Subtract out the millions spent in fighting for the base dealing with lawsuits from Virginia.
Also factor in the hundreds of millions of lawsuits against the CoJ and the military for reopening an airbase at an airport that was decommissioned as an active base, and boundaries were lifted allowing encroachment in crash zones.
Factor in the moving of a few schools out of the crash zone in both Clay and Duval County.
Sure, there were possibly millions to be made, but there were sure millions to be paid to fix the issues that the city had with a decommed base and laxing of building codes and crash zones. Not to mention residents in Clay County who had a stake in their lively hoods who had zero say in the matter.
Of course, what people do forget, is the main man behind the push also lived on the Beach in St Johns County. He sure as hell didn't have to deal with the noise of the newer FA-18s. Most of the city was under newer sound maps due to the upgraded jets. It would not have been just the westside and parts of Clay/Baker County.
Read this before trying to reply:
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/102006/opl_cecilcon.shtmlThe Super Hornet creates 117 decibels of sound at 1,000 feet. The Super Hornet is twice as loud as the early model FA-18 Hornets, four times louder than the F-14 Tomcat and almost 16 times louder than the commercial aircraft that fly out of JIA.
The Defense Department projects that more than 240 of these aircraft would be transferred to Cecil. Officials promised the BRAC Commission that their operations would be unrestricted. That means aircraft could take off and land 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The normal Navy flight pattern altitude during daylight hours is 600 feet and 1,000 feet at night.
According to testimony at BRAC hearings, Cecil would host more than 200,000 flight operations per year; about one every three minutes. With each passing flight, noise levels at thousands of homes within 5 miles from Cecil Field will exceed that of a rock concert.
Additionally, the Navy's new Joint Strike Fighter is expected to come out about the time that a master jet base would open at Cecil.
The Joint Strike Fighter will be almost twice as loud as the Super Hornet.
And, it won't affect just those living around Cecil. People living around Jacksonville NAS will hear these new jets loud and clear. When the flight pattern is full at Cecil, FA-18E and JSF pilots will fly the very short hop over to NAS.
Mandarin, too, will be in the flight patterns that reach the other side of the St. Johns. Even Beach communities would be affected, as pilots make the six-minute trip to Mayport NAS.
The EPA regulates noise levels around airports using contour maps that identify decibel levels expanding outward. A decibel level of 65 or greater is considered unacceptable for unrestricted residential use.
A recent study was conducted of the potential noise contours for Cecil as a master jet base.
The study used the same computer modeling techniques that the Defense Department uses to evaluate the noise impacts of aircraft.
The research showed more than 88,300 acres of the Westside could be in areas the EPA considers unacceptable for normal residential use. Using 2000 census data - before the Westside's recent building boom - the study conservatively estimated more than 25,000 residents live in noise contour areas that would be rated at 65 decibels or greater.
