With No NoticeMattituckAugust 29, 2016To the Editor: A meeting with Representative Lee Zeldin, Riverhead and Southold Town supervisors, one town councilmen, legal counsel, and the Federal Aviation Administration was held on Aug. 22 in Ronkonkoma to discuss the F.A.A.-mandated North Shore helicopter route. This route, which is riddled with loopholes for the helicopter pilots permitting them to “transition” over the same neighborhoods on the North and South Forks, sadly, is extended for another excruciating four years without public comment and with no notice to local officials.The F.A.A. was asked clear and precise questions by Mr. Zeldin and the two town supervisors. Its responses were quite concerning. What came of this meeting is the truth behind the extension. It was done due to political pressure by our influential New York State Senator, Chuck Schumer, as stated by an F.A.A. employee. The senator is a federal official who is elected by the public to do what’s right for the hardworking taxpayers and residents of New York. Oops! The next day the F.A.A. quickly released a public written statement of how “Comments an F.A.A. employee made yesterday about the North Shore helicopter route were misrepresented.” Another quote from the release stated, “Media have reported the claim that there was a secret deal regarding the North Shore helicopter route. There was no secret deal with Senator Schumer or anyone else.” Really? Two town supervisors, one town councilman, a congressman, his staff, and legal counsel all “misunderstood” what was said in the meeting? I think not. TERESA McCASKIE Closing the Airport Wainscott August 29, 2016 Dear David: Closing East Hampton Airport (KHTO) is hardly extreme. Using our land for our benefit is common sense. Think wind and solar energy, low-impact commercial leasing, playing fields, affordable housing. What is extreme is a single person coming by jet into a rural seaside village, dumping thousands of pounds of pollutants on it, and destroying its tranquillity. What is extreme is the onslaught of helicopter companies ferrying serial vacationers into a once-recreational local airport despite intense opposition from hundreds of thousands of people all over Long Island. What is extreme is the silence from local elected officials and environmental organizations such as the Group for the East End and the Nature Conservancy regarding the immense air pollution and climate degeneration from unnecessary and unwelcome aircraft flying over our public watershed. The citizens of Santa Monica, Calif., acting to close their airport and use the land for the common good is common sense. East Hampton’s subsidizing its awful airport is extreme. It is indefensible. Barry Raebeck Intentions and Goals East Hampton August 29, 2016 To the Editor, So, there is now an offshoot of the glorious Quiet Skies Coalition, the No-to-KHTO gang. Looks like the “coalition” is finally crumbling under its own weight, and under the impetus of an illustrious member of its predecessor, the committee to stop airport expansion. A founding member, no less! A founding member who, one day, decided to live near the airport. This group, under its various names and pseudonyms, has lost every lawsuit, every temporary restraining order it has filed against us, the taxpayers of this town, in the last 25 years or so. This group has cost millions (yes, millions, literally) to this town, to defend, and eventually squash, these same legal actions. If I had been a member of this group, I admit I would be frustrated also. But does this not open some serious questions about the true intentions and goals (not to mention the motives!) of this amalgam of malcontents right from the very beginning? What they always so vehemently and indignantly denied over the years (decades), because they knew it was not popular, turns out to be true nonetheless. Their goal is (and always has been) to close our airport. Pure altruism, of course, for the good of the people. Of course! Fortunately for them, absolute hypocrisy is no longer a fatal disease. GERARD BOLEIS Land at the Airport Noyac August 29, 2016 Dear Editor, We read frequently of increasingly out-of-reach commercial rents in and near the Village of East Hampton. I’ve also learned that many locally owned and operated businesses, some small or starting out, others who have identified growth opportunities and want to expand their businesses, are clamoring for commercially zoned rental space. Among those are building contractors, heavy-duty machine operators, landscapers, tech-based operations, storage businesses, providers and installers of specialized materials such as solar panels — the possibilities are many and varied. Such businesses need space at reasonable rents right now, for parking the company’s trailers, vans, and employee vehicles, but especially for longer-term parking of large machinery, warehousing of small equipment and supplies, etc. When opportunities arise, they need additional space if they are to expand their business. A growing business will add jobs. More local people will be on the payroll, including year-round and seasonal workers, as well as some part-timers. Such businesses want a long-term lease which provides the security they need before investing in growing their business; they want not to have to be concerned about short-term leases or verbal agreements that expose them to a proprietor’s whims when renting privately-owned land or premises. With 628 acres of airport land, such space could be made available on medium to long-term leases to a wide range of businesses — if the town were to transform even a portion of the airport land to benefit all residents of the town. Land at the airport is currently being leased for non-aviation uses for as much as $50,000 per acre, but the benefits go to the airport fund, not to the town’s general fund. It’s time to take a good look at how the residents — not the out-of-state commuter charter and air taxi operators and a very small group of airport-based operations with few full-time employees — could benefit year round from the land. And no, I do not own land anywhere near the airport; the town’s tax roll will attest to that. PATRICIA CURRIE An Ecological Calamity Wainscott August 26, 2016 Dear Editor, The proposed car wash in the hamlet of Wainscott will create total chaos. The mere design is shocking and resembles something in Arkansas or even closer, making this look like western Suffolk County. The potential for an ecological calamity is as real as an accidental spill of the chemicals needed and stored at this nightmare is beyond belief. We have a federally designated sole-source aquifer that supplies all our drinking water, the deepest part being under the airport and surrounding area. The Clean Drinking Water Act specifically prohibits any project that may imperil a sole-source aquifer without express written approval of the E.P.A. director, and that applies to a proposed fuel farm at the airport. Since the car wash proposal was first announced, I have observed the traffic patterns on Montauk Highway. Every single day, at approximately 11:30 a.m., the traffic is bumper to bumper, backed up from the post office to Daniel’s Hole Road and beyond, and continues most of the day until magnified by the trade parade. Every intersecting street both north and south of the highway where there is no traffic light makes any attempt to turn left, to go east from the north or left to go west from the south, is so hazardous it is scary. A consulting company is a waste of money. Let the planning board and town board members visit the site and see for themselves. I have experience in traffic control at defense plants, where thousands entered or left during rush hour. No doubt any traffic from this mind-boggling idea that attempts to leave will go north on Eastgate Road, turn right on Cowhill Lane, where Narrow Lane warning signs already exist, eastward to the stop sign at Wainscott Northwest Road. At an estimated 100 cars per hour, the line will be like the L.I.E. at rush hour, snaking all the way back to the exit. No doubt residents who already endure the numerous vehicles on Westgate and Eastgate Roads that try to bypass the already jammed eastbound lane on Montauk Highway will become virtual prisoners in their own neighborhood. Who dreamed this up? Do we not have a community preservation fund to stop overdevelopment and the destruction of a way of life? Let us all wake up before it is too late and the transformation of this wonderful area will surely resemble the rest of the wasteland of Suffolk and Nassau Counties. ARTHUR J. FRENCH Obstruction of Solutions East Hampton August 29, 2016 Dear David My closest friends tell me that my letters to The Star, particularly regarding the airport noise issue, are too long. (Your editors tell me the same thing.) But I think it necessary, if sometimes eye-straining, not merely to complain, but to lay critical facts before the public. Over the last several weeks, I have explained in detail how incredibly poorly served the town has been by its aviation attorney, Peter Kirsch. He appears to me to be incapable of distinguishing between his own frequently idiosyncratic views about the law and the sort of advice a competent lawyer should be giving a client about how the client’s interests can best be served, given the always uncertain legal terrain. Even the Federal Aviation Administration, an implacable opponent of airport noise control, disagreed with Kirsch’s advice to the town that nothing could be done. In my opinion, Kirsch has made an utter mess out of the work done by dedicated private citizens over a span of 35 years to relieve the community from excessive, exhausting, profoundly disturbing aircraft noise, especially that from commuter aircraft, while preserving the airport as a facility chiefly for local and recreational pilots. Most of the people I know who are bothered by the relentless noise of commuter helicopters and seaplanes do not want to close the airport. They want a solution that will respect the interests of their neighbors who like to fly, while also restoring to them the peace of their own homes that simple justice requires. Kirsch’s fumbling obstruction of all of the most viable solutions to the problem has pushed an equitable, community-based solution further away rather than bringing it closer. He stuck us with a definition of noisy aircraft that allows crowd-sourced helicopters and commuter seaplanes continued, uncontrolled access to the airport. He would not countenance the adoption of multiple measures to control frequency of operations. As a result, we have been stuck with none for two summers, because the federal court enjoined the only measure that Kirsch would tolerate. Incredibly, egregiously, Kirsch advised the town board not even to attempt to defend from helicopter company legal attack the settlement agreement with the F.A.A. that is absolutely legally essential to the town’s authority to control airport noise. The result is that the defense of that legal linchpin is left largely to the F.A.A. itself, an agency congenitally opposed to any rules to control airport noise. Talk about the fox guarding the henhouse. All Kirsch’s doing. More recently, he insisted that airport landing fees must legally be levied strictly by aircraft weight, although thousands of airports in the country do no such thing. Seems trivial, but Kirsch’s opinion, if implemented, would cripple the ability of the airport to remain financially viable without F.A.A. funding, which comes with F.A.A. control. That atrocious idea was only stopped because representatives of the East Hampton Aviation Association and of the Quiet Skies Coalition and the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion jointly protested to the town board. How can Kirsch’s series of blunders be explained? One possibility is that they are an accurate reflection of his professional competence. Another possibility is that he is so beset with conflicts between the town’s necessary legal positions and money he makes with public presentations of his own opinions — opinions that are in critical respects absolutely contrary to the interests of the town — that he is unable to fulfill his professional responsibility faithfully to represent the interests of his client. Another possibility is that Kirsch is left to do whatever the heck he wants in the service of his own interests and those of his other clients, because the town board itself lacks the competence to supervise him properly, to ask the right questions, to understand the implications of the things he says, to separate Kirsch’s legal fantasies from the state of the law as it is, or to perceive correctly where the risks and rewards of action and inaction lie. Or maybe it is all of the above, on which more to follow. DAVID GRUBER Motorcycle Gang Amagansett August 29, 2016 To the Editor: I hold a commercial pilot’s license, with thousands of hours and more than three decades of experience. I own a small single engine four-seat airplane that I regularly fly for personal use into and out of East Hampton Airport. But this letter is not about the well-publicized noise issue; it’s about a safety issue that is probably not as apparent to the community at large. The traffic mix that uses East Hampton Airport spans the range in speed and size from small private planes to helicopters to the largest corporate jets. During the many years I have been flying in and out of East Hampton Airport, I have found that the pilots of all the various types of aircraft operate around the airport with courtesy and in accordance with standard safety procedures — except the seaplanes. They have established themselves as the motorcycle gang of the sky. It’s not just individual pilots, it’s a culture among this group. On a recent Monday morning, before the tower was open to impose order on the chaos, I witnessed three seaplanes in the span of four minutes disregard the standard procedures that promote a safe and orderly flow of traffic. In fact, one of these seaplanes caused a “near midair” with me as I departed the airport (I have filed a formal report with the Federal Aviation Administration about him). Based on these episodes and many others I have seen, I would never fly with these seaplane operators, and I advise everyone I know to avoid them. Until an accident happens, about all that can be done to make them clean up their act is to publicize how they operate and let the public decide if this is who they want to trust their lives with. Or not. JOHN KEARNEY Airnoisereport.com East Hampton August 29, 2016 Dear David, The town is busy boasting that airport noise has somehow magically improved because of what it claims is a decline in complaints. Not really. It is just that the town has refused to take into account complaints received by a private system that is much, much easier to use than the cumbersome and technically obsolete system for which the town pays a small fortune. At present, after enduring the noise, it is necessary to waste considerable time filing a complaint on the town’s system, adding to one’s own annoyance. Worse, the town’s system only shows flight tracks with a 10-minute delay, so it becomes impossible to identify the flight that caused the noise. Absurdly, the town claims this is for security reasons, although you can go on public websites and watch flight tracks of jumbo jets in and out of J.F.K. in real time. Above all, there is complaint fatigue. Everyone is sick and tired of filing complaints when there is no result. Does the town board know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. The not-for-profit private system airnoisereport.com shows East Hampton flights in real time and has a very simple user interface. The private not-for-profit system only got under way in June of this year, logging 200 complaints for East Hampton Airport that month. But in July it logged 5,000. The July 2015 figure for the town system was 7,250. The combined town and airnoisereport figure for July 2016 is 8,700, a 20 percent increase in complaints! In claiming that complaints are declining, let alone attributing this to the town’s largely failed efforts thus far to impose airport restrictions, the town is affirmatively misleading the public. Southampton Town has agreed to support the airnoiseeport.com system. The East Hampton Town Board thinks noise goes away if it covers its ears and eyes. But what the East Hampton Town Board refuses to know still hurts us. The East Hampton Town Board’s airport noise control efforts are turning into a shell game. Sincerely, SUSAN McGRAW KEBER
Published 4 years ago
Last updated 4 years ago
Letters to the Editor: Airport 09.01.16
September 1, 2016