Staff Sgt. Cameron Lewis
F-35 Lightning II aircraft assigned to the 115th Fighter Wing, Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin take their first flight to Truax Field April 25, 2023.
Noise levels from the fighter jets can register as high as 115 decibels on ground-level noise monitors.
Only a select few residents on Madison’s north side might have their homes insulated from the booming noise of F-35 fighter jets flying overhead.
The Pentagon on Aug. 11 invited Wisconsin to apply for just over $1.1 million in noise mitigation funding for eight homes near Truax Field Air National Guard Base, where F-35s take off and land. The award is for $17 million less — 154 fewer homes — than Wisconsin applied for during a first round of grant applications. The state’s first application was rejected in March.
Leslie Westmont, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs, says in a statement that the department applied for around $1 million in funding in the second round “to begin a pilot phase of noise mitigation.” Only $10 million was available in the Pentagon’s award pool, according to Westmont, and invitations were sent to five applicants. Receiving an invitation does not mean that an applicant will receive funding.
“We are committed to continuing to explore options to assist the neighborhood with noise mitigation, and this opportunity is a first step,” says Westmont. Around 2,200 residents near Truax are expected to be subject to noise levels “incompatible” with residential use by 2027, according to a 2024 Dane County Regional Airport report.
A Pentagon spokesperson, who did not provide their name, deferred comment to the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs. County Executive Melissa Agard did not respond to a request for comment.
Several politicians and community leaders, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Zach Brandon, president of the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce, were supportive of the jets’ arrival in 2023, which they said would increase local job opportunities and Dane County’s economic profile. At the time, they mentioned that federally-funded noise mitigation might be an option for those affected.
That prospect has not come to fruition. Residents in east- and north-side neighborhoods like Carpenter-Ridgeway and Eken Park say that the noise from the jets, which can register as high as 115 decibels, negatively affects their wellbeing. Repeated exposure to sounds above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
“It's just like pulling teeth to get any of the elected officials interested in this,” says Rick Soletski, a resident of Carpenter-Ridgeway. “I'm really disappointed.”
Soletski has been pushing his elected officials to find funds for noise mitigation. On June 17, Carla Wolff, a constituent services director for Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, told him in an email that Burlington, Vermont, and Dane County — both communities in which F-35 fighter jets were placed near residential neighborhoods — were “surprised to not receive any funding.”
“The Office of Local Defense Community Cooperation prioritized schools in the first round of funding and we do not have any schools that fit the criteria to qualify for that funding,” Wolff wrote.
Soletski was upset to hear that the latest funding round could result in so few dollars.
“There are a number of people in this neighborhood that are older, like me,” Soletski says. “I'm 70 now, and if, in all of these studies and applications and approvals, if that's another three or four years, we'll be sitting under that noise for close to seven years before anything's done.”
