We, the undersigned taxpayers and citizens, demand that our elected officials at all levels: local, state and federal, stand with their constituents and call on Mayor Emanuel to halt the O’Hare Modernization Plan (OMP) construction, funding, and completion until the project has undergone detailed analysis that uses real data gathered since the flight paths changed in October 2013, data that reflects the reality on the ground, not only at the airport but in the neighborhoods where citizens are affected by the airport. We demand that our officials call on Mayor Emanuel to keep and use all the diagonal runways as part of any solution before further development of the OMP.

The OMP has over-promised and under-delivered from the start. It has been a disaster for communities under the flight paths, reducing quality of life and threatening citizens’ health. The OMP is behind schedule, over-budget, built out-of-order, and not bringing any of the projected gains in efficiency. With the announcement to construct the next runway the mayor is choosing to sacrifice a new group of taxpayers and citizens.

Without keeping the diagonal runways open, this proposal is totally unacceptable. The mayor has chosen to sacrifice us, our parents, the elderly, our children and grandchildren, our health, our leisure, our sleep, our property values and entire neighborhoods, communities, and parts of the city and suburbs for money, political connections and contracts, while he ignores, minimizes, dismisses and silences the citizen-taxpayers who now pay for the privilege of living under a pollution and noise path.

We demand a moratorium on the construction of any future runways and a halt to the planned demolition of runway 32R-14L. We oppose closing any diagonal runways that offer solutions to existing noise and pollution problems and that can accommodate large aircraft in exchange for new runways to the tune of a wasteful $10 billion of the taxpayers’ money.