Residents and some local officials are now calling on Broward County and Fort Lauderdale to study lead emissions at South Florida’s government-run airports sooner, rather than later, citing a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation which found that the region’s smaller airports top the country in annual emissions of the toxin.
Many residents said that they had not realized the tiny piston-engine planes that fly over their homes emit lead to begin with. Officials who knew about the emissions said they were not aware of the extent of the problem in South Florida.
North Perry Airport, which sits in Pembroke Pines and borders Hollywood and Miramar, ranks fifth in the nation, the Sun Sentinel investigation reported. Broward County owns and operates the airport. City-run Fort Lauderdale Executive ranks 18th. Two other local government-run airports, Miami Executive and Pompano Beach Airpark, sit near the top of the list as well, at 11th and 28th.
The fuel that contains the lead, banned from cars in the 1980s, is still used in small piston-engine planes, which is why the small airports where the planes take off and land are some of the biggest producers of lead in the country. An unleaded alternative has recently become available for all of the planes, but is barely used in South Florida.
The rankings are based on 2020 estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, which calculates lead emissions using data about the operations at general aviation airports. The EPA is already poised to issue a final endangerment finding about the fuel by the fall, the first step towards regulating it.
Officials have never studied the actual amount of lead in the air surrounding the South Florida airports or its effects on the people living nearby.
“Someone is doing something about it, and it’s being done at the federal level,” Pembroke Pines Commissioner Tom Good told the Sun Sentinel last week. “If that’s happening and it’s a real situation, let’s not wait until the EPA comes out with what air quality standards are going to be. Let’s start testing now.”
Good said he knew about the lead emissions issue after George Koren, a Pines resident and representative on the North Perry Community Advisory Board, brought it to his attention over the last several months, but he hadn’t realized North Perry ranked fifth in the country.
The City Commission had previously discussed drafting a resolution to send to Broward County, which runs the airport, encouraging the County Commission to put an air and noise quality study in its budget for next year.
After the Sun Sentinel investigation was published, Good said that he decided that timeline wasn’t fast enough.
“We’re anticipating pretty imminently (the EPA) is actually going to have the rule which will set standards,” Good said. “And then taking a look at what the harm is for lead and everything, it’s like — wait a minute.
“And then what (the Sun Sentinel) reported was the fifth highest concentration of estimated emissions,” he said. “I was like, ‘O.K., we probably need to do something more than just ask them to put it in the budget.’”
Good has since begun talks with leaders in Hollywood and Miramar, and drafted a resolution for the city to send to the county, urging commissioners to conduct a study. The item will come before the commission at its Aug. 16 meeting.
“The City Commission hereby strongly urges and formally requests that Broward County fund, implement, and report a comprehensive study of the air pollution levels, including the lead concentration levels, present in and around the North Perry Airport and within the surrounding residential community,” a draft of the resolution reads.
Arlene Satchell, a spokesperson for the Broward County Aviation Department, which operates North Perry, said in a statement that the department “is continuing to evaluate the EPA data on estimated lead emissions for general aviation airports and is monitoring developments on the federal level, such as the FAA Reauthorization Bill, regarding this subject matter to determine any feasible alternatives we may be able to explore … while adhering to all appropriate state and federal regulatory requirements. BCAD continues to operate HWO in a safe and efficient manner that meets or exceeds Florida Department of Transportation and FAA operational regulations.”
Meanwhile, the residents of the Lofts at Palm Aire Village, a residential community separated from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport grounds by a fence, are calling on the city to study the air and soil as well.
Resident Debbie Puia wrote in an email to the Sun Sentinel that she was “astounded” by the story. The planes fly low over her home and the noise has long bothered her, she said, but she didn’t know they emitted lead on top of it.
“Can you imagine breathing in 22 years of this?” Puia asked, referring to a picture of her pool filter, covered in black soot.
Lead is a particular concern for children because of its effects on brain development; there is no safe level of lead in the blood for children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The Fort Lauderdale airport’s operations include jet traffic, which North Perry does not, part of the reason for its lower quantity of emissions. When asked about the lead emissions issue, airport spokesperson Arlene Borenstein said that the city had begun transitioning away from the light piston-engine aircraft that use the fuel. Still, the airport emits over 700 pounds of lead per year.
In July, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis attended a homeowners’ association meeting at the Lofts about a water plant being built next to the neighborhood. At the meeting, residents confronted him about the lead emissions issue.
“We need your help,” Michael Ray, another resident, told Trantalis, adding that the Federal Aviation Administration has a plan to transition the general aviation industry to unleaded fuel by 2030. “We don’t want to be poisoned for another seven years.”
“This is the first time I’m hearing this,” Trantalis replied, adding, “I thought everyone used unleaded.”
Trantalis later told the Sun Sentinel that the meeting raised some concerns with him, but he hasn’t had the time to adequately address it, as he had been out of town the last two weeks.
“As soon as I can bring together department heads that are involved with that I’m definitely going to take a step forward,” Trantalis said.
Commissioner John Herbst, whose district includes Fort Lauderdale Executive, said he had begun looking into the issue after reading the Sun Sentinel investigation. He asked airport staff to provide him with an estimate of the number of light aircraft, which run on the leaded fuel, currently operating there.
“I saw the article and I reached out to staff and asked if they can compile some data to see how extensive the issue might be,” he said Wednesday.
Taking matters into his own hands, Ray reached out to Mountain Data Group, a research group that studied a similar government-run airport in San Jose, Calif., to see if they could do a study at Fort Lauderdale Executive.
The study would cost between $50,000 and $100,000, Christopher Keyes, one of the researchers, told Ray in an email. Ray said he had not yet received a response from the city.
Herbst said Wednesday that if a study on lead from the airport came before him, he “would be absolutely supportive.”
Meanwhile, operations continue as normal at the airports as newcomers continue to move to the neighborhoods next to them.
In George Koren’s neighborhood across the fence from North Perry, he said a young couple with a 7-month-old son recently moved into a home next door that has been vacant for two years. He spoke to the mother the other day.
“She doesn’t go outside too much with the baby,” Koren told the Sun Sentinel last week. “I said ‘Well, that’s actually good, with our air and everything like this.’ She didn’t really know anything about lead.”