The town of Superior and Boulder County commissioners are suing Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Broomfield over long-raised concerns about lead pollution and excessive noise by air traffic, which is only expected to increase in years to come.
The airport, owned by neighboring Jefferson County, adds “unreasonable health and safety hazards” for residents, town officials and commissioners said in court documents filed Tuesday in Boulder County District Court.
In filing the lawsuit, Superior and Boulder County are not asking to close the airport, but want the airport to stop using an operation known as touch-and-go that is often performed during training flights when planes land and take off without coming to a full stop, according to court documents. The training flights are conducted in piston-engine aircraft, which is the only type of aircraft using fuel containing lead.
Operations at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport are largely made up of these training flights and in recent years, the number of flights has skyrocketed, the lawsuit stated. Flight operations at the airport jumped 47% from 2019 to 2023, when there was more than one operation every two minutes for the entire year, the lawsuit said.
In the summer months, the airport is typically more busy, with more than 1,500 flights on any given summer day, according to the lawsuit.
When using touch-and-go operations, the piston-engine aircrafts are flying at low altitudes and at low speeds, exposing residents to an increased amount of exhaust and lead-based particulates, according to the lawsuit. If a plane flew over residents’ homes at high altitudes, higher speeds and lower power settings, the lead-based particulates would be less hazardous.
Because of the “constant impacts” of the touch-and-go operations, residents cannot open their windows, cannot use outdoors spaces and cannot sleep without interruption, the lawsuit stated.
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“For years, we have asked Superior residents to be patient while we worked with Jefferson County to address the noise and lead pollution coming from RMMA. But now we know that Jefferson County did not take this issue seriously and went so far as to mock our residents’ legitimate concerns,” Superior Mayor Mark Lacis said in a statement Tuesday. “Our residents have had enough. Jefferson County knows there is a problem and they should solve it immediately by eliminating touch-and-go operations by piston-engine aircraft.
“If Jefferson County won’t abate this nuisance voluntarily, we’ll have the Courts require it.”
The lawsuit names Jefferson County board of commissioners and Stephanie Corbo, the acting director of Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, as defendants.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Jefferson County officials said federally-funded airports such as RMMA, are subject to federal laws that require the airport to be available to aircraft operations, including those that use leaded fuel and make noise.
“It is not a legal option for the airport to mandate a reduction in those operations,” the statement read.
Officials said they hope to continue to work with community members to address their concerns “where viable and legal options exist.”
The Federal Aviation Administration aims to eliminate the fuel with lead, known as avgas, by 2030 because of the negative impacts known to be caused by lead particulates in the exhaust of planes that use the fuel.
According to the lawsuit, the airport’s previous director said the airport was trying to fully transition away from using fuel containing lead to a sustainable aviation fuel by 2027, but it is unclear whether the goal remains a priority.
In October, airport officials and Jefferson County commissioners said the airport was already in the process of transitioning to unleaded fuel. The unleaded fuel that is compatible with piston-engine aircraft was approved by the FAA in late 2022 and as it becomes more available, RMMA will “proactively and fully transition” to the unleaded fuel in the next two to three years, ahead of the FAA’s 2030 goal, the airport said in the statement.
Tuesday’s lawsuit comes after neighbors near the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport also sued last month seeking compensation for homeowners who have been “deprived of the use and enjoyment of their homes and properties.”
Though the airport is owned and operated in Jefferson County, as soon as planes depart to the north, they enter the airspace of Boulder County and Superior, which is northwest of the airport and home to about 13,000 residents.
Boulder County Commissioner Ashley Stolzmann said the decision to file a lawsuit did not come lightly, but was a result of a lack of action from the airport and its owner, Jefferson County.
“We have spent countless hours trying to work through solutions with Jefferson County and the airport, but we aren’t seeing progress and our residents are still suffering from the negative impact of aviation fuel and piston-engine aircraft,” she said in a statement.