Beverly Airport Frustrations Remain High Among Many Danvers Residents

DANVERS, MA — Residents of Danvers, Wenham and Beverly who live near the runways of Beverly Airport continue to express frustration over airport noise and the response to their complaints from airport management and the Beverly Airport Commission even as Beverly Airport Director Gabriel Hanafin recently told the Danvers Select Board and Beverly City Council that complaints have dropped up to 90 percent over the past year.

State Rep. Sally Kerans (D-Danvers) told Patch on Tuesday that she refiled legislation this year to require the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission to collect noise data from the airport and post it publicly, as well as to adhere to a "good neighbor policy" with its abutters.

• 'People Were Very Angry': Beverly Airport Director Talks Danvers Noise Complaints

Hanafin told the Beverly City Council last week that through his office's efforts to address specific complaints since an updated noise abatement program was instituted in September 2023, complaints have fallen from 65 to 100 per month to five registered complaints this past December and six in January.

"Not only have we noticed a change in the number of complaints that we've gotten," Hanafin said, "but the whole tone of the complaints has totally changed. It's not so angry and expletive-ridden. It's much more someone having a conversation and wanting to ask questions."

• Beverly Airport Director Says Noise Complaints Take Nosedive

But several residents contacted Patch in the wake of that meeting, telling Patch that the new airport leadership has been only moderately more responsive than the previous one, and that the noise issue has not substantially subsided.

"I think the neighbors are exhausted," Kerans told Patch. "So when the airport manager might say we have had a drop off in those complaints, some of the neighbors may be at the point where they are so exhausted that they are saying: 'Why bother?'

"It is a great burden to people to have to listen to this day in and day out."

Kerans said the airport should also explain how flights are distributed in the area between the ones that fly into Beverly and which ones fly into Lawrence. Hanafin told the Beverly and Danvers elected bodies that one reason for that in recent years has been the relatively low fees that Beverly charged, which he has sought to raise to help increase revenue and to even out the flight distribution.

"This legislation is not going to fix everything and it could very well paint a more accurate picture of the burden of noise that the people of Danvers and Wenham are dealing with," Kerans said.

She added that while the airport is in Beverly, that it is Danvers and Wenham residents that bear the biggest burden from runway takeoffs and landings.

"What they don't get (in Beverly) is the relentless noise — day in and day out," she said. "People have recorded upward of a huge amount of flights in one day in the summer. Maybe you are not hearing it in Beverly, but that does not mean it's not a problem in Danvers.

"The airport could be much more cooperative with people and they haven't been because they don't have to."

A group of persistent Danvers residents was back in front of the Beverly Airport Commission on Monday night pushing for greater representation on the Commission — four members of the nine-member Commission, where Danvers currently has two — for environmental, health and quality-of-live impact studies on the airport and the leaded gasoline still used by planes, and for the revocation of lease plans to build a new hangar and expanded jet port.

Hanafin told the Beverly City Council and Danvers Select Board that the new hangar is a private enterprise to house planes already using the airport, and that the renovated runway is for safety reasons and not to expand service. But Danvers residents who spoke at a December meeting expressed skepticism about the capital plan, saying that the town should be compensated with taxes to the greater extent than the original charter requires.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)