Malverne Considers Joining Villages in Noisy Flight Fight

When Malverne Mayor Patricia Norris McDonald recently held a Mass in the backyard of her Westwood home to of her husband's shooting, Bishop Chris Cardone had to stop the service multiple times to wait for noisy planes to pass by.

"It was ridiculous," McDonald said.

Her personal experience with what appears to be an increase in air traffic over Malverne, coupled with complaints voiced last month by village residents, prompted her to attend a meeting Monday night of the Town-Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee (TVASNAC). The 30-year-old coalition, which now consists of 13 villages in western Nassau County, could soon be adding Malverne to its ranks.

McDonald joined more than 40 local residents and other leaders, including New York Assemblymen Brian Curran and Tom McKevitt and State Senator Jack Martins, who crammed into Lawrence’s Village Hall on July 25 to hear from TVASNAC committee members and officials from the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

TVASNAC has been meeting regularly for months with FAA  and Port Authority officials to address residents’ concerns about overhead flights, mainly those traveling to and from nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Runway 22L into JFK, which has seen a dramatic increase in arrivals - from 14.5 percent in 2004 to 29.2 percent in 2011 - has become a main focus of the group, which includes representatives from Floral Park, New Hyde Park, East Williston, Inwood, Atlantic Beach, Valley Stream, Cedarhurst, Hewlett Harbor, Island Park, Lawrence, Long Beach, Stewart Manor, Woodsburgh and Garden City. Garden City, one of the newer members, is among the villages affected by the rise in aircraft utilizing Runway 22L.

“We did not buy houses underneath runway approaches,” said Laurence Quinn, a Garden City trustee and member of TVASNAC. “The traditional pattern had had no flights coming over at night.”

Quinn is pressing for the FAA to conduct an environmental study at JFK, but officials have said that the agency “has not revised or created any new public procedures” so no environmental study is needed.
“There have been two fairly significant jumps... what constitutes a change in air traffic patterns?” Quinn added.

Inwood representative Hezzie Cibere said the problem extends beyond arrivals at JFK. Departures, which effect Inwood and are the main concern of Malverne residents, are a bigger issue.

"Inwood gets takeoffs at Runways 13 and 31.We get the planes before anyone else here...and I hear them all night long," she said, pointing out that the old cargo planes departing around midnight are the worse.

Another Inwood resident, Nancy Manara, said the sound of the departing plans was so loud one recent night she thought "it was the day the world was ending."

"Arrivals I'll take any day," she added. "Takeoffs are worse."

Noise isn’t the only concern, according to Ray Gaudio, a representative for East Williston. Playing off of the famous campaign slogan of New York governor hopeful, Jimmy McMillan (“The rent is too damn high.”) he proclaimed, “The planes are too damn low.”

Gaudio said some planes are flying at dangerously low altitudes - 80.5 percent below the mandated 2,500 ft or higher in East Williston.  
“I think safety is involved,” he said, reminding all in attendance about the “Miracle on the Hudson,” in which a plane had to make an emergency landing on the river after a goose was sucked into the engine. “We are right near Eisenhower and Christopher Morley parks...which have a large population of Canadian geese.”

Gaudio also accused the FAA and Port Authority of failing to address the concerns the group has voiced in the past and deliver on a plan for a noise abatement program at JFK, which he said was promised at the last meeting.

TVASNAC Executive Director Kendall Lampkin reminded Gaudio of the intent of the meeting, to allow both the committee members and the public to ask questions.

“We’re not going to allow this meeting to degenerate into finger pointing,” Lampkin said. Lambert also stressed that TVASNAC has not voted to advocate any particular fix to the situation. “We are a sounding board,” he added.

To allow time for public participation, he limited each committee member to pose two questions to the officials present: David Siewert, air traffic manager at JFK Air Traffic Control Tower; Paul Laude, program specialist for the Federal Aviation Administration; Ralph Tamburro and Jim Hayden, of the FAA and the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON); Ralph Tragale, assistant director for the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey; Ed Knosel, manager of environmental programs at the Port Authority; and William Huisman of the Aviation Development Council.

Many locals - from a 52-year-old Valley Stream resident to a young girl in Garden City - shared how the loud planes wake them up at night.

“I wake up early at night because the noise from the airplanes comes so low… and when I get to school I fall asleep at my desk," Julia Fornasar said.

The suggestions from the members and residents gathered included rotating runways more often, requiring planes to make instrument-guided landing approaches and raise minimum altitudes that pilots must follow. Some also questioned whether pilots who do not comply with altitude standards have been penalized.

Zach Campbell, a 15-year commercial and cargo pilot, assured the audience that they must adhere to the standards. “I could lose my certificate. That’s what we deal with as pilots,” he said.”

As residents of the western Nassau County, Campbell told the audience that they too need to deal with the circumstances.
“We bought homes here...we know there’s airports,” he said. “As the aviation industry grows, we all have to understand that we all want to travel places, so there’s going to be more air traffic.”

Knosel said already JFK is rotating its runways four to six times per day for efficiency purposes, but explained that wind direction dictates runway selection. In regards to complaints about noisy cargo planes, Knosel said, “We can not dictate that they go out and buy new aircraft.”

On the FAA side, Siewert said right now the agency is monitoring controllers on the midnight shift at JFK to make sure they are following protocols. He said the issue is “very complicated,” but promised the group that “this is not the end. This is a followup community meeting.” Siewert encouraged residents to use the group has a direct link to aviation officials and to also voice complaints by calling the agency’s hotline: 718-553-3365 or emailing 9-aea-noise@faa.gov.

Following the meeting, Mayor McDonald spoke with Lampkin and Siewert, and later told Patch that she was seeking information about Malverne joining the group. Once she has details, including cost, McDonald will present it to the village board, who would need to vote to approve the membership.

“I think the board gets it [is a problem],” she said.