Mountain View officials have issued a scathing review of NASA's environmental report on air cargo, saying ``deficiencies'' in the study seriously underestimate the toll on surrounding communities in the flight path.
The criticisms, presented during Tuesday night's council meeting, are a response to an environmental assessment the NASA/Ames Research Center released last month claiming air cargo flights flown from Moffett Federal Airfield would have a minimal impact on neighboring cities.
...City officials question the baseline against which NASA is comparing projected impact levels.
While the Navy was operating at Moffett Field, the number of flights averaged 80,000 annually. When the Navy pulled out and NASA took over stewardship in 1994, it set 60,000 as the airfield's annual flight ceiling.
But during the last two years, the number of Moffett flights has dropped to about 24,000 annually.
However, the report consistently uses the 60,000 maximum annual flights as the baseline for comparison -- a level city officials say skews results in NASA's favor and is inappropriate since it doesn't reflect current community conditions.
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