Letters to the Editor: Airport 06.29.17

Federal Oppression

East Hampton

June 25, 2017

Dear David, 

The new normal, meaning no curfews at East Hampton Airport and presently no way to govern this publicly owned asset, has descended on the aircraft-noise-affected community in force. Air traffic has never been more intrusive and disturbing as it has been these last few weekends, with aircraft flying at will and at low altitudes. I was awakened this morning at 5:45 by a noisy helicopter, leaving town. It’s just too much.

The Independence Day holiday is now upon us and we can expect this traffic to increase substantially, as all traffic typically does on holiday weekends. I write to urge your readers to continue to log their aircraft-noise complaints, and recommend they use airnoisereport. com, a website that is much easier to use than the town-sponsored PlaneNoise site, planenoise.com/khto/. One may still log complaints on the town’s site or call the noise complaint line at 1-800-376-4817. But AirNoiseReport is faster and simpler to navigate, and can be easily accessed by various mobile devices. 

Quiet Skies Coalition has never agreed that noise complaints are an accurate measurement of noise disturbance, because it implies that no complaint means no disturbing noise event, and we know that is not true. However, the town has anchored its noise regulatory policy in noise complaint data, so the noise-affected must continue to complain. 

It’s also worth mentioning that Quiet Skies Coalition has never endorsed or participated in recommending any one route in or out of the airport over another. That, too, is a flawed management strategy, as it just spreads the pain, rather than solve it, which is to reduce operations in and out of the airport. Unfortunately, limiting numbers and concentrations of flights and controlling access for noisy aircraft will remain an undetermined policy piece, until the town and its taxpayers can exert full control over its property as the owners of East Hampton Airport. 

The town’s loss in court last fall has placed the people of the East End, and the residents of the Town of East Hampton — the true owners of this facility — squarely under the thumb of the Federal Aviation Administration. And that agency, not our duly elected government, is presently determining policy at our small local airport. It’s an outrage that a huge federal agency can have such a profoundly negative influence on our lives. But this is our reality now. 

I appeal to the aircraft-noise affected to once more brace ourselves to our cause: Independence from the tyranny of the F.A.A. In the spirit of the Independence Day weekend, let’s make everyone aware of how these noise impacts are destroying our health and happiness and the peaceful enjoyment of home and property, qualities that define us as a community. Only freedom from the F.A.A. will ensure the perpetuation of our sense of place and the characteristics we hold so dear. 

We must work to throw off the chains of federal oppression manifest in this government agency. Log every bothersome aircraft noise event.

Most sincerely, 

KATHLEEN CUNNINGHAM

Quiet Skies Coalition, Ltd.

Aerial Assault

Bridgehampton

June 26, 2017

Mr. Editor:  

It has long been established that helicopter operators, pilots, and passengers using East Hampton Airport have no regard for the peace and privacy of the citizens over whom they fly; however, last Friday’s aerial assault under deplorable weather conditions reached a new low, even for them.

With low ceilings, poor visibility, and blustery winds, these air jockeys thundered across the East End landscape at treetop level. It must have been terrifying on board, as the white-knuckle approach into East Hampton was rife with danger to all in the flight path.

At what point does the airport say No, you must divert to Westhampton? At what point does safety, and the public welfare, overrule the desire to land at any cost? Where is the accountability for such actions?

While East Hampton continues to grapple with the myriad problems associated with its airport facility, can’t we at least agree that such irresponsible behavior be terminated? To ignore the danger posed by such actions creates an atmosphere of complicity that will not be so easy to ignore when disaster ensues.

Most sincerely,

PRESTON T. PHILLIPS

Beauty Buried

East Hampton

June 25, 2017

Dear David,

As I sit in my garden on what should be a magnificent Sunday afternoon of peace and tranquillity, listening to the wood chipper or some such device being operated in my immediate neighbor’s yard for hours on end, a loud, low, slow helicopter flies overhead. Nearby, Georgica Pond is fouled with cyanobacteria.

All I can think is that East Hampton has completely lost its mind, allowing, both by greed and neglect, its beauty to be buried in refuse, noise pollution, nitrogen pollution, disease vectors, traffic, and visiting revelers urinating and vomiting in the streets. 

While the town board struggles to gain control over our airport (property that we collectively own) from the loathsome New Jersey helicopter operators and their self-absorbed clients who prey upon us, it is time, way past time, aggressively and relentlessly to address all of the assaults on our quality of life. We simply cannot permit East Hampton to be overwhelmed by waste. If we do, our children will curse us, and rightly so, for what we destroyed.

DAVID GRUBER

Promoting Air Pollution

Mattituck

June 19, 2017

To the Editor: 

Well, another South Fork high-end realtor is at it again. A full-page ad in a New York City newspaper featured with the headline “Enzo — Always on the Go and Getting It Done” as the realtor is seated inside of a helicopter with six featured Hamptons homes “Sold.” 

Let’s see, are we selling real estate or promoting helicopter services to the Hamptons? Clearly, the indirect suggestion to promote additional noise-polluting air traffic over our homes is not one of his or his agency’s concerns. 

My guess is that he does not live under the Federal Aviation Administration-mandated North Shore route flight path, where pilots “transition” over the North Fork to get to and from the South Fork airports or the Southampton helipad. Choppers don’t fall out of the sky, as they must “transition” over our homes, schools, farms, and beaches.

The natural beauty, peace, and tranquillity that thousands of us enjoy year round on both forks is being eroded by the arrogance of such realtors looking to reap profit over quality of life by directly or indirectly promoting air and noise pollution. 

Deplorable. 

TERESA McCASKIE