Boning Up on Airport Noise
(03/26/2009) James Brundige, the manager of the East Hampton Airport, and Matthew O’Brien, the airport operations supervisor and noise abatement officer, were invited to be speakers at a recent University of California symposium on airport noise and air quality.
The two men have been involved in addressing aircraft noise, which has prompted complaints from East Hampton Airport neighbors as well as those across Long Island who live under flight paths. At the conference, which was sponsored by U.C.-Davis and held in Palm Springs, they gave a presentation titled “The Complexities of Noise Reporting in a General Aviation Environment.”
“Mitigating the noise generated by the traffic at the East Hampton Airport is challenging because of being situated in a rural, resort community,” Mr. Brundige explained this week.
To measure noise at airports and determine the impact of noise on the community, the Federal Aviation Administration uses a metric called “day-night averaging,” or D.N.L., and uses a noise threshold of 65 decibels for determining the effect airport noise has on a community.
“Our presentation focused on the fact that day-night averaging does not work for a community like East Hampton and that our focus is on single-event noise and supplemental noise metrics,” Mr. Brundige said. “Also, 65 decibels is not realistic because the Town of East Hampton is an area that experiences a very low ambient noise level, especially at night or on weekends, when the ambient noise levels can be below 45 decibels.”
In their presentation, Mr. Brundige and Mr. O’Brien outlined a number of noise-abatement initiatives employed at the East Hampton Airport. According to Mr. Brundige, they involve “establishing noise-abatement routes and procedures for both fixed-wing and helicopter traffic, monitoring traffic using an aircraft tracking system called AirScene that can archive aircraft tracks and altitudes out to about six miles from the airport for up to three years, maintaining a noise abatement hot line that allows us to receive input from the community on how they are impacted by aircraft noise, and matching the hot-line data with AirScene data for feedback to the user groups and stakeholders, and placing portable noise monitors in various locations around the community to measure the impact of aircraft noise for that particular area. All of these initiatives are based on measuring aircraft noise as single noise events rather than day-night averaging,” he said.
In addition, the airport managers issue monthly reports to the offices of Senator Charles Schumer and Representative Tim Bishop and to the Eastern Region Helicopter Council and local community groups showing the degree of compliance with airport abatement procedures based on data received through AirScene. They also keep an open line of communication with aircraft operators and trade groups, such as the helicopter council and the Long Island Business Aviation Association.
“Our goal is to continually work at making the Town of East Hampton Airport as community-friendly as possible within the realities of modern life,” Mr. Brundige said.
He said the conference allowed the two men to meet with the managers of other airports in similar circumstances, such as those in Van Nuys, Calif., and Lake Tahoe, “to exchange ideas for noise mitigation in resort communities. This is a problem that plagues many communities across the country and the University of California is providing a forum for solutions,” Mr. Brundige said.