Plane noise being studied by the Port Authority

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Residents of Valley Stream and neighboring communities have noticed more noise from low-flying planes in the past few months.

Angelo Bruno, who lives in the village’s Gibson neighborhood, said he has tried to drown out the noise by turning on his air conditioner’s fan for the night so his children aren’t disturbed while they sleep.

“A lot of hot nights we won’t notice it because the windows are closed and the air is on,” Bruno wrote to the Herald in a Facebook message. “But now that it’s cooler, it’s pretty bad.”

Bruno, who moved to Valley Stream six years ago, said he has noticed the noise getting worse over the past few years. “They will fly by one after the other for 20 minutes maybe, a couple times a week it feels like,” he wrote.

Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages (D-Elmont) said she sympathized with frustrated residents, and urged them to get involved to correct the problem in one or both of two ways. “The Port Authority will commence aviation community roundtables with [Federal Aviation Administration] officials and community representatives in April for JFK and LaGuardia airports,” Solages wrote in an email to the Herald. “The roundtables will include representatives of local elected officials, who have been consulted with regarding the formation and role of the roundtables. Anyone interested in becoming a member can contact our district office.”

Solages said that residents could also opt to have a noise monitor installed in their backyard as part of a study on noise pollution. “We know that we live by JFK,” she said. “However, we shouldn’t get the brunt of the airplane noise. There should be equal distribution among all communities around JFK.”

When Malverne held its 9/11 candlelight vigil earlier this month, it was in the middle of a six-hour period in which dozens of planes roared overhead, making it almost impossible to hear Deputy Mayor Patricia Fitzpatrick during the ceremony. Malvernite Elaine Miller, who keeps track of planes flying over the village, said that from Sept. 1 to 8, 270 to 300 planes had flown over her house each day. “On Sept. 8, they sent us another 60 planes on top of that,” she said. “It was solid 14 to 17 hours per day of plane noise.”

Despite what appears to be an increase in air traffic and noise, statistics from Malverne’s plane noise monitor show that the day-night average volume was only 55.9 decibels from January through August 2016, below what the FAA defines as significant noise, an average of 65 decibels.

Still, many South Shore residents are complaining about the noise, and Miller, who started the activist group PlaneSense for Long Island, has more than 2,000 people following her efforts on social media.

The problem, some observers say, is how the noise numbers are tabulated. Thunderous noise levels are diluted, because the calculations also include times of the day when there is no plane noise at all.

“They’re averaging things out over a year’s time, so everything’s watered down,” said Malverne resident Larry Hoppenhauer, Malverne’s representative on the Town-Village Aircraft Safety & Noise Abatement Committee. “The six hours we were getting those flights going overhead on Sept. 11 — ranging in the 65- to 75-decibel range — will get diluted when they average it out yearly.”

It’s a situation that Len Schaier, president of Quiet Skies — an organization that seeks to simplify access to aircraft noise research and supports noise mitigation efforts — with the help of several politicians, is trying to change.

Schaier, who has a goal of reducing the day-night average threshold from 65 to 55 decibels, points to a study conducted by Harvard and Boston universities — the first study to use the FAA’s day-night-average system to gauge noise impact on the population. “They found that when the number is 55 or higher, people were more likely to have cardiovascular disease,” Schaier said.

The study, which analyzed noise at 89 U.S. airports and hospitalizations among approximately 6 million study participants, found that older people exposed to aircraft noise at high levels may face an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Study researchers speculated that the noise could be linked to stress reactions and increased blood pressure — two risk factors for cardiovascular problems.

Schaier, who sits on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s Technical Advisory Committees for both LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, noted that Congress recently passed a reauthorization bill for the FAA that did not mention the efforts to reduce aircraft noise. He added, however, that a second part of the bill, which must be signed into law by next September, does address community aircraft noise — but it needs the public’s support. “We must make sure those running for office, and those already in office, do not forget that many of us are still hurt by the noise and pollution,” Schaier wrote in an email.

Earlier this year, U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand sent a joint letter to Michael P. Huerta, administrator of the FAA, requesting more public meetings to address changing flight procedures or the implementation of new ones, and the updating of noise modeling metrics. The FAA said in response that it had formed a 28-member advisory committee “to provide advice on policy-level issues facing the aviation community in implementing NextGen” — a new airspace system that enables planes to fly closer together, take more direct routes and avoid delays caused by planes waiting for open runways.

The NextGen Advisory Committee consists, however, of only one environmental representative — Brad Pierce, president of NOISE, a national, community-based association of local elected officials — and 27 air industry executives.

In the meantime, Nicole Fischman, a nine-year Valley Stream resident who lives near Firemen’s Field, said she marked a passing plane every five minutes on Sept. 25. “This is the worst it’s ever been,” she said, adding that the noise often wakes up her 6-year-old, forcing her to keep the windows closed.

Elaine Miller continues to press Port Authority and FAA officials for answers. “Why have planes been overflying Malverne excessively for such an extended period of time?” and “Why has there not been a rotation of runways?” are among the questions she has asked Paul Laude, an FAA spokesman. To date, she has not received a response.