogan’s estimates lack hard analytical data and are purely based on his conjecture and personal assessment.
Finally, now is not the time to rush to premature conclusions based on hypothetical data that is contained in studies such as Hogan’s. Thus, we urge you to wait for the site-specific data and facts that will be released as part of the EIS process relating to basing the F-35 at Luke. Once we all receive the same data and facts, we can begin having informed, productive discussions on the similarities, differences and impacts of Luke’s aircraft fleet moving from F-16s to F-35s.
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