At the city of Santa Clara level this site choice will result in a liability exposure higher than any NFL stadium ever built. Up to this point the NFL has been careful to avoid placing stadiums within the sound contour of an airport. It is not a random occurrence that there is not one single NFL stadium in an airport sound contour.
At the County of Santa Clara Airport Land Use Commission they are charged with basically keeping us from doing harm to ourselves around airports. While they do not have direct control over the stadium site they do have the ability to determine the site is not a compatible land use for various reasons like noise and safety. The City Council can override the ALUC with a 2/3 majority vote (5 out of our 7 members) and a finding of facts. These overrides remove liablities from the San Jose Airport and place them on Santa Clara.
At the State level they must approve that the basic reasoning that the city council has overridden the ALUC follows some logic. Since the city council will not be able to find a comparable stadium they will have to make up some other reasoning like a dome is not economically feasible for the 49ers to deaden the noise from the planes and that the number of aircraft crashing into things at that distance is acceptable to them.
Here are the accident charts that the ALUC and the city staff will be using.
They come from the California Airport Land Use Planning Handbook.
The handbook can be downloaded here.
The California Airport Land Use Planning Handbook describes Safety Zones that
help determine compatable uses. In the zones near the proposed site, at about 10,000 feet, outdoor stadiums are prohibited (page 9-45). However, this is for smaller airports, larger airports will use the noise contour to determine compatible land use. Using this method it is easy to point out where the low flying planes are, just follow the noise.
The method is mentioned in the FAA's manual "Land Use Compatibility and Airports" Page V-37. The manual is downloadable at the FAA website.
"In the absence of aircraft noise exposure contours, airport owners can define Airport Impact Zones and identify appropriate land use zoning for each impact zone."
The Issues: City, County, State.
