About 300 Lake Nona residents turned out at a public hearing Thursday night to tell the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority that they don’t want Orlando International Airport to encroach on their neighborhood in southeast Orlando.

The crowd was made up mainly of residents of the NorthLake Park at Lake Nona subdivision, which borders a two-square-mile tract of airport-owned land. They had responded to a campaign from a residents committee.

The aviation authority plans to expand the airport toward the east into an undeveloped area bordering houses and townhomes, and it’s proposing large-scale aviation uses that it considers key to its growth over the next decade. Residents are worried about noise, pollution, unsightly hangars and parking lots as well as traffic on surrounding roads and the impact on wildlife, even though aviation authority officials said they would “mitigate impacts” of construction.

” ‘Mitigate’ is a pretty word for ‘destroy,’ ” Deborah Moskowitz, leader of the residents committee, told the crowd at Lake Nona High School. “There is no question that the development as currently planned will have an adverse impact on the value of adjacent homes. This type of development is unquestionably not compatible with an adjacent residential area.”

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