Chicago won't start replacing smelly airport noise windows until 2027, nearly a decade after complaints began

Aviation Commissioner Michael J. McMurray gave the timeline at an Oct. 27 City Council budget hearing after Ald. Marty Quinn (13th) asked for an update, the Greater Southwest News-Herald reported. Phase one covers 225 homes, and its construction contract was awarded in May. Phase two, 242 homes, went out to bid in September, with award due early in 2027 and work in the fall. Phase three, another 242 homes, is to be advertised this fall and also start in fall 2027. Phase four begins in 2028; McMurray put it at 250 homes, while the department's website lists 257.

The windows were installed under the Residential Sound Insulation Program. The Chicago Department of Aviation has run it around Midway and O'Hare since the mid-1990s and has insulated 22,204 homes. Complaints took off in 2017. The department says inspectors have confirmed odor in 2,406 homes, 1,341 of them near Midway, and that windows have been replaced in only 70 homes so far.

Testing ordered in 2017 and 2018 traced most of the smell to PVC-coated insect screens. Wood Environment & Infrastructure Solutions, the industrial hygiene consultant, found no evidence that the windows or the odor threaten health, according to the department. The city has since rewritten its specifications: no PVC coating on screens, screens placed outboard of every pane, windows shimmed and fastened working from both sides of the wall, and odor and VOC tests on sample units before any vinyl window or patio door goes into production.

Illinois pays for the work through the Sound-Reducing Windows and Doors Replacement Fund, set up in 2019. State law requires that one in ten homes done each year, at minimum, be hardship cases, such as leaks at the window or a resident's medical condition. McMurray told Quinn the pace would be a bit more than 200 homes a year.