Well, yes, contacting the media about the airport noise in Stuart, Florida does seem like a good idea now, doesn’t it? After all, someone is interested in the fact that our sleepy little peaceful town went from … well … sleepy and peaceful to noisy and obnoxious overnight, right? Yes, we thought so too.
But they didn’t. On May 2, a neighbor alerted us to an article penned by Mr. Gil Smart in The Stuart News. Upon reading it, we sent this email to Mr. Smart:
We read your article in today’s News regarding increased air traffic in and out of Witham Field in Stuart with interest.
Beginning in January 2017, we noticed an increase in repetitive airplane noise we attributed to Witham. When we reached out to find out the reason and what could be done to bring peace back to our community, we were stonewalled with “contact the FAA” and “nothing has changed.” Being long-time residents, we knew something had changed, but not being privy to the workings of an airport and lacking answers from our commissioner or the airport manager, we had to dig for ourselves to find those answers.
We discovered that it wasn’t President Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago causing the increased noise about which we had inquired, no matter that the county wants residents to believe that’s the case. There are definitely more jets when he’s in residence, and they’re irritating, but they don’t cause nearly as much stress and anxiety as planes overhead as often as every 2 to 3 minutes for hours at a time, 7 days per week, from morning until night. The planes causing this noise are — as best we can tell — flight school planes. There are many days where we can’t even connect 10 consecutive minutes of peace and quiet, and complaints to the County Commission and airport manager fall on deaf ears.
We invite you to visit StuartAirportNoise.com, and contact us if you’re interested in more details.
Regards,
StuartAirportNoise.com
Whether our email was never received by Mr. Smart or he felt there was no story here, we may never know — we never heard back from him. Since this wasn’t our first attempt at reaching out to the media, and all of our other inquiries have been ignored, we followed up once, and are loath to waste more time.
When enough residents complain, the media will come to us.
What Can You Do About Stuart Airport Noise?
We’ve compiled contact information for our Martin County Commissioners –> Look here.