Noise Pollution Controversy
The fleet of E-3's has remained in operation since the Cold War and has adapted its mission to emerging security threats, primarily in European airspace. Despite stringent self-imposed flight restrictions, including conducting a significant portion of training flights at different airfields throughout Europe and North America, E-3A operations in Geilenkirchen cause noise pollution, according to a recent study by the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, affecting over 40,000 citizens of Parkstad Limburg across the nearby German-Dutch border, who have formed an NGO aiming to stop AWACS flights. The Dutch government has asked for a mid-life upgrade of the AWACS fleet to include upgrading the engines to make the fleet meet the maximum noise levels allowed for civilian air traffic. However, NATO has not yet committed to the expensive investment. Despite its economic importance to the region and the strategic importance for NATO of the base, the Dutch House of Parliament has adopted a motion to restrict the AWACS from Dutch airspace unless new engines are installed. However, the Dutch government decided not to implement this motion.
Read more about this topic: NATO Air Base Geilenkirchen
Famous quotes containing the words noise, pollution and/or controversy:
“There must be no cessation
Of motion, or of the noise of motion,
The renewal of noise
And manifold continuation....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Like the effects of industrial pollution ... the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)