North Hempstead Town supervisor Judi Bosworth has written a letter to FAA administrator Michael Huerta, urging that airplanes be rerouted to the south of Long Island to reduce aviation noise over Nassau County.
The letter is the latest effort by town and village officials over several years to mitigate the noise pollution that Bosworth says is a disruption to residents’ quality of life and a potential health concern.
“The town frequently receives calls and emails from constituents who are woken early, kept awake or forced inside by low flying aircraft,” Bosworth said. “Moreover, persistent aircraft noise is not merely an annoyance, it is hazardous to our health. Like many other communities, residents of our town work hard to enjoy an excellent quality of life. This is being threatened by the constant drone of low-flying aircrafts. Many town residents are upset and I share their frustration.”
If planes bound for Kennedy International Airport are redirected to the south of the island, the noise threshold could be reduced from 65 DNL to 55 DNL, Bosworth said. DNL stands for day-night average sound level, or the average noise level over a span of 24 hours.
In her letter, Bosworth cites a study commissioned by the FAA that suggests any threshold over 55 DNL can lead to cardiovascular disorders.
For every 10 decibels of plane noise, the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular conditions increases by 3.5 percent, Bosworth said, citing a Harvard School of Public Health study.
For these reasons, the Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization use 55 DNL as the accepted limit for noise levels, Bosworth said.
While there is no official mandate redirecting plane routes, Bosworth said planes should be able to avoid flying low over residential areas if the weather permits.
“At a recent New York Community Aviation Roundtable meeting, the FAA represented that, for safety reasons, airplanes must land into the wind. However, on several recent occasions, when the wind was light and its direction varied, aircrafts circled over the town and approached JFK Airport from the north,” Bosworth said in her letter. “June 6th was one of those days and many of my constituents registered complaints…In these conditions, aircrafts could have approached from any direction, yet they approached the airport from the north, passing over parts of the town at an altitude of less than 1,500 feet, subjecting town residents to constant, deafening aircraft noise.”
North Hempstead officials created two committees to address plane noise in 2015, the Aircraft Noise Technical Advisory Committee led by Len Schaier of Port Washington and the Aircraft Noise Public Education and Outreach Committee led by Fran Gould of New Hyde Park.
As of now, the FAA has not directly responded to the letter sent by Bosworth, said town spokeswoman Carole Trottere.
The FAA website says that any aircraft certified for airworthiness in the U.S. has to meet noise level standards.
“The purpose of the noise certification process is to ensure that the latest available safe and airworthy noise reduction technology is incorporated into aircraft design and enables the noise reductions offered by those technologies to be reflected in reductions of noise experienced by communities,” the FAA states on its website.
Bosworth is one of several officials who have expressed concerns about low-flying aircraft.
Village of East Hills Mayor Michael Koblenz has been vocal on the issue.
In April he sent letters to Bosworth and Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, urging them to file suit against the FAA for not fixing the problem.
“As you are aware, the volume in the flight paths at Kennedy Airport have substantially increased,” Koblenz said in the letter. “The noise, vibrations, pollutants and other severe environmental burdens now seriously impact the quality of life in many Nassau County communities.”
Koblenz said he met with FAA officials in 2014 asking for equal distribution of plane landing routes, but they didn’t grant the request. Legal action was the last resort in resolving the issue, he said.
“We are now left with no other alternative but to resort to judicial relief and with the high costs of litigation, we ask for your financial support, involvement and assistance,” he said.
Old Westbury Mayor Fred Carillo echoed Koblenz’ concerns Koblenz and said he supported his call for litigation against the FAA in a letter to Mangano in April.
Carillo wrote that noise has created “intolerable conditions that disrupts the quality of life of Old Westbury and East Hills residents.”
Old Westbury resident Susan Blumenfeld said it has become more difficult to sell a house in the village because of the noise and decreased property values.
“It is an issue that makes me feel like I live in the [city], where houses are less expensive because it is the [city], with airplanes flying over them,” Blumenfeld told trustees at the July 18 meeting. “This is not why I bought a house in Old Westbury. I bought a house in Old Westbury for calm and beauty. This is not calm and beauty. I can read the names of the planes. I almost feel like people are waving to me as they fly over our homes.”
Matt Varvaro of Port Washington, who is running for the 16th District seat in the New York State Assembly, has made airplane noise a point in his campaign.
“Noise pollution is a problem unique to our district, given our proximity to several major airports. I applaud the work that all of our elected officials have done to combat it,” Varvaro said in a statement released on Monday.
“However, more needs to be done,” he said. “When I get elected, I will work with the Port Authority and the FAA to redirect air traffic, lower the noise threshold, and take similar steps to ensure that airplane noise causes as little disturbance as possible to our residents.”
