Truth Should Not be Optional in Boulder's Airport Debate

Boulder’s airport debate has become less about airplanes and more about honesty. In the past year, city officials and airport advocates have repeatedly made public claims that collapse under even the lightest scrutiny. When our public discourse abandons factual grounding, it’s not democracy that wins—it’s disinformation.

Consider Bob Yates’ August 2024 newsletter, in which he claimed that Santa Monica’s municipal airport is closing in 2029 “because the skies over the area have grown too crowded” and that the FAA shut it down for “public safety.” That’s false. As Santa Monica’s Airport2Park campaign leader John Fairweather—who has fought the FAA for 15 years—explained, “The closure of SMO had nothing whatsoever to do with safety or crowded skies… The FAA manages congestion by redesigning flight paths, not by closing airports.”. Yates declined to correct his error when confronted.

Councilmember Matt Benjamin has followed a similar pattern. At an August 15, 2024, planning meeting, he warned that building affordable housing on the airport site would “deliberately put our lowest-income people on a contaminated site.” When asked if he meant that housing would be built without remediation, Benjamin doubled down, claiming that’s what petitioners proposed. They did not. He extends his hypocrisy by remaining silent on the health effects from keeping the airport.  He recently misrepresented a federal court ruling, telling constituents that “This decision to close the airport does not lie in the hands of City Council as this was a decision by a federal judge.” In fact, Judge Nina Y. Wang dismissed the case without prejudice—meaning the court didn’t rule on the merits at all.

When misinformation enters the official record, it distorts democracy.

The problem extends beyond City Council. Airport advocates Jan Burton and Adrian Nye have each written Daily Camera op-eds falsely claiming that the FAA or EPA will “ban leaded aviation fuel by 2030.” That’s not true. The FAA’s EAGLE program merely aims to eliminate leaded fuel “by the end of 2030”--if safe, unleaded replacements are “commercially” available. There is no EPA order. Burton, a pilot who stores her aircraft at the airport, has also written that lead “can’t be found in detectable levels near the airport.” That’s scientifically indefensible.

Peer-reviewed studies prove otherwise. In 2011, Marie Lambert and colleagues found that children living near airports had significantly higher blood lead levels. A decade later, Santa Clara County’s Reid-Hillview study confirmed that airborne lead from piston-engine aircraft was poisoning nearby children. These are not fringe findings—they’re mainstream public-health science. The idea that fiberglass filters “prove” clean air is absurd; lead particles from aviation exhaust average just 13 nanometers—hundreds of times smaller than the pores in such filters.

When public figures misrepresent science, they’re dangerous. They enable a status quo that poisons children for another generation while claiming to “wait for the FAA.”

Meanwhile, city-paid consultants like Kimley-Horn, who assert that the airport contributes over $60 million in economic benefit, refuse to release the methods behind their study—calling them “proprietary.” How can taxpayers trust economic claims that can’t be audited?

This pattern, misrepresentation, selective citation, and concealment, reflects a deeper problem. FAA grants make the agency the de facto regulator of local land use while shielding general aviation (GA) interests from accountability. Pilots know that as long as the FAA calls the shots, local noise rules, altitude enforcement, or public health oversight remain toothless.

The EAGLE program’s slow walk toward unleaded fuel shows how industry pressure stalls reform. GA groups insist on keeping leaded fuel available until it’s cheaper to switch—no matter the cost to children’s health. As one parent put it: “Six more years of lead exposure isn’t progress—it’s negligence.”

Across Europe, local airports operate under strict noise and curfew rules. In the United States, pilots claim those same standards are “impossible”—not because they are, but because the FAA won’t allow local control.
This debate isn’t about being “anti-pilot” or “anti-airport.” It’s about truth, transparency, and justice. Boulder deserves a public conversation rooted in verified facts—not in fear or fabrication. Whether the future of the airport becomes housing, a park, or mixed use, one thing should unite us: our demand for honesty from those who claim to lead.
 
About the author: Hep Ingham is a Boulder County resident, researcher, and community advocate for environmental justice and transparent public policy.


Citations:
https://airport2park.org/city-files-lawsuit-regarding-airport/
https://www.faa.gov/unleaded
Miranda ML, Anthopolos R, Hastings D. A geospatial analysis of the effects of aviation gasoline on childhood blood lead levels. Environ Health Perspect. 2011 Oct;119(10):1513-6. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1003231. Epub 2011 Jul 13. PMID: 21749964; PMCID: PMC3230438.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Options for Reducing Lead Emissions from Piston-Engine Aircraft. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26050.
Jack D. Griffith, Electron microscopic characterization of exhaust particles containing lead dibromide beads expelled from aircraft burning leaded gasoline, Atmospheric Pollution Research, Volume 11, Issue 9, 2020, Pages 1481-1486, ISSN 1309-1042, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apr.2020.05.026.