Airport noise study moves forward

The Port Authority announced at an Oct. 27 meeting with the Town and Village Aircraft Safety and Noise Abatement Committee (TVASNAC) that they have officially signed a contract with San Francisco-based Environmental Science Associates to conduct a federal aircraft noise study known as Part 150.
The firm will develop noise exposure maps and collect data to determine noise mitigation measures for residents living near John F. Kennedy. and LaGuardia airports. The study is expected to take three years and cost $8 million, with $4 million being devoted to each airport.
TVASNAC’S Executive Director, Kendall Lampkin, was surprised by the announcement. “Over ten years ago, I would have never expected to get to this point,” he said. “I was very happy to hear this news.”
It was also decided at the meeting that the threshold for measuring noise would be reduced to 55 decibels for both day and night, down from the original 65. This new recording level will be included in the contract.
TVASNAC trustee Laurence Quinn of Garden City supports the lower measuring level to be set at 55, which is also the highest noise level at which a person can tolerate noise and not suffer health issues.

“Part 150 is supposed to have a technical component and committee to set the decibels at 55,” he said. “There is a real issue with them not having the roundtables as they [the Port Authority and Federal Aviation Administration] could push their model, set to the level that doesn’t correctly measure the noise.”
It was March 24 when officials from the Port Authority originally met with concerned community members and TVASNAC in Malverne to unveil plans for conducting the study.
The goals originally stated at the Malverne meeting involved hiring staff for a specific noise monitoring and reporting office and a director to operate it, doubling the number of monitors used to record aircraft noise, a website known as WebTrak for tracking planes and their flight patterns online, and creating roundtable discussions for the airports involved in the study.
“People are still concerned about the roundtables,” Lampkin said. “I expect that we will get another announcement after the elections about this. It hasn’t been decided yet how many there will be. My feeling is that we will get one large roundtable with two subcommittees.” Roundtables are comprised of people acting as liaisons between the communities surrounding the airports and the agencies conducting the noise study.
In addition to signing the contract and establishing the new noise level measurement, more noise monitors have been placed throughout the communities surrounding the airports and a roundtable coordinator has been hired, officials said.
The Port Authority’s aviation director, Thomas Bosco, said that this study eventually is to include Teterboro and Newark Liberty airports. “The continuing progress toward the federal Part 150 studies for Kennedy, Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and Teterboro airports marks another milestone in the agency’s efforts to address residents’ aircraft noise concerns in New York and New Jersey,” he said in a prepared statement. “Working in concert with residents, elected officials, industry partners and FAA representative, the agency’s consultant will perform the intensive, complex studies necessary at these four airports to evaluate noise levels and propose and analyze potential efforts to alleviate the problem.”
To learn more about the Part 150 study, visit http://www.panynj.gov/airports/webtrak.html.